What People Think Of Us

Early yesterday morning (and I mean 'crack of dawn' early), my roommate's dad left a strongly worded message on the answering machine, accusing my roommate of stealing his magazines. My roommate was baffled at the accusation, but his father was furious, and demanded the safe return of his magazines. We played the message a few times and had a good laugh.

Later that evening, our friend Steve called and I invited him over.

"I'm on my way," he said. "And I'll pick up some SmartFood." That seemed like an odd choice to me. I have tasted SmartFood maybe twice in my life, and I have never considered buying it.

A half hour later there was a knock on the door. I opened it to find a man holding a bag of SmartFood, but it wasn't Steve. It was my friend Gabe.

"Just thought I'd stop by to hang out for a bit," he said. "I brought you some SmartFood." (As I'm writing this I'm realizing that I still haven't heard back from Steve, and he never did show up. Odd.)

Gabe and I watched Arrested Development for a few hours, then he went home and I took my bike out for a ride. I only made it a few blocks from my house before I was stopped by the cops. Apparently I look suspicious, riding my BMX bike at 2am on the east side of Vancouver, wearing mostly black. They just asked me what I was doing, where I was going, I showed them my ID, then they left and I went home.

So this is what people think of us, I thought. We're thieves, and we love artificial cheese flavouring. I am a little bit offended, and I can't imagine what we did to earn this reputation. We did recently buy several blocks of cheese from Donald's Market, at a price that was practically stealing, but it was real cheese, not artificial.