"You got a towel with you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur.
Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him.
"Why? What, no . . . should I have?" He had given up being surprised, there didn't seem to be any point any longer.
Ford clicked his tongue in irritation.
"Drink up," he urged.
At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash outside filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping over the whisky Ford had eventually bought him.
Arthur choked on his beer, leaped to his feet.
"What's that?" he yelped.
"Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet."
"Thank God for that," said Arthur and relaxed.
"It's probably just your house being knocked down," said Ford, downing his last pint.
"What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window.
"My God, they are! They're knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?"
"It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said Ford, "let them have their fun."
"Fun?" yelped Arthur. "Fun!" He quickly checked out of the window again that they were talking about the same thing.
"Damn their fun!" he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously waving a nearly empty beer glass. He made no friend at all in the pub that lunchtime.
Arthur thinks that his life is collapsing. Ford knows that the world is going to end. Disaster is a matter of relativity. A house being demolished versus a planet being demolished. Small picture versus large picture. Local versus global. Trump versus Obama. You get the idea.
I know that I tend to have a very Arthur Dent view of the world at times. For example, this afternoon, I just realized that my annual teaching evaluation narrative is due this Friday. I don't know why I suddenly began thinking about it. Call it intuition. So I sent an e-mail to the English Department Head to double check. She confirmed my suspicion.
This has changed the entire trajectory of my week. I will now be focused on creating this document, which will be used to determine whether I teach for the rest of the academic year. It's kind of a big deal.
Of course, in reality, it is simply a hoop that I have to jump through. I've been teaching at the university for close to 25 years. I believe that I've proven my mettle as an instructor. There just has to be a paper trail (metaphorically--all the documents are submitted electronically nowadays). I guess it's to insure that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. I shouldn't really be worried.
Yet, I can't help it. It's a big deal. If I don't submit this document, I don't teach, lose my ranking/seniority, can't pay my bills, lose my car and house, get fired at my other job, become addicted to meth, and eventually end up in prison with a big hairy boyfriend.
That's it. I have to believe in myself, to get through the next few days. I have to avoid being Arthur Dent.
Saint Marty just has to put one foot in front of another. (Yes, that's a Santa Claus is Coming to Town allusion.)
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