Today is Tomorrow's Yesterday.
That is what is written on the poster hanging above our new staff assistant- LIsle's- filing cabinets. There are six tall drawers which contain nothing but forms, endless forms, and kleenex. And scissors. A dangerous number of sharp jabbing tools. I imagine. I can see into not just a person's soul, but their desk drawers.
Lisle's job is to fill out forms for almost everything anyone around here does. Budget, overtime, travel, purchasing....reserving the conference room for staff meetings.
The poster shows a clown riding away on a tricycle, midway across a landscape of sawdust and half lit empty circus tent.
It puts me on edge. I've started coming in the other door each morning. I can't take it. She's going to kill us all one of these days, despite the basket of Albertson's cookies she puts out for everyone each wednesday, and the candies that occupy her counterspace the rest of the week. Hard candies. She has to be seething with murderous rage to hang something so sinister. A full grown clown on a tricycle. What do his parent's think?
Lisle seems happy enough. I think she must be dosed to the gills on Paxil or something.
I know a woman whose dog is on Paxil for separation anxiety. The dog doesn't like it when she leaves for work each day. He pants and drools all over the window and back of the couch. Zeke doesn't like it when I leave for work either, he sits in the kitchen window and watches. It would never occur to me to put him on anti-anxiety meds any more than I'd get my spayed border collie a boob job to cure her insecurities. Can you imagine what that would cost? Eight new perky yet elongated teats? No way. She can suck it up like I've always had to and be thankful that she doesn't have back problems. Be glad that she can run unencumbered. I tell her this and she barks and wags her half tail.
Try telling Lisle this, however, about her own good fortune and she stares and blinks. Hard.
It's like there is nothing behind those eyes but a blank form and tomorrow's yesterday riding away on a trike.
