“Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!”, the brain of the author thought as he sat down to pen his Sunday night prose.
“4 Left! And so much more I could say”, the brain continued.
It was true. There was so much uncharted territory. Why not write a poem about polar bears, or a story about a traveling salesman named Martin who finds his one true love in a coffee shop in Nebraska? It’s easy to get into projects, the brain thought, but ending them is another thing completely.
Yet all things must end in some fashion. And while we expect things like a daily twitter notification of mediocre storytelling, eventually it shall end. Better to have traveled the road than to not have started the journey, staying safe and at home, warm from the cold light of an ending.
Some say endings are just new beginnings, but make no mistake, things do end as we know them. We’ll never be able to return to that exact routine ever again. Our job is to simply cherish the memory, and embrace the opportunity to make new and radically different experiences rank with those of our past.
“I know, the little creep should have left months ago”, Sandra replied.
Jeremy Smith, a junior-level data analyst at Strategic Data Initiatives Inc. was not well liked by his co-workers. A natural loaner, Jeremy came into the office when he chose, left when he felt like it, and management never raised an eyebrow. And why should they? Jeremy was the fastest worker they had – he often completed work 2-3 times faster than his senior colleagues. He was in line for a promotion, in a few months he’d pass Tom & Sandra, both veterans of the firm.
They had taken upon themselves the job of trying to get Jeremy to quit. They instructed none of their friends to speak to him, something that none of them were doing regularly anyway. Jeremy was to be treated like a pariah. He didn’t seem to notice. It was normal for no one to speak to him, for his phone to not ring all day, etc.
Then they started spreading the rumors around. Everything they could think of. The nastier the better. Jeremy just ignored all of it.
Sandra & Tom were at a loss of what to do. They dared not put anything about him in writing, via email or somewhere in the office, as management could easily track that back to them. Suddenly it came to them.
“Ya know, he always wears that stupid hoodie”, Tom told Sandra.
“Yea, so what?”, Sandra replied.
“I bet he wears headphones underneath it!”, Tom said with glee.
“Ah, so he doesn’t hear anything… that would explain it”, Sandra said with a smile.
So they started on a new petition – to make a dress code change at the office. No hoods, no headphones. They coached it as some way to improve employee relations – people would feel more connected to each other, and junk like that. They got some supervisor in another part of the office to go with it, and he got it implemented site wide. On Day 1, they saw Jeremy walk in, no hood, no headphones.
They started their rumor mill up, and before long people were blushing at the things Sandra, Tom, and their followers were ‘accidentally’ saying about Jeremy. Jeremy just sat there, a blank expression on his face as he worked away.
Sandra & Tom couldn’t figure out what they were doing wrong. To their dismay, Jeremy was promoted. Not to management, but to a senior analyst position on a higher floor. They were happy he was gone. He didn’t fit in anyway.
Several months passed until one day a peculiar email arrived in both Sandra & Tom’s inbox. They had a meeting with their boss’s boss on a higher floor. They went up and gleefully thought about what this might mean. They’d both been looking to move into management, maybe this was literally the call up.
They were a bit shocked when they entered the room and saw Jeremy sitting in one of the chairs before the desk.
“Sandra, Tom, come in and sit down”, the boss beckoned. They sat down next to Jeremy.
“I believe you know Jeremy, although I gather you two weren’t close when he worked near you. So you should probably know that Jeremy is legally deaf – so speak up!”, the boss said as they peered over at Jeremy. That’s why the kid hadn’t ever noticed their venomous spew!
“Jeremy has worked on employee statistics here, and he’s brought me some interesting findings about both of you”, the boss began. Sandra and Tom began to get nervous.
“It seems that, for some time now, you’ve both been failing to meet performance standards. Normally you would have been coached on this and we could have fixed the problem – but it seems as though floor management has been a bit behind with silly things like dress code changes and enforcement. I’m really sorry to tell both of you this, but I don’t think we can keep you at the analyst level any longer”.
Sandra and Tom were shocked. Sure, they’d slacked off a bit since they figured Jeremy did and was rewarded for it.
“Uh, what are our options?”, Tom asked, a bit taken aback.
“Well, unfortunately you only have 2. You can become Jeremy’s assistants as he starts a new group here, or you can resign”, the boss said matter-of-factly.
“We’re not sure that would work well”, Sandra said.
“Yea, Jeremy honestly doesn’t seem like he needs assistants”, Tom added. “Perhaps we could work in another division, or have another chance?”.
The boss raised one eyebrow and glanced at Jeremy. Jeremy, for the first time Tom or Sandra had ever seen, let out a curled smile. Perhaps more of a smirk. His hearing aide turned up to high had given him Tom’s answer, and he knew the intent behind it.
“I’ll have security escort you both out”, the boss said.
The plant sat serenely at the side of the desk. Every leaf a memory of the passage of time. Every branch a marker of a period of its growth, periods the family had marked by hours or days or weeks or months. The plant marked them as they were – extensions of itself, new life springing, moment by moment. The plant was not static, as the humans around periodically became. It did not regard change as something to be avoided, but as something to be embraced.
Then, in an instant, the plant was toppled by the cat.
Change happens, slow or swift. We just need to adapt to it, and we will survive.
She was running late that morning, and nothing was where it was supposed to be. Her bag was a disaster, her laptop case in complete disarray, and the laptop had a dead battery since she forgot to charge it. She wasn’t getting any work done on the train this morning, but maybe she could gather up some reading to catch up on. That meant digging through the inbox, finding documents, and synchronizing them to her iPad.
The clock flashed 7:23, and if she wanted to catch the 7:50 train, she knew she needed to get on the road for her 10 minute drive to the train station. She couldn’t afford a random 10-15 minute backup that weren’t unheard of at this hour.
“Hon”, croaked her husband, who lie sick in bed.
“What?”, she asked, trying not to sound annoyed.
“Can you get me a glass of water before you go?”, came the weak response. She looked at his bedside and found his normally fill canteen was empty.
“Yea… I’ll try”, she said as she pushed things around in her bags.
About 7:26 she made it to the front door, and realized she hadn’t gotten the water. She weighed her options. Get water, potentially miss train, or leave her 43 year old husband, who despite being sick was more than capable of getting water eventually, to his own devices. In the end the guilt got the best of her, and she got him the drink.
“Thanks”, he said, as he drank a sip and reached out for a goodbye hug. She didn’t have time for it, but she felt sorry for him. He’d been so attentive to her in the past, so she waited the extra minute for him to hug her and say goodbye. Then she was out the door like a rocket.
And she was more than a bit upset when she got to the train station at 7:49, parked, and missed the train by less than a minute. She’d have to take the 8:10. She found a bench at the train station, wrote some quick emails rescheduling her first appointment, and tried to start working. At least there was a power outlet her she could siphon some power off for her computer.
At 8:09 she made her way to the platform and stepped on to the train. Her phone vibrated with an alert and she ignored it. She was always getting alerts from various services she subscribed to, some about traffic, some about the weather, some about things she only cared about once in a short while. This one would just have to be ignored.
Until she looked out the window and saw the strangest sight. The train slowed down and passed another train sitting on the tracks. At the slow speed she could see that it was the train she normally took. In fact, she saw a friend of hers sitting in their usual seat. She quickly pulled out her phone and saw the alert was from a service for rail passengers. It talked about a delay in her general vicinity. She looked up her friend’s number and dialed. The other line picked up quickly, as if her friend was already staring at her phone.
“Rita, what’s going on?”, she asked.
“Our train broke down!”, Rita exclaimed, “And now we’re waiting for a tow back to the hub, where we can transfer. Probably won’t get into the city until 9:30 or 10 at this rate”. They chatted for a few moments before hanging up. She didn’t have the heart to tell Rita she had just passed her – so she said she had gone in earlier, which technically would be correct adjusting for their new arrival times.
As they finished their call, she got another message, this time from her husband. It simply read “Sorry to make you late with my requests – hope all is well”. It was all well, after an ironic twist of fate. She realized that sometimes small differences create other small differences, a glass of water, an ironic reduction in delay. But the perspective to see the important small differences from the trivial – that was what made the big difference after all!
Each portion of this story was inspired by the music I was listening to via shuffle.
Song: Flowers on the Wall (Statler Brothers)
Tony strolled into the local florist, obviously not in a clear state of mind. He had just come off an all night bender and the bright colors attracted him as he made his way toward civilization from the less gentrified area of town. The woman behind the counter could smell him a mile away, and kept a watchful eye as he looked at her inventory.
“How much?”, he said, pointing toward an arrangement of flowers.
Song: Learn to Fly (Foo Fighters)
The proprietor eyed the wilting flowers she was about to toss out, as she cleaned the shop shortly after opening.
“They’re free for you if you’d like to take them home”, she said, passing the roses to Tony. His startled look accompanied a tentative “uh… thanks”, as he turned and walked toward the door.
“Thank God he’s gone”, the shop keeper said as she watched Tony stagger down the street, roses in hand.
Tony, however, wasn’t quite ready to go home. He knew that his girlfriend would have, no doubt, left a few dozen messages for him with his roommate, especially after he stopped responding to her texts the night before. It wasn’t his fault though – a broken phone smashed after falling off a bar stool isn’t the best texting machine.
Tony, clutching broken phone in one hand, and roses in the other, pushed his way into the AT&T store near the florist. The salesperson approached, apprehensive as the florist had been.
Song: Another Postcard (Chimps) (Barenaked Ladies)
“Can I help you?”, he asked Tony.
“Uh… broke my phone last night”, Tony said as he thrust the remains of his cheap phone into the man’s hands.
“I can see that!”, the salesman said as he surveyed the damage.
“Can you fix it?”, Tony slurred. He’d started to come out of the altered state of consciousness he was currently a resident of, and the hangover had started setting in.
The salesman looked at the phone, broken plastic and missing battery, and informed Tony that he couldn’t.
“Then gimme a new one”, Tony said. The salesman started the process of replacing the phone, and was grateful when he saw that Tony was due an upgrade anyway. He seriously doubted Tony had the money to spend today on a new phone, but felt confident Tony could at least sign his name.
Song: Pickin’ Up The Pieces (Fitz & The Tantrums)
The salesman brought Tony over to the ‘free’ phones section of the store and showed him his three options. Tony picked the one he could see clearest, reasoning that future benders would be easier if his phone was more visible to him. Drunk logic worked like that.
“Just a moment, Mr. Hendricks”, the salesman said to Tony as he went through the usual phone voodoo needed to transfer the essence of one phone to another. When he was done, Tony collected his new phone and roses and wandered out.
“Pills”, Tony thought as his headache intensified. One last stop before he wandered toward the drugstore.
Tony made his way into the store, one of those newer mega drugstores that keeps the drugs, ironically, hard to find. He located a small bottle of aspirin that he was reasonably sure he had enough money to pay for and wandered toward the front. A few steps before the cashier he grabbed a bottle of some beverage from a nearby freezer and placed both items on the counter.
“$3.45”, the woman announced.
Tony dug into his pocket, finding that his phone was much larger than it had previously been, and locating two quarters and three crumpled up bills.
“Here’s your change”, the woman cheerily announced as Tony ripped into the drink and the aspirin, placing the nickel in his pocket. The beverage tasted cherry-like, although Tony didn’t bother to look at what brand or concoction it was. All he knew was that he needed to get the pills down and that he was thirsty as hell.
He arrived at his apartment around 9 A.M., each step on the three flights of stairs felt like a knock to the head. He reached his door, put the key in the lock, and turned it, only to find the door unlocked.
Song: Burn That Bridge (Jimmy Buffett)
She saw him before he’d fully entered the apartment.
“Damnit Tony, what the…”, she stopped her sentence midway as she spied the roses.
Tony, not being a particularly dumb man despite his condition, recognized he might have some sort of opportunity here, given his eye for pretty colors and the bounty it had scored him.
“Sorry babe”, he said as he offered up the roses, “I messed up”. Something inside him told him to shut up at this point and let the flowers do the talking.
Angie looked shocked. Tony had never bought her roses before. For him to do it this morning, in his obviously unkept state, was amazing.
“Let’s get you some rest”, she said, as she guided him toward the bedroom.
Jenny walked out of the elevator toward her office, with Winston beside her. He seemed to lag a bit behind, and didn’t respond to her continuing conversation about tasks at hand.
“You ok?”, she asked as she peered behind herself.
“Yea… just noticed that they put down a new rug in front of the elevator”, Winston said as he studied it carefully.
“I hadn’t noticed”, Jenny replied.
“You know what’s weird?”, Winston said as he caught up to her a few steps away,”I didn’t see it – I didn’t even feel it beneath my feet…. I realized I was slightly higher off the ground than I usually was”.
“What do you mean?”, Jenny said in confusion.
“Well, it’s hard to explain – almost like my eyes glanced onto the hallway in a new way – they were seeing everything from a slightly different perspective – one a small bit higher than ever before”, Winston said as they neared their desks.
“I guess I wouldn’t notice given that my height changes daily depending on my shoes!”, Jenny said with a laugh. Her proclivity toward extremely high heels, and days off from them after ‘over doing it’ were well-known throughout the office. Winston’s comment, though, made her wonder about how many things she took for granted in her daily routine. And if things were changing around her, was that a bad thing?
Her natural reaction was “Yes!” – she’d read enough stories about killers lurking in hidden corners, victims seeing things awry but not being able to put their finger on the exact source of the incongruity until the knife was already held at their throat. If the world was changing subtly around her, she should take that as a sign that she needed to be more diligent in her observation. For the next few weeks she watched her surroundings like a hawk (metaphorically speaking – she wasn’t looking for prey). She began to notice little changes day by day. The man handing out the free newspaper at the bus stop normally used the exact same motion to pull one paper from the crook of his arm, except when handing the paper to an attractive lady – then the motion slowed slightly, the man glancing away from the woman toward the papers to be sure he pulled only one. Perhaps a nervous affliction – one that men seldom had around her plain appearance. In addition to the newspapers, she inadvertently noticed work schedules of those serving her. The attendants at the gas station worked 4 days a week, and 1 weekend day, most working Monday-Thursday, and then Sunday. Jenny marveled at the new information she had picked up.
Until she realized most of it was utterly useless. It wasn’t as though her brain had a finite limit of things it could remember – quite the opposite, however Jenny had the sense that she had learned so much and had not once foiled a would-be criminal, or helped someone at the office by noticing a minute detail, or even been able to work her facts into idle conversation with her friends. All the work she’d done was useless. The work had tuned her brain, tuning that would last longer than the months she’d practiced observing, but had no noticeable benefit. Jenny moved on with life, abandoning her little project. She still noticed the odd mannerisms of the newspaper man and the gas station attendant’s schedules, but dared not work them into conversation for fear of being labelled that “weird girl”.
Many years went by, with the details becoming more or less explicitly forgotten. In fact, Jenny wondered if she even noticed them anymore. Until one day when she was walking home and had the urge to take a different route. She’d lived in the same neighborhood for years, and it had sadly declined over time. Still she never felt too unsafe, and it was broad daylight, so why bother changing her habits. Reluctantly though, the strong urge persisted and resulted in her walking into a coffee shop for a few moments to contemplate her odd feeling.
Just as her coffee was served, she saw the police cars pull up in front of her house down the street. She could see the police moving up her driveway, and she anxiously sat in the shop until she saw a man running down the drive, tackled by the police as he tried to turn to run toward the shop. She took her coffee and began to cautiously walk down the street, toward the scene. The police met her a few houses down.
“Ms. Turner?”, the officer asked.
“Yes”, Jenny said, wondering how he knew her.
“Ma’am, it’s a good thing you waited a few minutes to come home today. The man we caught has hidden in the house behind yours – we’ve watched him for weeks. Today was the day we decided to move in, and we were going to do so before you came home. However we were delayed, and couldn’t move in until a few moments ago”.
As the officer talked, Jenny realized that she’d noticed vehicles parked along the streets over the past few months that were missing today, something she later inquired about and was told that they were indeed the watchful eyes of the detectives involved.
That night, the irony hit her: She changed her routine to notice facts she hadn’t before. Over the years, that itself had become routine, to the point she wasn’t even consciously aware of it. And while today may have been exceptional in the level of excitement this ability may have prevented her, she wondered how many other things in the past years she’d avoided without ever knowing. Did she avoid a speeding ticket by noticing the signs a cop was watching? Had she clued into the system used to mark down prices at her favorite stores, securing her the best deals? Or had today been the only time her “weird” ability had helped?
Danielle’s mother pulled her along, across the side street toward the shops. Today they’d be shopping and spending time together, Danielle being only 3, the world was still a big place with much to explore, and not enough time to do it, straining against her mother’s pull.
3 years goes by, and Danielle’s mother pulls her toward the school building. The child is reluctant to give up her own ability to explore for the guided exploration of her teachers. Her new friends, whom she will meet shortly, will ease the transition.
6 years goes by, and Danielle’s mother pushes her toward activities she’d rather skip. Spending time with her grandparents, going to Sunday school, and practicing her piano skills pale in comparison to the excitement of the conversation of friends, the shopping at the mall instead of the stores on main street, and exploring what being a teenager will be.
6 years goes by, and Danielle’s mother taps her daughter on the shoulder. It’s graduation day, and while college awaits, today marks the end of the guided exploration started 12 years earlier. Danielle is on her own, for a while, to learn about the world. Her mother hopes she can guide herself.
6 years goes by and Danielle’s mother beckons her daughter to hurry up, the guests are seated, they await the bride’s entrance.
Many more years go by, and Danielle’s mother, father, and husband pass on. She sits in a coffee shop that stands where her mother once took her shopping long ago. It is then she realizes that she never finished exploring the world. She gets up and drags herself out into it.
The old library sat unused, the new one sat next door. The old library was the site of many a hot debate by impassioned undergraduates inspired to succeed as they were the first to attend college in their family, the first to be able to sit around all day and think as opposed to work. The first to be given that sort of freedom. The new library’s claim to fame was that it sported a coffee bar, and lots of big plush chairs near power outlets.
The old car sits on the used car lot, abandoned by it’s owner. They had been through good and bad, and many jury-rigged fixes in place of regular maintenance. He had driven it down to fumes numerous times, praying that it could make it just a bit farther to the next gas station. It had been where he got his first traffic ticket, and made out with his future-wife. Now the new car sat in the garage, and he felt he’d earned it through years of hard work. But it never felt the same.
The old computer waits for the child to play with it. It’s the location of the first article she wrote, and where she slaved over her resume that she used to get the position she loved. It’s the computer that held the games which she used to relax after a long day studying. It’s the computer that traveled the 2 hour commute during her first years of working here. Now the new computer purrs and moves about quickly, she seldom thinks of the old clunker.
The old lover feels the sting of the rejection, and sits lonely with the old friends, and the forgotten family. They wonder aloud why they were abandoned, why they were cast aside as useless by the person they once knew. The replacements never see their predecessors, they are too busy enjoying the time with their new friend.
It’s fine and well to take away the old and replace with the new when progress demands. But one should carefully consider the consequences, directly proportional to the sentience of the object being replaced.
They sat in the room arranged around the table. The room was feeling pretty familiar by this point, they’d been there before quite a few times. Tom was gone, he’d ventured out to get something or another, but the rest remained, tired and worried.
The beginning of a new task always requires effort, and trying to transition from one state of affairs to another would be a greater challenge than anyone expected. There were so many questions to be answered, and none of them were quite prepared to tackle them. It had only been a few days, plans were uncertain.
At the door lay a plain box made of wood. It’s rough surfaces sanded down smooth, and despite varnish, it seems to reflect light in a subtle way. If the room had been darker, it might have seemed that the box was glowing on it’s own, but in the late-day sun filling the room, the box just appeared slightly lit, ominous in it’s simplicity and unattended nature. No man dared to open it, while all were curious.
Phil spoke up first, asking what they were going to have for dinner. Others grumbled, not sure if they were even in the mood to eat. That first week had been really tough, and they’d all lost a few pounds, although no scales were handy to verify this. They were all sure that in the weeks to come, they’d still not be quite back up to the affairs of the world. They were creating their own world, here in the room, waiting for the right time to act. The right time, they could not know at this point, would come in a flash several weeks from now. It would push them out of their haze, into the world, to meet all the benefits and consequences that they were destined for. But for now, without that flash of inspiration, they sat here. Some occasionally spoke, some told a joke or anecdote, and some were moved to tears at the insanity of it all. Throughout it all, the box remained.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door, and when they opened it, they were shocked at who it was. He sat down with them, and listened as they spoke. It was amazing that now, even though they had questions to ask of him, they did most of the talking. He patiently listened as the conversations gradually turned more light in nature. Someone, probably James or Jack went out to get some food, and they all ate together. He left a few hours later, mentioning that he’d be happy to open the box for them sometime, if they didn’t do it themselves. They thanked him.
Thus it went on for several weeks. The number changed a few times, as people came and went. Sometimes there were nine in the room, other times twelve, and always the meal was exquisite. On his last visit, he did indeed open the box, and the surprise it held flew out at them.
“You’ve really got to get moving”, he told them on that last visit. “The box is open, I’m going on a trip, and this room is awfully depressing in a way, don’t you think?”. They agreed, and left with him. Many went separate ways, but they would never forget what they learned in that room, or from the contents of the box.
