Reading is, for conspicuousness, the new indecent exposure.
On widely spaced occasions, I am made to dress up and leave the office, usually to attend a meeting. The destination is nearly always the same (the state building downtown), but the format varies: sometimes I am the lowest-ranking sacrificial appendage to a complete away team, and other times I am a lone missionary presence carrying note paper, efficiency, and a month's ration of pemmican. Not surprisingly, the less important the task, the more likely I am to be sent alone. I suspect that's how I became solely responsible for "documenting collaboration" between two government agencies upon whose good playground manners (some portion of) 8.4 million dollars in federal funding depends. I sit in the back of their joint meetings and I take notes - on paper, the better to doodle with (also, it fits in my purse).
By riding MARTA, I can save the planet, avoid downtown parking, and turn a 15-minute drive into an hour's worth of getting paid for nothing. The only downside is that it takes a little planning to find books that will fit into my purse (particularly alongside the notepad). For February's meeting, for instance, I wound up packing a slim grey volume of poetry,1 namely, Housman's A Shropshire Lad. I made it to and through the meeting without much distress, except for the fact that it was just a regular single-agency meeting and not joint at all. A less able secretary might have been stymied, but I nimbly documented where the collaboration should have been, and then worded my report very, very carefully. Anyway, after securing a seat on the northbound train I returned to a slippery bit of "Terence, this is stupid stuff".
"HEY," a woman yelled from five rows down the car. "Are you in college?" I looked up, shook my head while ducking it towards my shoulder in a simultaneous, diagonal, and - I would have thought - universal gesture of "But you've got the wrong guy!" and went back to reading. Needless to say, the people between me and the shouter also looked up, questioningly. "NO," the woman explained, "I'M TALKING TO HER."
Later, she left the train.
This month I had Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, which is the right size but otherwise unremarkable. I arrived in plenty of (empty, yet billable) time. It was a nice day, and the street vendors had a fresh assortment of Obama gear, so I took a seat outside on the steps to wait. Various homeless people joined me, following the well known Law of Stalls; after the edge positions are filled, though, it's anyone's game, and the older man who made the fourth was only a foot or so to my right. We were mutually invisible (again, following the custom) until a friend of his walked by.
After the initial greetings, the friend hazarded, "She's just reading away, huh? I bet she's in college." (It seemed best to continue reading, and I did.) "Naw," my fellow sitter scoffed, "she too pretty to be in college. She married."
Friend: "Yeah! A pretty girl like that must be somebody's wife."
A pause.
Sitter: "She's MY wife."
I don't know who laughed harder at that, the friend or me, but since I was technically still pretending Complete Engrossment, I'll let him have it. And THEN the meeting had been cancelled (collaboratively?), making me a free agent for the afternoon, so I was home by 3:30 or so. Amazing how the universe smiles upon pretty girls like me.
I'm afraid that the Chicken Chef hasn't been seen lately: either he escaped in time or... he didn't. I know better than to ask. Meanwhile, we have shifted our attention to the courtyard troubadour, Guitar Hero. In return for a brownie, he obligingly explained to my Dickensian Grandma that he's been working for the lawyers upstairs since his band broke up. No doubt my boss will get involved soon enough and we can start answering the real questions, like blood type, social security number, and what it actually feels like to have one year of your life sucked away;2 until then, please be patient.
1. Of course there's no reason to describe it immediately before giving the title and author, but it turns out to be extremely difficult to think or write about published poems without throwing in "slim volume". Give it a shot and see how you fare.
2. That reminds me of one of last year's books. Perhaps I will review it someday? Perhaps.
By riding MARTA, I can save the planet, avoid downtown parking, and turn a 15-minute drive into an hour's worth of getting paid for nothing. The only downside is that it takes a little planning to find books that will fit into my purse (particularly alongside the notepad). For February's meeting, for instance, I wound up packing a slim grey volume of poetry,1 namely, Housman's A Shropshire Lad. I made it to and through the meeting without much distress, except for the fact that it was just a regular single-agency meeting and not joint at all. A less able secretary might have been stymied, but I nimbly documented where the collaboration should have been, and then worded my report very, very carefully. Anyway, after securing a seat on the northbound train I returned to a slippery bit of "Terence, this is stupid stuff".
"HEY," a woman yelled from five rows down the car. "Are you in college?" I looked up, shook my head while ducking it towards my shoulder in a simultaneous, diagonal, and - I would have thought - universal gesture of "But you've got the wrong guy!" and went back to reading. Needless to say, the people between me and the shouter also looked up, questioningly. "NO," the woman explained, "I'M TALKING TO HER."
Later, she left the train.
This month I had Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad, which is the right size but otherwise unremarkable. I arrived in plenty of (empty, yet billable) time. It was a nice day, and the street vendors had a fresh assortment of Obama gear, so I took a seat outside on the steps to wait. Various homeless people joined me, following the well known Law of Stalls; after the edge positions are filled, though, it's anyone's game, and the older man who made the fourth was only a foot or so to my right. We were mutually invisible (again, following the custom) until a friend of his walked by.
After the initial greetings, the friend hazarded, "She's just reading away, huh? I bet she's in college." (It seemed best to continue reading, and I did.) "Naw," my fellow sitter scoffed, "she too pretty to be in college. She married."
Friend: "Yeah! A pretty girl like that must be somebody's wife."
A pause.
Sitter: "She's MY wife."
I don't know who laughed harder at that, the friend or me, but since I was technically still pretending Complete Engrossment, I'll let him have it. And THEN the meeting had been cancelled (collaboratively?), making me a free agent for the afternoon, so I was home by 3:30 or so. Amazing how the universe smiles upon pretty girls like me.
I'm afraid that the Chicken Chef hasn't been seen lately: either he escaped in time or... he didn't. I know better than to ask. Meanwhile, we have shifted our attention to the courtyard troubadour, Guitar Hero. In return for a brownie, he obligingly explained to my Dickensian Grandma that he's been working for the lawyers upstairs since his band broke up. No doubt my boss will get involved soon enough and we can start answering the real questions, like blood type, social security number, and what it actually feels like to have one year of your life sucked away;2 until then, please be patient.
1. Of course there's no reason to describe it immediately before giving the title and author, but it turns out to be extremely difficult to think or write about published poems without throwing in "slim volume". Give it a shot and see how you fare.
2. That reminds me of one of last year's books. Perhaps I will review it someday? Perhaps.