notes from above ground

iii

I forgot how much people love small talk. Don’t get me wrong, I’m okay with half-hearted banter about the weather—it’s just hard to figure out what’s real and what's filler. It makes me wonder if everyone hates me, and that’s why they only talk to me about small things. No one really cares that much about the weather. Maybe they talk about the big things when I leave.

I blame professionalism. To maintain a professional environment, everyone has to be polite, and the best way to be polite is to talk small. Talking big would risk ruffling feathers, and big talk takes up too much of the mental space that we’re supposed to use for saving lives.

When conducting small talk, by the way, you must talk about the snow: how much there is, whether or not you think it’s magical, and what’s going to happen to it in the near future. Is it gonna stick or melt, do you think? The details of your opinion don’t really matter, but you have to have an opinion.

"yes" “Yes, the snow is magical, because it reminds me of going sledding when I was a kid,” or “No, I hate the snow, because it means I have to shovel!” Either response will earn you a polite chuckle and enough time to smoothly transition to more important matters, like “Are you having chest pain?”

To say nothing, or to say something too “big” (“The snow is telling us to slow down, in accordance with nature, but the above ground demands that we keep going fast,” or “Our descendents probably won’t see snow, not even if they go to the Poles”) would be unprofessional—and, frankly, rude.

Speaking of chest pain, I can’t find my stethoscope. Right now is obviously the wrong time to lose my stethoscope. It’s the one item that I actually need to fulfill my above ground responsibilities. It feels sort of dumb, losing something like that, especially because it’s engraved with my name. It’s like there’s a little part of me out in the world, vulnerable and unsupervised. Is this how parenting feels?

In all schemes grander than this current scheme, the missing stethoscope doesn’t matter. It’s not like there’s a shortage. And it’s not like my lack of a stethoscope will be the difference between someone living and dying. Worst case scenario, which is really not that bad: I can buy a cheap one from Walmart tomorrow.

I don’t know why I can’t get over it. I know it’s just a stethoscope, a tube of rubber with metal bits on both ends, but I can’t stop thinking about it, even when I try to think about something else. It’s weird to not know where something is, something that belongs to me, something that should be underground with me. I guess the question becomes: could it really belong to me if it could disappear without my noticing?

These kinds of things drive me crazy. They always have. Like my watch that went missing last year and never turned up. And the thing that I forgot I was going to say when I was seven. What was I going to say, and how different would my life be if I remembered it? I’d probably know where my stethoscope is, for starters.

Anyway, I personally find the snow to be magical, and I also think that it’s trying to tell us to slow down. I’d slow down to a stop for the next three months if it were up to me. Sit in front of my window and watch the snow fall, not worrying about what’s going on in the above ground. It’s not up to me, obviously. Things are about to speed up.