Ma Bell: Sticky Fingers, The Cake Killer
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| Fruit Cocktail Cake |
But right now, it was Monday, Monday. Rainy Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down. I always hated Mondays; I guess most folks do. A three day weekend would have been so nice. But then I would be in trouble because there were no songs about Tuesday. Well, Tuesday Afternoon. But the Carpenters said it best. On this Monday morning, I was wondering how France was going to act. I wasn't sweating it, but I was curious. Would he ignore me, would he play the part of an injured lover? Or maybe he would go make his copies elsewhere. It didn't take too long to find out.
I was in the backroom keypunching, and I heard somebody come in. I looked in the glass, and it was him. He had a big stack of papers sitting on the copier. Was he going to make all of those copies now? He gave me a cheerful "good morning, Legs." He didn't turn around. He was facing the office but talking to me. I could see him perfectly in the glass reflection. I kept my back to him, and we carried on a conversation. Nobody could see me, and they had to be able to read lips to tell what he was saying. He told me that he wasn't upset. He said that he had thought about it and maybe he was
assuming too much. He thought that I liked him. I told him I did like him, but "like" didn't mean
love. He said, "okay, that is fair. I'm sorry if I was overbearing; from now on, I will let you call the shots." I told him I didn't want to call the shots; I just wanted to be asked about things before assuming anything. I told him that I was learning how to assert myself instead of accepting what other people decided for me. He just shook his head and said, "Okay, I get it." Then he took his papers and walked out. Sigh!
That morning we had food in the office for some reason, a birthday perhaps. At lunch, Mary and I went and got a sampling of the food. In Texas, they call it a spread; anywhere else, it is called a potluck. There were a couple of insurance guys in the office selling life insurance for dependents. I was on their list to add insurance. At lunchtime, one of them came and sat by my desk to fill out the paperwork. My food was on my plate and moved over to the side of the desk. We were filling out the papers, a lot of papers, and all of a sudden, he stuck his fingers in my fruit cocktail cake. I looked at him like. "what the hell?" He had a shocked expression on his face; when he picked his fingers up, my cake was stuck on his fingers. I asked him why he did that. He turned purple-red. He said that he thought the cake was one of those sponges that you moisten your fingertips to make it easier to handle papers. I started laughing, and I told him loudly that it was the stupidest thing I had ever seen. After that, my laughter was uncontrollable, and it was loud, and it was so bad that I snorted, which made it funnier. Mary came over, and we were dying with uncontrollable laughter, and the poor guy still had the cake stuck on his fingers. That made it funnier. His partner came over and started laughing at him too. Mary and I had to leave the office for a while to regain our composure, and the two insurance guys had to come back another day to complete their work. When they came back, the other guy finished my paperwork. Every time I looked at the other guy, I started laughing.
I still remember the guy all of these years later. He resembled Bobby Kennedy, small stature, longish hair. Boston accent. I wonder if he ever thought about that?
Okay, so my Monday checklist was moving right along; deal with France, insult the insurance guy, laugh until it makes you sick and your sides hurt, think about what to do Tuesday night with Daniel. Well, I had done everything that I could do while I was at work. I would have to talk to him later about it. I would just have to do some things tonight that I would normally do on Tuesday, like laundry.
Guys just complicated my life. Was it always going to be that way? Life just seemed so much simpler without them.
And in reality, it really was.
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