Aunty Christ, Your Working Boy

First impressions are so very important, as you know— as everyone knows—which is why I showed up for my first day of work five minutes late, bleary-eyed, with a stiff, swollen, purple leg (bike accident—pilot error). Can I start counting the days before my promotion? Oh, probably. If I didn’t win them over by almost falling asleep during the software demonstration, surely my constant comments about how we used to do it in the old country (hint: Not Like They Do It at My New Office!) helped make a few new friends.

My coworkers are all fresh-faced young-’uns who have never produced a title commitment in their lives, and yet were so much faster than I will be by this time next week. They are cute, too: A lanky boy fresh outta diaper school, his friend the adorable lesbian (or faux-lesbian? I can’t tell, and I don’t know that it matters), and my new best friend, a teenager who wore teal eye shadow and told me all about it. All about what, you wonder? Oh, wouldn’t you like to know. All about everything, of course, like: Her boyfriend, where she lives, what she thinks about bankruptcy, other jobs she’s had. She seems ridiculously bright. It leaves one wondering if the office life is meant for other, younger people.

But then there was the gentleman whose job it was, presumably, to chat with me. He’s at least 70, has been CEO of two companies, and is working 12-hour days in my department for no reason that I can think of, unless it truly is, honestly, to brighten my dark working hours. Reminds me of a gentleman who worked at the encyclopedia while I was there, and perhaps still does, who we called Mister (Mister Something, actually, though I don’t remember what the something was), and who would shuffle onto the third floor most afternoons and install himself at one of the long tables in the library, doing research or something, when he wasn’t regaling us with stories about Charles Van Doren and the influenza outbreak of 1918, which nearly claimed his life as a child. Or maybe he reminds me of some kind of terrier with a ball. Same same, really. It’s hard to say.

Oh, I don’t really have enough coherent thoughts in my brain at this point to write anything … coherent, or anything. So let’s dabble, shall we?

I was thinking of writing a list for McSweeney’s—I’ve been mulling it over for the last month or so, and it suddenly occurred to me, as I tried for the first time to transfer it from head to computer screen, that it’s not that funny. Not McSweeney’s-funny, anyway. Maybe Aunty Christ Loves All Her Children-funny, though…

The actual playlist from EMF’s spring 1991 concert in Chicago (as I remember it)

1. “Unbelievable”
2. The second song off their album
3. “Unbelievable” (dance remix)
4. Cover of Jesus Jones’ “Right Here, Right Now”
5. The first single from their forthcoming album
6. “Unbelievable” (unplugged)
7. “Unbelievable”
8. Encore (“Unbelievable”)

Other things that aren’t quite funny enough for publication include the fake news story that might have emerged from this headline that popped into my head during the commute home:

US Warns Chinese Infants Latest Toxic Export: Minister of babies to be executed at dawn

Lately I keep seeing people with Asian toddlers—that’s all there is to that story. Kinda makes a person want an Asian baby of her own, though. Or, not baby, really. How old does someone have to be to run an electric lawnmower? Four?

Next post ought to be something I’ve put some effort into—a lost book of the Bible, perhaps, a restaurant review, or an advertisement for a new brand of deodorant. I’ll work on it. When I’m not hard at work at my other job, I mean.