day 18

I woke up this morning. That’s a great thing.

When I was five, I wanted to be a triceratops. Three horns and a shield. You can’t beat that. A tyrannosaur could not beat that. King of the dinosaurs my ass. Before he had a chance to bite at me, I would have already ripped his bowels apart with my three-pronged attack.

I grew older and wiser, and quickly learned that it was impossible for me to be a dinosaur. So I had to choose a new profession. I wanted to be a werewolf. Michael J. Fox had me convinced after my first viewing of Teen Wolf. Not only did werewolves have hairy bodies and long sharp teeth, they also had mad basketball skills and mad womanizing skills.

I grew older and wiser again. Since then, I have considered being an astronaut, fireman, geologist, archaeologist, football player, doctor, artist, journalist, scientist, physicist, astronomer, and pilot. However, I never considered nor wanted to be what I’m doing right now.

My cubicle is my coffin. A three-sided pine box storing my working corpse. Like Dracula, I spend the daylight hours entombed, only to free myself as the sunlight fades. My nightlife, however, isn’t as near as exciting.

What do I do? I’m not exactly sure. Management gives me instructions. I pass those instructions to those I supervise. I make graphs, charts, and spreadsheets reflecting their work. They are full of numbers and acronyms. Apparently AGLBL is at 67%. I don’t know what that means. Management apparently does and isn’t too excited.

Management comes over to break the news. I swore we had this conversation last week and the week before. Regional isn’t too happy. So management isn’t too happy. So I shouldn’t be too happy. Through the whole conversation we never make eye contact. I take a sip of coffee and send off an e-mail to my team members. I let them know they shouldn’t be too happy. My soundtrack is an occasional fax machine and the clicking of keyboards.

This isn’t living. With a smile, I gather up whatever I don’t want to leave behind. A picture of me and her. A small stuffed gorilla named Simi. A paperclip statuette of a man. His paperclip dog. A Cartman bobble-head. A stack of Post-It notes. As I leave the building I whistle a bird’s melody.