Unemployed

I walked into work the next morning, parking crookedly in my space, and was greeted at the front desk by the blond haired receptionist with a pompadour lift to her long hair that was right out of the Staten Island scene. She had been in Florida for over 20 years, and she looked straight off the Staten Island Ferry in Working Girl.

“How was your weekend?” she asked.

“Oh, it was fabulous,” I replied knowing that she got laid and I had to compete. I clocked in at 8:29 and 59 seconds hoping I would get credit for the extra second. I had once been docked for two minutes.

I imploded when I passed the partner’s personal assistant’s desk who was wearing flowered pants and a striped top, and who thought she was hot shit. She was the worst dresser in the place that gave me the right to dress like a slob.

I walked with my head proudly up in the air and settled into my black leather desk chair whose armrests got in the way of my crossing my legs. I said good morning to my supervisor who was staring into her computer and ignored me. My colleague, Brutus, the typesetter, grunted hello, and at that point I knew I should not bother with him for the remainder of the day. The two Indian computer programmers were busy Iming to their respective girlfriends and forced themselves to acknowledge my presence.

Feeling as welcome as one could be at work, I proceeded to go through my morning ritual. I went to AOL and discovered that my password was not accepted. In absolute despair since I could not call AOL from my open cubicle, I went to the New York Post Online site to check out what the Mets had done the night before.

I had been in Florida for close to seven years, but the New York sports teams were in my blood. Ever since my crush on Eddie Kranepool in 1962, I had followed the Mets religiously wherever I lived. Although I considered myself too ugly as a child for Eddie Kranepool, with my big nose, tortoise shell glasses, and crooked teeth, my mother encouraged me which prepared me for the heartache I would endure in years to come. He came to my school in sixth grade, and my mother took a picture of me with him, my glasses falling off my nose, and my mouth in a nervous grimace. I wondered if he could smell me sweating. I knew he was not aware of the depth of feeling I had for him which made me sad. I was just another ugly adolescent girl, and he was performing community service.