Dear Dr. Emmott:

Dear Dr. Stephen Emmott: Last night, I read through your recent book, Ten Billion. In it, you outline the global ramifications of the growth of the human population, covering how it will affect the global carbon cycle, climate change, crop and water demand, and how greater demand for everything that humans need in general will eventually tip the world into spiraling hothouse-mass-extinction decline. In fact, the last line of the book (and I should point out here that, even though it tops the 200-page mark, most pages only have a sentence or two, and every image and chart is given a double-page spread) clearly states that, in your educated opinion as a scientist, "I think we're fucked."

Now, I don't question your statistics. I'm sure that in your lifelong quest as a scientist, you are more aware than the vast majority of us about the troubles we face, and what would need to be done to overcome them. What I call into question is your moral irresponsibility in publishing your book. Because what we come away with is a definite statement that we have already gone too far, and there is nothing that can be done, short of changing every social, political, economical, and instinctive (re: procreative) behavior we have. Globally.

So my question to you, sir, is: What purpose does your book serve, exactly?

I think I am a rather practical person. I think I have a pretty good idea of what I can control and what I can't, and don't spend much time worrying about things that are beyond my ability to influence. Some people might even say that I embody this trait to a fault. Which is why I can say that after reading it, Ten Billion left me with a stronger sense of futility and fatalism than I have experienced in a long time. And, I wonder, if *I* felt this way, what might your book do to someone else, someone who is more sensitive to declarations about the ultimate fate of the human race?

And this is why I wonder whether your heart is in the right place on this issue. Because while your book is quite clear on how many gallons of water it takes to make one hamburger patty (800, which is mostly wrapped up in the growing of feed and maintaining of cattle), it doesn't give us any idea of what to do about it other than "consume a lot less". And even then, as you say, we're still fucked, because the change we have already presented to the world is enough to send us past the ecological tipping point. You present a hellish vision of the future, but offer no solutions on how to change it. Is that because (and here I know I'm guessing at it) you don't see the point in attempting any?

It's your clear cynicism of global politics and business that motivates most of your reasoning for why things cannot change in time to stave off disaster. You argue that fossil fuel companies are too big, have too much power, and are responsible for making too much economy-fueling money to change course, politicians' only interest is in getting elected again, and geo-engineering is too poorly understood to fix the problem. And yes, many globally-supported programs to curtail carbon emissions and resource consumption have already failed. But does that mean we should stop trying?

If humans are going to change this disastrous course, then they need to only be given one thing, the thing that is sorely lacking in your book: hope. Cynicism has never produced any result other than apathy, which I think we can both agree there is too much of, and has been for too long. (And I considered the possibility that your book is a double-feint, a dare for the rest of us to prove you wrong, but I honestly don't think you thought about it that carefully.)

Ultimately, what you're leaving out of the equation is exactly what you see as the source of the problem: humankind itself. True, if we continue on the current track, there will be ten billion people before the end of the century. But if, as you say, the world profoundly changes sooner rather than later because of our influence, won't our own growth be part of that affected change? Any number of the effects you talk about in your book will cause overpopulation rates to slow, and some would argue that the change is already starting to take place.

So here's something that I've been thinking about for a while now, and it seems to have been fully brought up out of the depths by my ruminations about your book: that the ones who really control the world aren't politicians, or titans of industry, or even great ethical leaders. It's storytellers. Think about it... Most of what inspires us as human beings, what grounds us to the world and also lets us fly beyond it, investigate its realities and imagine its possibilities, are the stories that we tell each other. In the end, stories are the only thing we really have that lasts. And I'm not just saying this because I fancy myself a storyteller. I say it because we all are, in our own way. And that's where moral responsibility comes in.

There's a story Ray Bradbury wrote in the mid-20th century called "The Toynbee Convector", where a man announces to the world that he's created a limited time machine that allowed him to see 100 years into the future, and he describes the beautiful, near-utopian society he glimpsed there. In response, humanity bands together and works toward the common goal of a bright future that they already know is going to happen. They do it because they now know it is possible; not only that, it is destined. And they make it happen. Taken in this light, what do you think it is likely that your book will do?

I know, I know... scientists deal with facts, not fancy, and your job is to seek the truth, no matter what form it takes. But what you have done with Ten Billion is to present the facts and then extrapolate them, in effect writing a story about what you believe will happen, in the guise of inevitability. Yes, your opinion is more educated than most, but what is the price of putting this problem-with-no-solution book into the world? The twist ending of "The Toynbee Convector" (fifty-year old spoiler alert) is that the man who saw the future was lying. He never built a time machine. But what he did understand is what I already stated earlier: people need hope to change. So here we come to a place where fancy is more useful than fact, in fact is better at ensuring the survival of the human race.

Do I think you should have presented a rosy, I'm-sure-we'll-come-up-with-something ending, wrapped in a bow? Of course not. But I think that you could have split the difference between your instincts and Mr. Bradbury. Don't just point out the problem, but endorse new solutions, instead of knocking them down known ones like ducks in a shooting gallery. As much as science likes to pride itself on its impartiality, it doesn't exist in a vacuum, either. I can't imagine any thinking person coming away from your book with anything less than a vague sense of despair, maybe even a profound one. And I then have to question your motivations in publishing Ten Billion. Maybe your responsibility as a human should at have at least partially eclipsed your responsibility as a scientist.

Henson’s Legacy

First of all, I'd like to thank those of you who have been following the blog links I post here every week (or at least try to). My pageviews often get into the triple digits, and I think it's significantly beyond awesome that so many of you take the time to see what I'm blathering about any given week. That being said, my outpu here is about to slow down a bit... that's going to be happening for two reasons. First of all, I've gotten a new job, and of course that's necessarily going to demand more of my time. Secondly, I'm taking the next few months to focus on a new project, one with a deadline, so that's where my mind is going to be.

This new project I'm talking about is a contest that is being run by the Jim Henson company. I've followed them off and on over the years, and they always seem on the verge of getting a new Dark Crystal project off the ground. This time, they're preparing to publish a YA prequel novel, and they're allowing submissions from anyone who thinks they are worthy of adding a new tale to the mythology of Thra. Seeing as I was squarely in the target audience for that film – just having turned 11 before its mid-December opening – and have spent more than the average person’s time contemplating the first in the 30(!) years since then, I’ve decided to try to come up with a compelling story to add to its ever-evolving story.

For a period of time, The Dark Crystal was one of those movies that obsessed me. In a world where every sci-fi/fantasy film wanted to be the next Star Wars, Jim (along with conceptual artist Brian Froud) brought us a weird, beautiful, grotesque, almost dream-like movie about a broken world and how it was healed. And while I still loved Star Wars, there was something about the Dark Crystal that intrigued me. It was altogether different, resonated on a deeper level. I took time during school to draw pictures of my favorite scenes, at home read the movie novelization (which I still have, and apparently fetches a fair price for a used copy on Amazon ), and wondered about what came before and after. And that’s why it’s such a no-brainer that I should try to write something new. So before December 31st, I'm hoping to do just that, and turn in 7500 words, representative of the Dark Crystal prequel story I would tell, to the Jim Henson offices.

But it’s kind of a daunting task. First of all, there’s more to learn about the history of the world of Thra (only the first part being that the world has a name). There's the film itself to consider, along with graphic novels and ancillary tales. It's all part of Jim Henson’s original design in creating a deep, rich world that you feel has existed for a long time. I've just finished the first two Dark Crystal Creation Myth graphic novels that have been released in the last few years, and have been trying to get my head around all the new backstory.

Thinking about this particular creation of Jim’s has got me thinking about him more than I have in the past decade. I remember exactly where I was when I heard he had died... I was at Disney World, of all places. I was on spring tour with the U of M Men's Glee Club. We did one every May at the end of the school year, and that particular year we were traveling the southeastern part of the country. That day, we were free to walk around Epcot Center and then had an outdoor evening performance to meet for, but when we arrived that morning on the bus someone had heard the news and passed it on to everyone. I was pretty shocked -- Jim Henson was still a relatively young guy -- and was profoundly sad to hear it.

My first thought on hearing of Jim's death was, "Damn. I was hoping to get to work with him someday." At the time, I was all geared up to be a filmmaker, and honestly thought that I was going to break into the industry one way or the other. Movies had been my childhood and adolescent obsession, and it would be a few more years until the indie film revolution came and went, and even a few more before I realized that making up the stories was the only part that I really wanted to do.

The news that day affected me the same way all this Dark Crystal research has: it got me thinking about what a product of Jim's imagination my own imagination really is. When I think about it, he was an almost constant presence for the first fifteen years of my life, when I learned how to act toward others, how to create, and how to dream. I started with Sesame Street in the early 70s, then switched to The Muppet Show in the late 70s (which I would watch religiously every Sunday night, and marvel every time at how fast a half hour could go by), Fraggle Rock in the 80s, then The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth after that. My favorite Christmas album always has been (and I assume always will be) A Christmas Together, a collaboration the Muppets did with John Denver -- it's the only one that is actually funny and moving as well... which is a spirit that also infused the HBO special Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas. I absorbed all of this in my first fifteen years of life, and didn’t really lose touch with it until high school brought me under its sway.

So what did Jim teach me? Well, he taught me that you don't have to be a grandstander to be a good leader. Kermit the Frog never made a big deal about the fact that everyone seemed to answer to him, in fact he questioned it often -- most notably in a strange conversation with himself in the middle of a midnight desert two-thirds of the way into the first Muppet Movie. But Kermit didn't need to doubt himself. He never used his position to force his ideas on people. If anything, what he really showed was an ability to let everyone around him be themselves, and good things would come from it. The Muppets were the quintessential band of misfits -- the comedian who was never funny, the diva who had questionable levels of talent (and was a pig to boot), the cook who kept getting antagonized by his own ingredients, the scientist who constantly blew things up... But Kermit was the rock, the focal point of all their attention, because he was really their audience. I don't think Fozzie ever cared that his jokes bombed every night, because Kermit was still his friend afterward. I imagine that Kermit's relationship with his performers was much the same as Jim's was with the artists he surrounded himself with. He was the one who took all their disparate talents and brought them into focus.

But Jim showed us the darker side of leadership as well. Aside from that conversation with himself I already talked about, Kermit does encounter other moments of profound self-doubt. The most famous one, of course, is the song "It's Not Easy Being Green", which I still think is one of the most profound meditations on identity and self-acceptance you can find under three minutes in length. In that time, he goes through what for most people is a lifetime of second-guessing yourself and your worth, and breaking through to realize how important you really are with the question, "It could make you wonder why... but why wonder?"

The thought that I might get the chance to add something to Jim's vast set of worlds and characters is one of those instances where you find that after all the years and miles, you've somehow come back around to where you started, and the thought that all the dreams and stories and adventures you've had all along were just small parts of a glorious, uniform whole. I thank Jim and his family for this coming opportunity to show my appreciation for all that he gave to us.

Ozzy Explains It All

I used to work with a young woman who had no idea that Ozzy Osbourne was a celebrity before his family's reality show in the 90s/00s. When she casually mentioned that, I was stunned. "No no no," I wanted to say, "He wasn't always a bumbling, mush-mouthed sitcom dad. He was BIG, he was dangerous, he was scary!" I'm glad that Ozzy now has re-established himself as one of the founding fathers of metal, and that maybe these youngsters are getting a much-needed schooling in pop culture history.

Ozzy has gone through a number of transformations over the years. In the 80s, he started leaning more heavily on synths after the untimely death of his guitar muse, Randy Rhoads, which was in a way fortunate because that was the way the winds of change in metal were blowing anyway. He even participated (somewhat half-heartedly) in the mid-80s glam metal boom, when it seemed that the formula for success was spandex, sequins, and at least one power ballad that would get teenage girls to buy your album. He didn't start working his way back toward his heavier, crunchier roots until he found guiatarist Zakk Wylde.

It was during this time that he wrote the song that's prompting this essay, because I think it offers more emotional depth than any other metal song I can think of. In fact, it attempts no less than to encapsulate Ozzy's whole twenty-year rock-idol experience. It's a hidden track on his 1988 album "No Rest for the Wicked", so well-hidden that I didn't realize for many years that it actually had a title: "Hero".

You might not notice the psychological importance of the song on the first listen. It's full of Zakk's arena-filling power chords, and Ozzy's trademark wailing vocals soar over the top, as razor-sharp as on the album's other tracks, but it's the lyrics that really showcase an artist laying his soul bare. While it's not entirely out of character for Ozzy, an artist who has often used his music to let us in on his inner torment, I'll tell you why this song is really different...

It starts out with the lines "I don't wanna be a hero/I don't wanna ever let you down", and right there we realize we're in different territory. He's giving equal weight to the idea of shying away from being a celebrity, and realizing that he has a responsibility to his fans. This is the crux of the song, and he's put it right up front for us. The song is actually filled with imagery that signifies his reluctance to be seen as important: "I don't wanna wear your broken crown", "Don't want to sit upon your crippled throne".

Then comes the chorus, which for a long time I thought I must be mishearing, because in it, he actually tells us -- his fans -- that we've been wrong all along to believe in him. Underscored by the power chords that opened the song, he bellows, "I don't wanna disappoint the fools no more, the fools no more." Now, I've heard music artists talk in interviews about how they don't want to be perceived as role models, some have even written songs about it, but I've never before or since heard one that outright calls their fans fools.

But here's where the genius of the song comes in. We've just been called names, but Ozzy keeps us from being offended by then telling us exactly *why* we shouldn't admire him, and why if we want someone to look up to, we should look elsewhere... He also says, "Don't think you'll ever understand me/*I* don't even understand me", and "I couldn't answer all your questions/And if you're lost, I couldn't find your way". He's actually harder on himself than he is on us.

But it's the final verse that puts the exclamation point on the whole idea. After a typically blistering Zakk Wyde guitar solo, Ozzy finishes the song by executing an incredible lyrical sucker punch. "I am not your destination, or a road that's gonna lead you home/So, baby, please don't go." Then he keeps repeating those last three words over and over, going so far as to be joined by a choir that assists him the whole time the song is fading out.

It's that last part that really gets to me. You have to remember that it's coming from a man who, at that point, had been in the music business for almost 20 years, and finally had, admittedly not for the last time, overcome his inner demons. In fact, the track before this one is called "Demon Alcohol", and talks about how hard it is to stay sober, narrated in the voice of his addiction, a relentless hunter of souls. By the end of the album, Ozzy seems to understand the corner he's painted himself into, with a mind clearer than ever. He's idolized by millions, but is painfully aware of his own shortcomings, as an artist, a husband, a father, and a man.

But he chose to make the last refrain of the album a plea, begging for everyone to stick with him, despite all the reasons he doesn't think he's worthy. Even though he knows he doesn't deserve it, he knows that he's come too far to turn us away. He's shown us the frailty behind the mask, the quasi-symbiotic relationship he (and by proxy, all celebrities) have with their fans. He needs us, actually much much more than we need him. I can't think of another artist as prominent who has expressed a sentiment like that, or ever would.

Clouded Thoughts

I told some friends a few weeks ago that I was going to watch Cloud Atlas, and enough of them wanted to know what I thought about it that I started writing down some notes. Turns out, I had a lot more to say than I expected, and so I'm turning to my blog to give me room to put it all down. I hope they don't think that's too impersonal, but when the ideas start going, you've got to give them room, don't you?

Anyway, after a few days, I've been thinking about the movie a lot and trying to piece together what I'm left with after watching (and, I should say, being entertained by) the whole thing. When all is said and done, I've come away with an appreciation for what Tykwer and the Wachowskis were trying to do, telling a huge, sprawling epic with emotionally resonant stories, but it’s also incredibly apparent how they could have made it much tighter and better.

The overall theme of the film seems to be that our actions have effects -- sometimes far-reaching effects -- beyond our own existence. Like Sonmi says, "Our lives are not our own." We're responsible for not only what we do with our lives, but what those lives will ultimately do to others' lives. It's almost enough to make you not want to do much of anything, for fear of causing hardship for those around and future generations, but if you can get past that, the idea gives you an awareness of your place in the tapestry of the world.

We're presented with versions of the same people in six different epochs, from the 1800s to the 2200s. Their personalities and circumstances change every time, and there's always some sort of connection between one epoch and the next... someone reads a book or hears music written by one of the other epoch's characters, or visits the same place. And here's the first instance in which I think the storytellers missed an opportunity. Sometimes the connection between one epoch and the next is really tenuous, and the influence characters have on each other isn't really clear. Take Jim Broadbent's modern-day publisher, for example. You can fleetingly see him reading the book written by Luisa Rey (Halle Berry in an earlier epoch) while he's on the train, but never mentions it. Whether her story of uncovering a nuclear power lobbying conspiracy inspires him to break out of the nursing home/asylum he's forcibly placed in is not clear. I think the movie would have been much stronger if there had been a clear line where one character's overcoming of adversity had clearly affected another. Even a further explanation of "The Fall", some kind of man-made apocalypse which apparently led from a futuristic society to a broken-down wilderness, would have helped.

There's also the issue of what these characters are fighting against. It's usually a human rights issue of one sort or another, and stories separated by 400 years end with blows being struck against human slavery. If the movie’s central theme is the progression of the human race, one has to wonder how far we have come if we're struggling with the same issues over and over again.

That idea of improvement over time is a missed boat with the individual characters, too. I understand that it's a neat selling point (both to actor and to audience) to have movie stars playing up to six vastly different characters – e.g. Halle Berry as elderly male Korean cyborg doctor! -- but it doesn't seem to have any real value in the story itself. For a while, I thought that maybe Tom Hanks' character was really the same soul, making better decisions as he came back time and again. He did go from a corrupt doctor who would slowly poison a man for his gold to a selfless peasant of the future who risks his life for a stranger in need. But then I remembered that in the modern-day epoch (chronologically the fourth out of the six stories), he was a disgruntled Cockney author who, in cold blood, killed a man who gave him a bad review. How much richer would the story be if you could see him improving from life to life instead?

Now, keep in mind that reincarnation isn't something that I brought to the table myself. The recurring characters all have an identical shooting-star birthmark on their bodies somewhere. And at one point, Hanks and Berry actually talk pointblank about how they get the feeling that they keep meeting over and over again in different lives. But after all that, I'm not sure what the birthmarks are supposed to represent. Are these people marked in this way to represent the unique way they are linked? Because if that's the case, it's blunting the movie's message about how we *all* are linked and *all* are responsible for those around us. Or maybe the birthmark means that these are special people, destined for this cycle of lives in a way that the rest of us aren't. That muddles the idea even more.

I'm ignoring the fact here that it's also kind of distracting to play find-the-star in each of the epochs, especially with extensive make-up jobs that often change the race of the actor. Admittedly, there were more than a few that I missed, which I learned from watching the recap that precedes the end credits. Like I said, it would have meant more if there had been a reason for it, but clearly a fair number of these "links" were background cameos and weren't even necessary. Wouldn't it have been a better, more cohesive story if they had been, if we could have seen relationships and situations evolve across centuries? Is it really worth the credibility lost when Hugo Weaving plays a Nurse Ratched-like Englishwoman? Or when Jim Sturgess tries to pass as Asian in a room full of actual Asian actors?

Like I've said, I appreciate what the filmmakers were trying to do, and maybe going back to the source novel would help in explaining what all these stories really have to do with each other. But what I see is six stories that don't have a lot to say in and of themselves, loosely woven together into an ambitious film that appears to be deeper and more important than it really is.

The World's Girl

My daughter started kindergarten this week. I have been in her school before, but aside from a few pictures of her classroom and her teacher, I have no idea what her school experience has been like so far. This is mostly because for the last few weeks, I've been working nine hours a day and adding a forty-five-to-sixty-minute commute on either end.

As many of you know, I've been out of work pretty much constantly since Borders closed its last shutter in the fall of 2011. Since just after Lily turned three, I've been home with her and my wife nearly all the time. Now she's five, and all of a sudden I'm struck with the reality of going from experiencing thirteen of her waking hours a day, to only being around for the last three. It's a pretty big adjustment, and honestly it's hitting me harder than I thought it would.

I like to think that I'm a pretty adaptable person. My philosophy is that if you can look at a situation and say, "okay, good or bad, this is what's happening now", then it usually turns out to be easier to deal with than it seems. But this whole situation is weird. Amy, Lily and I have spent the last five years as this tightly-knit group, this indivisible little family unit, and now in the span of a little over two weeks, I'm off to work far away and Lily's off to school. It feels, well, wrong somehow.

Of course I worry about my little girl. That's a parent's job. I know that she's going to go to school, and when she gets there not everyone is going to "get" her the way we do at home. Not many of the kids are going to know about (or certainly want to talk as much about) Lalaloopsies, or Minecraft, and no one's going to be amused by our family inside jokes. And what's worse, she's going to come home with a whole new set of influences and references and jokes that I'm not going to understand. Maybe that's the part that worries me most.

Ever since I knew I was going to be a dad, I've told myself -- very pragmatically, or so I thought -- "Okay, the parents have the first five years of their kids’ lives to help establish the foundation of their personality and beliefs, and from there on out they become more and more their own person, building off of what you gave them." What I didn't think about was that typically the people who build the foundation usually get the chance to build the rest of structure as well. Not only that, but it's making me realize that maybe we didn't have quite as much influence in that foundation as we thought we did.

It's not that Amy and I won't have any influence anymore, it's just that there's going to be a lot of other stuff coming at Lily. It's going to be stuff from kids who were raised by parents with ideas that I might think are all wrong, or from kids who have older siblings who, in time-honored tradition, introduce their younger brothers and sisters to stuff that they have no business knowing about yet. That environment is where Lily is going to be spending over half of her waking hours. It's almost totally out of our control, and will be mostly unseen by me or by her mother. That's what bothers me.

Of course, there’s a world of difference between thinking lofty thoughts about establishing foundations, and what it's like to actually reach the points where the fundamental changes happen. I kind of take solace in the fact that when I come home, Lily acts as if I haven't really been away that long. I actually like that better than to have her running toward me when I come in the door. I want her to know that even when I'm not there, I'm still there, and when she casually looks up from what I'm doing and just says "Hi" when I walk in the door, that's how it makes me feel. I prefer that the situation is harder on me than it is on her.

I know I'm far from the first parent to feel this way. And I also know that, in a way, my recent unemployment has been a blessing in disguise. I mean, not a lot of fathers get the chance to spend virtually every day with their kids between the ages of three and five, which has got to be one of the most crucial times in their mental development. Although the financial aspect of it was at times excruciating -- and I have to profusely thank our friends and especially our families for their continued, ongoing, and sometimes totally unexpected, generosity -- I'm always going to look back on it as a golden time, and I hope she carries at least a little bit of that feeling into the rest of her childhood, and maybe even adulthood.

Of course, my and her mother's work is nowhere near to being done. In fact, I'm sure it will even get harder, because of all these outside influences that Lily is going to find herself up against in the coming years. We're making that leap from being mostly in control of what she sees and hears, into the area of unknowns, things that we can't know about unless Lily tells us. And I hope that we've instilled in her that that's what she should do. Our days of keeping her utterly safe and insulated in our world is coming to an end, and now we have to share her with the rest of you. She's starting her transition from being simply "our girl", to becoming the world's girl. And just like every other parent, I can only hope we've given her all the tools she needs.

FAST FICTION #6: LAST DAY

Patty’s only thought was: Flowers!

They were sitting in a huge glass vase on her desk between keyboard and monitor, a fountain spray of color, swaying ever so slightly in the breeze from the vent over her desk that always made her broil in the winter and freeze in the summer. She sat down, numbed to anything but their beautiful scent. It took her almost a full minute of admiration before she noticed the card sticking askew out of the center.

She removed it from the plastic pitchfork that held it aloft and opened it. “So sorry to hear about your job. We’ll always remember you! –C.” The words had been printed in noncommittal, separate cursive letters by an ancient electric typewriter.

C? Who the heck was C? Carl? Catherine – did she even spell her name with a “C”? Charlene? And what did she have to be sorry about her job for –

Her blood froze. This was it. Rumors had been spinning around the office like miniature tornadoes for weeks, that there were going to be layoffs, but that happened at the end of every fiscal year. Someone must have known this was happening ahead of time, and sent her flowers to —what? Soften the blow (like Charlene would), or twist the knife a little harder (as Carl *definitely* would)?

She started looking around, trying to catch someone’s eye. But lunch wouldn’t really end for another fifteen minutes, and everyone had their heads down, working through it. She sat there for another minute, not knowing what to do. Did this mean she didn’t have to finish the monthly report? Could she keep her bus pass until the end of the month? Should she go talk to her supervisor?

The longer she thought, the madder she became. This stupid company was always saying that it was run like a family, blah blah blah, and that everything was fine when everyone knew it wasn’t. For all she knew, security was on their way down the hall right now, ready to stand there stoically while she piled her accumulated twenty-two years of personal items (in a plastic mail bin that she would have to actually return to this building under penalty of US Postal Service law). She had a few things to take care of before she was going to let that happen…

“Carl?” she said brightly, poking her head around the corner of his office, making him jump just a little. His reaction gave her the guts to finish with, “Looks like you can drag out that bottle of scotch that everyone knows you have in the bottom drawer of your filing cabinet and drink up, ‘cause I’m outta here!”

Patty turned without letting him react. The face he would make looked better in her head that it ever would in reality. She next rapped on Sue’s cubicle, and said in a voice that was just a little louder than it had to be, “Sorry to interrupt your weekly phone call with that married guy from the downtown branch where you plan where you’re going to go for ‘drinks’ after work—“ here, she executed the biggest air quotes she had ever made in her life “—to let you know that your dream’s come true! It’s my last day!”

She spun on her heel to address Yolanda across the aisle, who actually flinched when she met her eyes. She hollered, “And be sure you keep that duplicate key to the cash box well hidden, Yol! You never know when inspection’s coming around, right?”

She went right down the hallway, opening fire on every single one of them. She might not have collected many personal items in twenty-two years, but she certainly had enough dirt to go around. By the time she had gotten back to her desk, half of the office doors had heads peering out of them to hear what she was going to say next, and the other half had been slammed shut, denials and escape tactics clearly being scrambled for behind them.

It took Patty a full minute to realize that the flowers as she finished her circuit of destruction at her desk, and another fifteen seconds to realize where they had gotten to. The flower delivery man, who had clearly heard her verbal barrage and was keeping his eyes shaded under his official delivery man hat, was clearly placing them on Rita’s desk. Rita was there too, eyes puffy and nose running, silently collecting her things and placing them in a plastic mail bin. Charlene stood quietly next to her, looking at Patty as if she had just come shambling out of a swamp.

She stood there, eyes wide, fists clenching and unclenching at her side, as the flower delivery man turned and walked past her toward the front doors of the office, the only place where sunshine was streaming in.

“Oops,” he muttered, never raising his head.