Working for the Man

Aaaah, Saturdays. I love Saturdays. I know Sunday is the day of rest, technically, but Saturday is the day of "Do-Whatever-I-Feel-Like," so with that, Rick and I mish-mash around and putter around the house like a couple of old people until we finally find our purpose. We kiss in the kitchen in front of the kids, to hear them say how gross it is, and see Sophie hide behind her opened fingers to watch us. Usually, I will admit, we never find our purpose. We poke at the kids. We dance to embarrass them. We yell at them to go out and play, and we yell at them to stop fighting once they've finally gone outside to play, and we watch Mandy, the twelve year old dog, through the gray hue of the window screens to make sure she's still alive while she's sleeping.

So, that has been our day, and Mandy is still alive, so it's a good day. Actually, for whatever reason, and maybe for no reason at all, things have been blissfully good lately. We haven't heard from Mim and Cat. I don't know what they're doing, but we've heard they've been in and out of surgeries and on vacations. I don't care, as long as they're not up in my business. I mean, I really hope that they're having lots of unnecessary plastic surgery. It's an unreal hope, but one can dream and fantasize. I mean, wouldn't that be fun to see? I once worked for a guy, maybe the craziest man on the entire planet and he had lots of plastic surgery. It was as though, through various botched surgeries, he got just what he deserved.

One day, he came into work with dark sunglasses and a baseball cap, and proceeded to act as though everything was normal. I mean, this was a miserably small office of just three people, so we were bound to notice, right? When all was said and done, he had hair plugs coming right out the front of his forehead where no hair had ever grown, naturally. I was afraid he was going to poke my eye out with those. They were coarse, like rust colored copper wires jutting out straight over his eyes like the visor on a cap. His eyes were suddenly slanted upward at the corners, like he had a coy little secret that he would never know, or share.

His hair was now this coppery red color. It seemed as though he had tried to dye it from its natural dark brown color to blond, and maybe while he sat in the beautician's chair, he saw someone else across the salon who made him question his manhood with his plastic shower cap elastic digging into his skin, and the ring of cotton stretched around his forehead to keep the blond hair dye out of his eyes. I'll assume he probably saw a man, a man like he wanted to be, like the multitude of construction workers in our building he was constantly comparing himself to. He would oftentimes stand at my desk, flexing non-existent muscles under bright purple and teal silk shirts, and ask if I could tell he'd been working out. I would always nod, and in his heavy turquoise jewelry, he would always say suspiciously, clinking a chunky ornate pinky ring on my desk, "Really? Really, you can tell? You're not just saying that, are you?" Of course I was just saying that, because being honest to Sherman was not an option.

I had seen him yell at the top of his lungs that his beautiful wife was an idiot and stupid, because she told him she liked a certain wall color rather than one he had chosen. "Stupid! You're just stupid," he yelled. "I mean, do you even know anything? Why are you so stupid?" He asked her, incredulous. Then, he stormed off leaving her standing in the lobby in front of the watching timid staff, while his wife tried to smile away his scathing insults.

I knew too that Sherman was a tenacious personal injury attorney that, when challenged at any level, would fight a dirty street fight like no one had ever seen. When his building got "tagged" by some school kids, he went to the school. For two weeks, he rearranged court dates and times to stand outside that nearby junior high. In his pimp-styled duds, he pursued kids that appeared to look, in any way, disreputable in comparison to the herds of other kids. After following and leering at middle schoolers, he finally found his target: A thirteen year old girl leaving the campus had the same scribblings on a tattered notebook that had been spray-painted on Sherman's building. Taunting her with his new found information, he followed her nearly a quarter of a mile in his lime green alligator shoes. Getting her address and finally coaxing some information out of the scared teen, he eventually got enough information to sue the girl's mother: It was a landmark case. Though the single mother pleaded with Sherman to have mercy on her, he would not budge. He said she was trash and needed to be taught a lesson. He was scary on many levels. He could not have been more pleased with himself.

On a personal level, he wasn't much kinder. When it was Sherman's birthday, he had told our little staff of three exactly what to get him: Having seen his numerous tantrums before when he didn't get what he wanted, we made sure to get him exactly what he wanted. With the identical item he asked for wrapped in shiny paper and looped with a big silver bow, he smiled: "I can't imagine what might be in here." 'Really,' I thought. 'You told us exactly what to get you. I can hardly wait to see how a crazy person acts surprised.'I would never know though, because though Sherman told us exactly what palm pilot to get him, the technology had just upgraded days before -- something we all should have known, had we not all been so flipping stupid! He took one look at the palm pilot that cost proportionally more than I made, gave a disgusted shake of his head, exuded some heavy puffs of disgust from his fleshy white effeminate body, said absolutely nothing, and left the room. For the rest of the day, and probably into the night, he holed up in his office contemplating whether we should all be fired or beheaded. The next day the over-priced palm pilot still sat on the conference table atop the pretty wrapping paper.

So, I suspected that this wholly unnatural reddish-orange hair color was a result of some erratic paranoid eruption wherein he thought someone looked at him oddly, and in his heightened paranoia, he threw off the white towel draped around his neck and insisted that he hairdresser wash out the hair dye in the midst of his venomous insults toward a beautician, he would ultimately leave in tears. He was like that. Always vacillating from one erratic decision to another, or rather, one erratic explosion to another.

His wife was a beautiful kind and stately woman -- a former fashion model. She had quietly apologized for an insinuated drug problem with Sherman, which would have explained much. Let's just say this, I've worked for some crazy people. I've been abandoned in New York City during the outpouring of Rodney King riots, which led to all of Fifth Avenue being boarded up with plywood. At Central Station we were warned that police cars had been tipped over and were on fire. Trying to get back to our hotel, the shouts of, "Hey, white girl!" were unnerving, and during that scenario, I had a lock, more like a boot on a car, attached to my hotel door at the Sheraton Towers, because the owner of our company skipped town without paying our bill.

I've also had my aura read to see if I had the ability to be a good salesperson, but I think I threw off the reading by my internal doubt and outward sarcasm. I don't know if they read my cynicism though, because the owner of the company also had her past lives read during my aura reading, and in her jubilation of finding that she had been a cowboy in her past life, and in all probability married to her own daughter, she was in a celebratory mood to have her love of southwestern art finally validated and know that it meant more than she initially thought.

I've also worked for a band of highly creative individuals at one of the largest connectivity companies in California. On an up note, we actually had Chris Isaac perform at our Christmas party - very cool. On the not-so-cool side, I ended up joining a baking club within the company, founded by a man who appeared to have a crush on me, played guitar in a rainbow crocheted beret at lunch on the grass out front, and got pretty upset when he found that I'd been married for two years -- something I had hoped Rick's picture on my desk, incessant newlywed talk about Rick, and wedding ring would have made clear. I think he honestly thought this character "Rick" was my cat. Eventually, it was the anger that boiled under that little rainbow cap that encouraged me to bow out of the baking group, and allowed me to realize that that little liberal man couldn't have pegged me more inaccurately. I don't know what vision he had had about the two of us singing on the lawn in from of our mega employer, but he could not have been more off.

Nine months after turning down a legitimate job to be employed in Sherman's office and hearing incessant death threats come across for Sherman on our office answering machine, I found myself one morning standing over his desk after he accused me of feigning illness to go on a hot-air balloon ride through Napa Valley, something I've still never done. With all of his ridiculous insults and accusations, I fired off, "You are the most pathetic little man I have ever met in my entire life!" I fumbled to take his office keys out of my purse and threw them onto the floor, "And, if you want those keys, go get em!" I stormed out, crying.

In the typical comfort I can only receive from those who understand me, my uncle sent a bouquet of flowers two months later on Secretary's Day with the inscription that read: "Michelle, I want you back. Love, Sherman." I nearly fainted until I realized the joke, since nothing was beyond the erratic undulations of Sherman.

Though not always clear, I realize that work is a blessing, really. When you think about it, it's one of the first things God gave Adam in the Garden of Eden. It is key to the completion of our human souls, though so many try to avoid it. It says in Genesis 2:16 that "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." I suppose since it was the Garden of Eden, it was more pleasant than any place I've ever worked, but still, it was work. I know there is something strangely satisfying when I've worked, done well, and have something to show for my work. I also know that sin has made most of what God initiated such pale shadows of the initial blessings. Somehow, we still have to find the blessing God intended for us.

Recently I started teaching History and Science to second graders. I have told Rick numerous times before that I would never want to teach. I teach our own children, but in doing so, I don't have to worry about parent complaints, unless of course, I become schizophrenic. In all seriousness though, it's not the kids I worry about, its the parents. Not that parents are difficult on their own, but every parent has their own individual idea of what their own child should learn, as well as who their individual child is -- reasons we homeschool. I am seeing beyond that though.

I know that we've worked like crazy these last few years, trying to stake claim to what we thought God had put before us in this business, to find the fields wrought with boulders, never-ending thistles, and no return for our efforts. It's been exhausting like I've never known. Can I tell you this? In the middle of trying to get this one little blog done, while I teach now two days a week and homeschool the other days, we got an e-mail from our attorney. He told us that Mim and Cat still want to walk through our office building. Really, when I read that e-mail, my heart stopped like a big rock stuck right in the middle of my chest. I had almost forgotten the full scope of what we've got before us.

I know this for certain though, work is still satisfying and good when someone evil isn't trying to distort the word of God for their own gain. I know that God is with us, even before us, in things that are too big for us. Even as we are still in the midst of something that is difficult, I am thankful that God has allowed me the refreshing reprieve of teaching these sweet little ones that so greatly reveal His greatness, even in a world full of evil. There is much the world can impose, but there is little the world can really take away from me when my eyes are continually focused heavenward.

Proverbs 12:14 "From the fruit of his lips a man is filled with good things as surely as the work of his hands reward him."