The Wonder Woman Protection Agency

This picture sits on a shelf above my desk at work. It's Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman from the 70s. I have a male friend/co-worker the same age as me and one day we were discussing TV shows we used to watch as kids. We both agreed that we didn't watch Wonder Woman because of any interest in the comic book character but because Lynda Carter is, well, Lynda Carter, and she looked like this and we were 12 and you get the point. I got my picture from a female friend who made them up for all the men in department at the time as a "Fun Friday" gift.

The photo has been sitting on my desk for about 3 years now, although I don't notice it very often anymore. Sure, I might lean back to stretch and it enters my line of sight, those long legs speaking to me in a way . . . hmmm . . . I'm sorry, what was I saying?

Yes, I look at the picture occasionally but not every day. Usually it's someone who has never been at my desk before who sees it and with a quizzical expression asks "So, what's up with the picture of Wonder Woman?" My shelf is filled with little tchotchkes of my favorite sports teams or there's my pen shaped like a rocket or my plastic steam train engine I got at a yard sale for 25 cents.

They all sit on my shelf, a part of my personality, creating a comfortable pocket for me to exist in while at work. Even though I don't look at all of them every day they instill in me a sense of home. I am one of those people who like to be surrounded by my stuff. There is no minimalism when it comes to the areas I exist in every day. My walls at home are covered with photos of family and friends, paintings, posters, banners, anything that can be hung up and displayed. At work I have photos from vacations, pictures of co-workers when we were doing something silly rather than working. Oh, and a picture of the cast of The Loveboat. That's a story for another time.

I admit when I see someone's work area that is devoid of any pictures or memorabilia, that is simply a box for work, I view it as a prison. If it works for that person that's great but I can't make it through the day in a cold, antiseptic cubicle. If I have to be confined to a desk surrounded by three walls I need my Woodstock figurine, shells from the beach, and my sign proclaiming me a fan of the New York Jets so people can feel sad for me.

Wonder Woman watches over all of my things, a protector as well as a boyhood crush. If I could get her to ride the plastic toy tiger I'd have a Frank Frezetta painting come to life.

One of Them

It was rainy that day. Cold drizzle fell from an indifferent sky onto sour faces attached to sagging shoulders. I walked through the parking lot to the door to my office building already dreaming about my mid-morning break. The thought of an over-sweet snack from the vending machine was still dancing a jig in my skull when I entered the lobby and was greeted by the first clown. He was my height but with his baggy suit was twice as wide. His meaty hands deftly tied off a balloon animal and handed it to me.

“Uh . . . thanks . . . for the dog,” I stammered.

“It’s not a dog silly. It’s a capybara.”

“A what?”

“The capybara is the world’s largest rodent, it’s indigenous to the Amazon rain forest.”

“Ok. Well, thank you.” I started to walk away and then turned back but he was gone. I looked down at the balloon in my hand and it exploded into a mist of confetti.

“What the hell?” I mumbled, shaking my head. Only on a Tuesday I thought.

I walked down a corridor toward my desk, sneaking glances into cubicles along the way. In each, instead of my usual co-workers, I found a clown. Some were tall, others were squat. Some had red hair, others green or blue. Red ball noses bulged from the middle of their faces as they sat in $700 office chairs making balloon animals and beeping annoying horns.

The trip to my corner of cube farm hell left me shaken. Where were all of my fellow office drones pouring bitter coffee into their bodies to jumpstart another day of blankly staring at a computer screen? Why were there clowns everywhere? And why did my capybara explode? I had a place on my shelf all picked out for it.

I dropped into my seat. A tall, thick clown with multi-colored hair appeared at my shoulder.

“Hey there! Do you have your project report completed?” he said in a shrill sing-song voice. Then he tooted his horn twice with a belly laugh that shook the wall of my cubicle. I saw he had a name tag over his heart. Scrawled in black Sharpie was “Mr. Flippo, manager”.

“Uh,” I started, both fearful and confused. “I have . . . a little more work to do on it.”

“Get it done mister!” Toot! Toot! Then he walked away, his over-sized shows knocking down a plant in the corner.

At 10:15 balloons dropped from the ceiling while calliope music blared over the loudspeaker throughout the building.

Noon brought the “parade of clowns” through the office where I was given the nickname “Frowny” and a balloon gazelle to replace my lost capybara.

I tried to work but the infernal horn tooting and singing “Happy Birthday” to everyone who called on the phone were driving me mad. The break room was chaos with battling games of pin the tail on the donkey and musical chairs. I went to the men’s room to find make-up smeared paper towels lying everywhere. When I got back to my desk someone had left a red rubber nose on my computer keyboard. As the afternoon wore on I felt eyes upon me. They were trying to draw me in, to make me one of them. Usually I stayed late to catch up on emails I hadn’t had time to answer but on this night I actually snuck out early with one last horn blast from Mr. Flippo.

I walked briskly to my car needing to be away from work as quickly as possible. The indoctrination, however, wasn’t over. My Honda CR-V had been painted a miasma of psychedelic colors. There was a squirting flower stuck to the top of the antenna and an over-sized bow tie attached to the car’s grill. I pulled a note from under the windshield wipers. It told me I was driving car pool tomorrow morning and included a list of 27 co-workers I needed to pick up on the way.

I got into my car, banging the steering wheel in frustration. When I looked at myself in the rear-view mirror I cried out. My face was covered in white make-up.

I’m becoming one of them.

Feng Shui Falderal

I was trying to do a little feng shui on my cubicle at work. I have a shelf with a bunch of personal items on it to make it feel a little more like home than a day time prison cell. One of the toys is a 4 inch high Viking warrior complete with sword raised in battle-readiness and a shield in the other hand.  Another item is a framed picture of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, a gift from a female co-worker to all the men in the department after we mooned over Linda one day. Today I made the mistake of moving Wonder Woman and the Viking too close together.

I heard WW say to the Viking sarcastically, “Nice sword. What are you compensating for?”

I wasn’t sure he even knew what she meant but he replied, “Shut your dragon mouth woman or I’ll put out your fire.”

The next thing I know WW’s golden lasso is out and she’s trying to hog tie the Viking. He countered with some nice sword cuts and took her legs out with his shield. As I’m trying to separate the two of them all hell breaks loose in my booth.

I have a wooden pencil holder that was made in India with a golden elephant on the side of it. The elephant charges, trunk high in the air trumpeting loudly. I’m a fan of the North Carolina basketball team and their mascot is a ram so I have a wooden tchotchke of the mascot. He sees the elephant coming and goes into his own charge. They crash together shaking the walls of my cubicle. Meanwhile WW has gotten in to her invisible plane and is flying above my head with the Viking hanging on to the tail slicing at the wings with his sword.

Another toy I have is an old style steam train engine. After getting buzzed by WW he takes off doing laps around the shelf, blowing his whistle and shouting, “Tommy the train doesn’t like fighting! Tommy doesn’t like fighting! All aboard the 10 a.m. shuttle from Santa Fe to San Diego. ALL ABOOOOOARD! TOOT TOOT! TOOT TOOT!

The train took out the ram but the elephant jumped on board. He’s trumpeting, the train whistle is blowing and WW crashed her plane into my notebooks. She has the Viking in a headlock and he’s smacking her ass with the flat if his sword. The plane debris was laying over the train tracks and as Tommy rounded the bend . . .

TOOT! TOOT! The 3 p.m. from Tuscaloosa to Talladega is now leaving from gate 4. ALL ABOOOOOARD! LOOK OUT! TOMMY THE TRAIN DOESN’T LIKE CRASHING!!!!!

This was the result:

I don’t think I’m ready for feng shui.

3 Things I Didn’t Understand Last Week

Why does your body attack you with a sudden pain? Then by the time the hypochondriac in you is convinced you’ve somehow picked up a fang-toothed, tape worm-like parasite from the Amazonian rain forest that’s eating your nerve fibers like cotton candy and carrying diseases heretofore only found in science fiction novels, it just as suddenly goes away. On my way to work the other day the inside of my right ear began to throb as if the Norse god Thor were in there pounding on my eardrum with his hammer Mjolnir. I’m pretty sure he was playing the solo from Zeppelin’s Moby Dick and much like Robert Plant I was about ready to shriek in a high-pitched voice. And then it was gone. I have no idea why the pain started, what caused it or why it stopped. Do our bodies contain gremlins? Are their little green creatures slithering through our veins, popping out occasionally to pinch a muscle or punch a kidney? This needs to be studied. I propose a telethon to raise money for research, hosted by Rob Schneider and Kathy Griffin and shown on cable access channels the world over. Wait, that would actually CAUSE pain. Forget it

This one is about the men’s room so if you are faint of heart, step away from the computer now. For those of you who remain, what is wrong with you? You like reading stories about the men’s room? I didn’t even like writing it. Anyway, on with the story! I was in stall #1 the other day at work, taking care of business and wondering what a cheese puff is exactly. I mean, it’s light and crunchy and cheesy and delicious, but WHAT is it? My important work was interrupted by whoever was in stall #2 tearing off what sounded like a full yard of paper. A few seconds passed and again I could hear the roll being maneuvered and A LOT more toilet paper being torn off. Another few seconds passed and MORE paper was unfurled. What in the hell was he doing with all that paper? Finally the toilet flushed and I thought all was well so I went back to pondering the provenance of cheese-based snacks. To my horror the roll of toilet paper began moving again: Foot after foot of thin, cheap paper being gathered for some nefarious purpose. There were sounds I couldn’t place which made me queasy, and then . . . more paper was unrolled. I audibly gasped. Did this man pass a ground hog? Was his rectum being used to test experimental suppositories? Did he clean out his cupboards over the weekend and find a 20 year old bag of olestra chips and figure ‘what the hell’? I put my head in my hands and wept as I knew I was going to die that day. I just wanted it to stop. I prayed and asked God what punishment he had wrought on this man. I was answered with spin after spin of the toilet paper roll. I watched the paper spool on the floor like a coiling snake. Then I heard the tear and saw the top of the paper mound peeking over the walls of the stall. Thirty seconds passed and the paper slowly disappeared, accompanied by sounds NASA scientists have yet to identify, followed by a second flush. When the man exited the stall I averted my eyes so as not to catch a glimpse between the stall door for fear I would turn to stone or worse yet, into a roll of Quilted Northern.

I work in a casual business environment. My department was recently moved to another of the company’s office buildings and we are now in the middle of a “cubicle farm” with members of another department. What I don’t understand is why they believe a cubicle provides privacy. They put up three metal and cloth “walls” and you’re supposed to be comfortable talking to your doctor to get the results of that test you drove three states away to get. There is someone in my office whose niece got married the other weekend. How do I know this? Because on Monday morning it was the first topic of conversation in every phone call she had and I can HEAR EVERY WORD SHE SAYS. I’m waiting for the day I get to hear about someone’s goiter or their step-son’s arrest for urinating on a cow. I think we should all get our own personal “hamster ball”. The plastic could be tinted so no one can see inside, it would be soundproofed so no one can hear your phone conversations and you could roll your way around the office in comfort.