Physically, we’re in this boardroom, but none of us is actually here. I count the number of bog oak wall panels. Thirty-seven. Initially, that number gives me an uncomfortable, unbalanced feeling, like when I discover a sock missing at the end of a wash cycle. I think about it some more, chewing hard on the end of my Bic pen. The woman speaking, she drones, rattling off terminology I haven’t even thought about since reviewing my welcome package a decade ago. Thirty-seven. It’s a prime number, I suppose. So, there’s that. Moreover, it’s a permutable prime with seventy-three. I relax. Deep breaths. We’ll get through this.
To my left, down the cartoonish length of the polished rosewood table, a middle-aged man named Brian sits hunched in his chair. He braces his elbow against the chair’s leather arm, and holds his 5 o’clock shadow in the palm of his hand. This man, Brian, he sits there in his slightly rumpled suit thinking about his collection of antique medical equipment at home. Just this morning, he put in a bid on eBay for a 15th century speculum and he’s eager to see if he’s won. It’s a real bargain. If he is the victor, he’ll own a speculum from every century from the 13th on. Brian can’t wait to get out of here. It’s no wonder.
These meetings, they’re tolerable only because there’s an end. That feeling you get when you walk out of a windowless boardroom after a four hour meeting, someone should bottle that feeling and make millions of dollars. It’s a revival.
We’re all standing at a bank of elevators, minds numb and crammed full of acronyms, and no-one has pressed the down button. We’ve all assumed someone else already done the deed. Brian stares down at his cell phone, annoyed he’s not getting any signal, the eBay web address sitting impotently in his browser’s address bar. With his bright white hair and pale, puffy face he reminds me of a polar bear. “Anyone else having issues with their phone?” he asks. The rest of us, cell phones in hand, we give them a quick glance and grumble in the affirmative.
The plastic elevator buttons, both up and down, they’re unlit, and the stainless steel elevator doors remain closed. At the same moment, we all seem to realize our lapse. We look around uncomfortably at one another, index fingers ready. No-one moves. Finally, Gloria from accounting, she stabs the button with the end of her cane. “What’s wrong with you people?” she asks. Her false teeth are as flat and straight as piano keys. Her hair’s been grey since well before it was hip.
The workday, most of us can only get through it because we know it can’t go on forever. That sensation you experience when you step out of your climate controlled office building into the fresh afternoon air, someone should find a way to synthesize that sensation and they’ll earn enough money to retire to a private island in Indonesia complete with a nice rumah gadang style house, a string of bamboo beach cabanas, and large support staff. It’s a rebirth.
Like butterflies emerging from our chrysalises, we all step out into the crisp December air, the pale sun warming our skin. We all take a deep breath; the air, it is good. It is actual air. Each of us to the others, we nod, smile, or wave our goodbyes. At home, we’ll throw off our ties, and shrug out of our innocuously coloured suits, trading them in for blue jeans, gym shorts, yoga pants, or maybe, just maybe, nothing at all. We will live our actual lives.
Brian, he’ll check his eBay account to find that he did, indeed, win the auction for the 15th century speculum in remarkable condition. It’s a real bargain. In his plaid pajama bottoms and tatty Genesis T-shirt, he’ll spend his evening preparing a space in his vast collection. The various specula, they reside in a glass case on a shelf above a large assortment of vintage tongue depressors and below another shelf containing myriad old reflex hammers. Tomorrow at work, when I ask him how his evening was, he’ll tell me it was all right. “I didn’t do much,” he’ll say, “just hung around the house. And you?”
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