Introducing Carlos Kotkin
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Hello. Hope you’re well, unless you’re a bad person. If we don’t know each other, and we probably don’t, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce myself in order to give you a better idea of who is writing these words. I’ll be writing things here on a semi-regular/occasional basis and I thought it important to provide some context and perspective into who I am. (Who’s reading this? Seriously.)
Without knowing, you’ll probably be inclined to assume I am a forty-something unsatisfied housewife who spends her days in curlers and a pink moo-moo watching the Home Shopping Network and Dr. Phil (is he still on?) while sneaking an occasional smoke.
It would be natural for you to make this assumption. After all, you’re only human.
However, that is not me.
For starters, I am a male in my mid- to late-30’s, depending on how bad at math you are. I am an only child, to my knowledge, who grew up in Southern California. And I am nearly 5’ 10” (I’m 5’ 8”). So there you have it. If that is not enough, here are a few other things about me…
I don’t like: People who get in an elevator before I get out (it works much better the other way around), raisins, going Number Two in public restrooms, eggs, girls who think I like them when I don’t, onions, people who drive onto a freeway too slowly, oysters, holding a red plastic cup for hours at a party and getting asked by a stranger (especially a dude) so what do you do?, mushrooms, being forced to hold a baby, papayas, people who don’t know me telling me to smile, Brussels sprouts, people who get along with everyone – they are not to be trusted, goat cheese, arriving late to a movie, horse radish, people who talk loudly on their cell phone in public (especially about menstruation), capers, people who wait half an hour for a space in parking structures – creating a huge back-up – when there are literally hundreds of available spaces one level up, pickles, weddings and the accompanying requirement of buying salad bowls for newly married couples who probably won’t go the distance and even if they do they don’t really need a salad bowl from me just because they fell in love, buttermilk, people on bicycles who think traffic laws don’t apply to them and then get all upset when I nearly take them out because they didn’t heed a stop sign, jalapeños, dudes who set up their mat next to mine in a yoga class and breathe hard on my neck for an hour and a half when there are plenty of other spaces and tons of attractive women to practice next to – come on man!, chocolate cake, people who laugh at everything, beer, comedians who tell jokes about Starbucks, lobster, the guy who works at the car wash who every time I tell him I’d like a regular wash always asks if I’d also like a tire wax or this detail or that polish and I end up having to say, “Just a regular wash” a thousand times before he gives me the little piece of paper, dim sum, credit card representatives who when I call to ask for my balance insist on telling me about this payment protection plan or that identity theft security policy or that space travel insurance, ostrich burgers, cats and little dogs except for miniature Doberman Pinschers, iced tea, getting sent announcements that so-and-so had a baby with a picture of what looks to be the same baby (is everyone having the same baby?) and then follow-up emails supposedly from that baby informing me he or she ate a sandwich for the first time, Salisbury steak, waiters who don’t write down the order and then bring back the food wrong, Clamato.
I like: The movie Raiders of the Lost Ark.
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