Apologies for being behind on the updating. I have been extraordinarily busy with various real-world concerns, such as washing my hair.

On Sunday nights I take the train home from work, and while doing so tonight I ended up, by chance, sharing the train ride with a pretty girl who works in my office. She got on the train one stop south of me, and by that time I already had my nose buried in David Brock’s Blinded by the Right which I bought this past week at the comic book store (although, as I discovered, it is not a comic book at all!), and if she had not said my name (Lucas) I may not have ever noticed she was sitting there, one seat over.

So, instead of reading about a man’s journey from liberal social values to neoconservative propagandizing and back again, I had a nice conversation with a person whom I did not know very well. As it turned out, she was getting off the train one stop south of my stop, so we talked the whole time, about such subjects as college majors, getting into classes, putting off writing papers until the last minute, things that every college student can relate to. Her boyfriend, as it turned out, majored in the same thing I did when I was an undergrad twenty years ago, so I briefly walked down memory lane in that regard. All told, it was a fine conversation, considering how awkward train conversations can sometimes be.

It seems wholly unremarkable. But consider this: as we continued to speak I became increasingly aware that an extremely long hair was plummeting in and out of my right nostril with every nasal breath I took. I could feel its boogery wispiness dancing against my upper lip, and it required focused concentration to avoid drawing attention to it by doing something obvious such as swatting it away or batting at it as a kitten would a strand of yarn, or, with my index finger, shoving it back up into my nose, where the other, shorter hairs just might grab it and prevent its return. I did my best to ignore it and continued with the conversation.

If she noticed, she did not let on; and really, I do not care whether she did or not. Perhaps if she did, it would make the conversation that much more memorable. I know it will be memorable for me, as every time a long nose hair brushes against my lip, or tongue, or chin, or sternum, or what-have-you, I will remember this conversation.

And I will repeatedly remember this conversation.

Because I am cursed.

On Friday afternoon, I was taking a leisurely stroll through my neighborhood, en route to hang out with my pal Sam. Springtime weather finally had Chicago’s testicles in its seasonably warm grip, and so, with my cool sunglasses on and my billowy black hair tied in a fashionable “pony-tail”, I casually strode along the sidewalks of quiet city blocks, delighted to be outside on such a lovely day.

Three blocks south of my apartment, I noticed that up ahead there was a girl standing outside an apartment building, presumably having just pressed the buzzer. Such a thing in my neighborhood is so regular and unremarkable that I had already forgotten about it by the time I reached the other end of the block, where she was still standing. As I passed her, she spoke suddenly:

“Did you see who did that?”

“Did what?” I said, turning to face her. The answer was self-evident once I did so, because the entire upper half of her person, as well as part of the door she was standing in front of, were covered in the remnants of one or two or three eggs. Judging from the points of impact, it seemed likely that the eggs were hurled from far away rather than dropped from above.

“Hurled an egg at me. Did you see it?” she asked, obviously not having overheard my internal monologue.

“No, I didn’t. How long ago did it happen?”

“About twenty seconds ago.”

Holy smokes! I thought. If I hadn’t been lost in thought while meandering down this block, I would have been a witness to this girl being pelted by an egg! Actually, it then occurred to me, if I had been walking at a brisker clip, it may have been me who would be wearing the egg entrails.

“Jesus!” I said. “So you were just standing here, and suddenly you get hit with an egg?”

“Yeah,” she replied. “I have absolutely no idea where it came from, either.”

Neither did I. A passing car? An apartment building across the way? An invisible pedestrian? Could *I* have done it? Had I been brainwashed by the government into becoming some sort of subliminally-influenced assassin, with this egg-hucking incident being one of the final trials of their hypnosis technique before they finally send me in to take out Tony Blair?

“This fucking sucks,” she summed up.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s not your fault,” she replied.

With that, a buzz came from the door of the building, and she bid me farewell as she pushed her way inside. I had no idea who she was there to see, but I immediately imagined a scenario wherein she arrives at the apartment covered in egg, and a concerned boyfriend asks her what on earth happened; then, she takes him aside and yells that if he had his pants on already when she got there, none of this ever would have happened.