PLAY HOUSE

At my day job on 29th and Madison, they ordain one person, one of us, (one of us part timers) to over-see our part-time operations. The over-seer decides specific break times, dress codes, comments on one's handwriting, quotas, allocations, allotments, allowances apportionments and assignments.

I bristle but nod in agreement.

All of these rules are play acting. We're playing house. Or office.
I'll play the boss and you play the worker.

I enjoy tedious work.
In fact, I escape in work. Boring work is good therapy for my troubled mind.
But do you want me to do your mindless work or concentrate on your pointless protocol?

Today, I bring my lunch to work so that I won’t have to hunt and gather during my new professional designated break time. But I get an e-mail from my bank. A check has not cleared. A check has been returned!

I walk to the bank on my professional designted dinner break.

As I walk to the bank, it must appear like I have all the time in the world! I'm so unrushed!
I'm walking so slowly that when I pass a co-worker on the street, I put my phone to my ear (so it appears that I’m talking to someone) to cover my loping dopey walk.

My walk to and from the bank would normally clock in at twenty minutes. Today it takes my entire professional designated break time.

When I get back to work I sit in the office kitchen and eat my dinner and read the New York Post.

I read; A.I.G will have to return their bonuses because the IRS will tax them at 100%..

But am interrupted by,

"Wow! All the four food groups" young handsome dark-skinned Iranian Jason comments.

(We don't talk normally but commenting on other people's food is easy entrée)

And then, my new supervisor enters the kitchen.

I stiffen.

I don’t know what he’s about.
Why HAS he taken this role on?

There is something dark here.

He is from Scotland and stifles his accent. He wears black shirts with floral ties. He is young and bald and his eyes have the steeliness of Sir Ben Kingsley when he plays one of his more demonic characters.

"Ah! Mr. Roberts, I see you eating your dinner, now, don't I?

"Yes, this IS my dinner. I'm just finishing up."

"But the time Mr. Roberts, the time."

"I know it's past six but I'll be done in just a bit"

"Ah Mr. Roberts, we all take our breaks at the same time, that's the way we do things now."

(He's being tongue in cheek, but the badgering, it never stops. It's tiresome.

"I know, I know" I say, " but you see, I had to walk to my bank during my breaktime and I walk at like... 2 miles an hour"

(this IS what I said but it occurs to me NOW that walking 2 miles an hour is actually okay)

"I'm having leg problems, leg issues, and it takes me a long time to walk ANY where, so I used up my entire break walking, This is why I'm late for work some times, because I have to see doctors or go to the hospital for some tests for something to do with my legs. So I can't get done what I need to get done on that new break, not with the way I walk, I just cant' do it."

I'm a defensive teenager and I’ve stood up and began to wrap up the remains of my healthy, dismal dinner which included carrot sticks, baby potatoes, (week old) beans n' rice, half an avocado, and rice crackers.

My supervisor wasn'r ready for this unleashing. He is concerned.

"No, It's okay, it's okay,"

And disposing of any emotion I say, "I'm not trying to make you feel guilty or pull a little surprise gotcha! on you. I'm just telling you the plain fact that I can't get to my my bank and eat my dinner on one fifity minute break because I don't walk fast enough."

"Sit down Mr. Roberts, sit down, I think can make an allowance for you, I think I can let this go. I didn’t know."

"It's okay, I'm done here any way." (I'm playing it very flat here.)

"No, I think what we should do, ( my supervisor says) I think what we should do is that YOU should sit down and finish your dinner and come back to work when you need to. You don't need me all over you right now"

(That was a nice thing to say (I guess) and okay I’ll sit down. Even though I am done. Really.

(I’ll play house... or office)

So, I sit down at the white plastic table, with the matching white chairs stacked in twos and threes, (the kitchen doesn’t get much love) and I think, I don’t want to have conversations about my terrible undiagnosed disease, but I'm afraid and frustrated by what I can't do anymore. This is what I am unleashing (I think). I'm not so angry with my supervisor, I'm angry at the small and developing realization of my (brand-new) IN - abilities.

I haven’t looked at this, can't look at this.

My angy realizations come out in child-sized bites.