You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The 1st day back from work.
I’m driving down the seedy boulevard toward my office.
It’s cold and gray. The wind is howling and there is a spitting anger in the sky.
I flick my windshield wipers, watching as they drag across the semi-wet glass.
There’s a semi circle streak of dirty bird poop.
With each revolution of the frayed rubber blade, I grow more agitated.
I am now fighting to see the road before me through a thin, wet veil of dried bird droppings.
“AAAARRRGGGHHH”
It’s Monday morning. It’s cold and dreary, and I would rather be under the covers.
Monday morning is tough enough.
After all, nobody says TGIM, right?
But Monday morning after a week off?
That’s like banging your thumb with a hammer and then spilling hot coffee on the same hand.
I’ve been away a week.
I was able to expel the evil vibe that is this job.
I eliminated it from my pores like an Indian Shaman in a sweat lodge.
Useless text messages, incessant emails about the front gate being broken.
EXPUNGED!
As I drive closer to the building, I gulp hard.
I wish I was going to the beach. I wish I was going to a new job.
I wish I was going back on vacation.
Christ, I’d rather give blood or a kidney than put my card against this magnetic gate reader.
Why didn’t I just quit?
Why? because as my friend reminds me “You got a mortgage right? You got kids in college right?”
Yeah.
Reality sucks.
But I can still day dream.
I could have texted the boss.
“Dear boss. After careful consideration, take this job and shove it.”
Wouldn’t that be fun?
Damn right!
I pull up to the building and prepare to make a left turn into the drive.
The building is ominous, like a crypt in a creepy graveyard.
How many dead bodies are in there? I wonder.
As I wait for traffic to subside, I look around.
What an eye sore.
Flea bag motel to the right. Zombies jay walking across the street like cock roaches running from a can of raid.
It’s only 8am but already so many douche bags drinking Schlitz out of a brown paper bag.
Ah there she is; the same stringy haired hooker sitting at the bus stop eyeballing me, waiting on a bus that never comes.
Couldn’t the police have busted her ass? Wonder what she charges?
Traffic opens up and I pull up to the gate.
I reluctantly put my card against the reader as the metallic gate slides open.
I let my foot off the brake and the car ambers forward.
It’s not too late to put in reverse and haul ass out of here, I think.
I could call in dead, I muse to myself.
As I move forward, looking for a parking spot, I notice the same cars of the same people I have known forever.
They are part of the drudgery, the wallpaper of this place.
They come and go like me, with no better option.
We are all lifeless cogs in the corporate machine.
I left a week ago. It takes every bit of a week to decompress from the job.
Deadlines and pressure and stupidity.
It festers inside of me like a cancerous boil. Day after day, week after week.
This place has made me old. It has taken years off my life.
Vacation?
I need it. I want it. I will take more.
The week I took was a cathartic necessity.
It reenergized me, made me whole and sane again.
What did I do?
Does it matter?
A day trip to Memphis, a blues club, a ball game, some ribs.
Anything’s better than the crack whore waiting on the bus that never comes.
A week off.
It’s like finding a gold doubloon under the big X in the sand.
Anywhere is better than here.
Anything is more productive than working for the man, punching a clock.
Like so many of you, I work for a leviathan of greed.
I am simply a mechanism, a number, a way to enhance the bottom line.
I think this as I put the car in park and turn off the car. The stress of the American workplace is compressing, atmospheric, pressure upon my ear drums, squeezing my brain.
I walk in the building and take a big gulp of sour work air.
“I’m back,” I say as the big electronic door shuts behind me.
I see the same boxes in the loading zone I walked by a week ago.
The boxes make me sad.
Last week, I was saying good bye to them, on the verge of a week off.
I was on my way out of this cobweb filled hell hole.
Now the spiders in the darkened corners never cleaned welcome me back like the plague welcomes the rats.
I take a deep breath and remember the good times I just experienced.
Don’t let the stupidity of tight ass pucker suckers bother you, I think.
“Welcome back,” someone screams.
They are smiling. Looks like they mean it.
I smile. “Good to be back,” I say without thinking.
“Really?”
I laugh out loud.
“No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
I’m back at work. At least I’m laughing.
Life’s Crazy™