Shopping in Whoville

I hate shopping. No, really. Seriously. Any kind of shopping sparks shivers of fear, but Christmas shopping evokes a cold sweat. For one thing, it requires interaction with humans. Not so easy a task for a recluse living out in the hills. Oh, don't get me wrong. I do not live at the top of Mount Crumpit with a dog named Max. It is just that my "personal space" is about one hundred feet and Christmas shoppers ignore that. But, to participate in the Whobilation celebration requires thoughtful gifts, so today I ate a hearty breakfast, strapped on my flack vest and trudged out to the shopping mall, biting my nails and gnashing my teeth.

Because I had to wrestle a cart out from under two children (the mother may have meant I could have the two children, not the cart) I didn't see this sign in front of the store. You are going to have to trust me on this. I didn't choose this store because of the sign. Honest.

Whoever thought of this gimmick was a genius. What draws people into a store at Christmas? Fifty percent off sales? Five items with ridiculously low prices? Chocolate? HA. I laugh at such shenanigans. Well, maybe the chocolate...

But wine tasting? Fabulous. I'd only intended to taste one or two, but the woman kept saying,

"Wait, I think you should try this one." I didn't want to hurt her feelings, right? By the time I got out of the store, I'd just about completed my shopping. At least I think so. There are about ten bags of items in my living room. Shopping was never so relaxing.

I do wonder about the sign, though. The times say 1-4 and 3-6.

Tap tap tap.

Hmmmm.

Tap tap.

Odd, don't you think?

As I’ve said before, I’m easily amused. It is a flaw.

When I first moved to the Portland/Vancouver area, I got a job in downtown Portland in “The Black Box," so named because it was all black on the outside, including the windows. Every morning it was like entering a coven. I’d sidle up to the elevators and jab the button, waiting for one of the doors to open and let out a vampire or a witch.

My training to process claims for a national insurance company began on the nineteenth floor. Sometimes my entire class had to travel to the fifth or the third floors for training. All twelve of us crowded onto an elevator and my trainer, Norma, came up with an inspired idea. You’ll just have to trust me on this, it wasn’t my idea. Honestly, it was Norma. Her idea was to turn around and face the back.

Brilliant.

We swung around, our backsides facing the doors, and floor after floor, the doors would swish open and meet with silence. Some would slink into the car, tap the button to the floor they wanted, and stare at the ceiling pressing themselves into the front corner. Others would wait for the next elevator. A few asked, “What the heck is going on here?”

My sides hurt from trying to contain my laughter by the time we reached the third floor.

Learning medical and dental codes and medical terminology made my eyes glass over and my stomach knot. The only good parts of the training were the elevator rides. Sometimes we’d all crowd up against the door like the elevator was full. Sometimes we’d face the side. Sometimes we’d all stand to one side. Aaaah, good times.

At the end of my training, I moved down to the fifth floor. What a disappointment. Not only were there fewer floors in which to have “elevator fun” but I was alone. If you face the back when you are alone, people just assume you are nuts. I mean, not that I tried it or anything.

One day at four in the afternoon, I shut down my computer and sauntered out into the elevator lobby. A gentleman from the mail room grasped the handle of a little cart with two full bins marked, “U.S. Mail”. He stared up at the lights indicating which elevator had the best chance of reaching our floor first and pushed his cart toward the doors.

The bell clanged. The door hissed open. The elevator was crowded with about fifteen strangers. But it wasn’t full. If everyone had scrunched over toward the sides the man with the mail would have been able to squeeze the cart in. I stepped into the car and held the door.

No one moved. No one. My mouth dropped open in disbelief and my hand fell to my side. The man with the cart poised at the door, waiting for the shift of people. Except no shift occurred. As the doors whispered closed I stammered, “B-b-but the mail must go through.”

Phfffft. Whir.

I turned and faced all the people and placed my hands on my hips. “Through rain and snow and dark of night, the mail must go through. Aren’t you all ashamed?”

They stared at me and collectively said, “Ahhmm.” Two heartbeats later they all said, “No.” It was so perfectly timed, so precisely executed that it appeared to be rehearsed.

My hands flew to my face, but not in time to cover the snort of laughter, and like dominoes, one after another joined in. Some collapsed against the sides and snickered, others clutched their leather briefcases and chortled and others loosened their ties and tittered. The doors opened at the fourth, the third and the second floors, but the outsiders did not join us. They backed away like the healthy eyeing a pen full of swine flu carriers.

Would you have stepped onto the car if the doors had opened onto a crowded elevator with everyone roaring?

Sometimes life is simply good.

Experiencing Life's Ups and Downs

Experience is essential in writing. Generally, the more horrendous your life, the better writer you can be. It may help get you through a crisis if you can just hang onto the fact you might sell your story later. I wish I had known this when I was younger. It would have made getting “sunday-punched” in the face by a maniac on the streets so much more fun.

Looking back, even embarrassing experiences can be useful. Long, long ago, in a land far away, I worked for county government. One day my boss came to me and smiled. “I have some good news,” she said. “You’ve been chosen to work down at the courthouse on Sunday.”

I squinted at her. “The courthouse is closed on Sunday,” I said. She couldn’t fool me.

She hunched one shoulder. “Visiting hours.”

I gasped. They housed the most dangerous male prisoners awaiting trial on the top floor of the old, stately courthouse. This was certainly an honor. I couldn’t go into the housing area for the males, and I knew only the most experienced deputies worked in this high security area, but perhaps I would be in charge of scheduling the prisoners for their visits. Maybe they expected me to run warrant checks on the visitors. Maybe I would make the visitors empty their pockets and step through the metal detectors. It was a heady thought. This was a chance to climb the ladder to success.

On Sunday, I walked into the empty lobby of the building. Doors usually opening to the courts and other county offices were closed and locked. I glanced around the ornate lobby with the polished brass scrollwork and pushed the buzzer to the jail, hidden discretely in a panel in the corner. The lavish doors to the old elevator moaned open and the sergeant stepped off in full-dress uniform with his stainless steel, four inch, .357 magnum Smith & Wesson strapped to his side.

“Good, you are here. You ready to take over?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I stood a little straighter, squared my shoulders and lifted my chin. “I’m looking forward to it.” I was a half hour early so they could train me on the security gates, or show me how to screen the visitors on the computer.

“Okay, climb in.” He stepped back into the elevator and pointed to a lever. “The building is closed except for the jail. When visitors come into the lobby, Deputy Knowles and Deputy Harlan will run them through security and then send them to you.”

“Great. I’ll be ready for them. What will I be doing, running them for warrants? Checking NCIC? Logging them in with a scanner? “

He cocked his head. “Um…you’ll be operating the elevator. We shut it down so it doesn’t operate automatically. You just push this button here, and then manually swing this lever over to open and close the door.”

“Then what?” I asked.

He grinned and adjusted his black, basket-weave gun belt, making the leather creak. “That’s it.”

My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘that’s it?’”

He picked a piece of lint off his dark blue Eisenhower jacket and ran his sleeve over the polished brass badge. “I mean, that is it. You’re going to operate the elevator.”

My shoulders dropped and my gaze locked on his. “The elevator? That is it?”

“Yup. You’ve got it.” He rocked back on his heals. “Now, push that button and take me back to the fifteenth floor so we can get started with visiting hours.”

I sighed. My corporate ladder to success was manually operated. “Yes sir.”

For the next five hours I rode up and down fifteen floors. No deviation. Visitors would climb on, some of them dressed nicely and others reeking of body odor and cheap cologne. The elevator jiggled and swayed up the shaft until it squeaked to a stop at the jail lobby. I’d crank open the door and off they’d go to visit their loved ones.

It was an excruciating five hours. In retrospect, however, I realize it gave me some insight as to what it must be like to be the captain of a square-rigged ship in 1805. I mean, I was in charge. The elevator went where I directed when I jabbed my finger against the “15” button. I controlled the lever like the captain controls the tiller. We were in constant motion. In fact, when I finally stepped off the elevator, I felt as if the lobby were moving.

Lastly, I got to clip out orders, just like a captain. “Step to the rear,” I’d bluster. And the visitors did what I said.

“Thank you for coming. Please come again,” I’d order. At one point Deputy Harlan overheard me issue this command.

“Melanie,” he said. “You don’t have to thank these people for coming. They are not customers.”

“I was just being polite.”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well, they are here visiting murderers, rapists and arsonists. Asking them to come again isn’t necessary.”

I’m glad I didn’t listen to him. The experience was invaluable while writing my British commander. He is such a gentleman, even while threatening the enemy with destruction. If it weren’t for my experience being an elevator operator, I may not have been able to write him with such a devotion to duty and honor.

The Earnestness of Being Important

How important are you to your company? A while ago I would have ranked myself somewhere between the guy who blows the leaves out of our parking lot twice a year and the woman who empties our trash and recycling containers twice a week. But then I remembered a lesson I learned as a teenager. My cousin, Karen, and I watched the original version of The Nutty Professor. In that movie, Jerry Lewis drinks a potion and changes from the nerdy professor to a handsome heart-throb. When the movie was over we reasoned that the only difference between the absentminded, dweeby professor and the suave, sophisticated Buddy Love was attitude. Buddy Love personified self-confidence. Who doesn’t want to be around someone with self-confidence? When the plane is going to crash, I want to be next to the individual I think will be able to get us out alive. I want to be strapped in beside someone calm, confident and not likely to panic in a crisis.

For a week after seeing the movie, Karen and I strutted about, kissing mirrors and saying things like, “I’m not saying I’m perfect; it is just that I’ve never met anyone better." At the end of the week, we were still the same girls, but now we had attitude. We were awesome.

As I mentioned in the last post, I work in a closet. Besides the filing cabinets, printer and fire extinguisher, there used to be a shredder squeezed between my chair and the wall. Important people from all over the company would swagger in and stand behind me to shred their crucial documents. It became distracting, not only because it is eerie to have someone stand behind me, but because I wasn’t important enough to use the shredder myself. Nothing I did was all that essential. When left alone with the machine it would jeer at me, pointing out my insignificance.

And then I remembered Buddy Love.

I sat up straight. Who is to decide how important a piece of paper is? Me. I decided. My dang papers were fabulously influential. I stooped over and dug out all the papers from my recycling bin, mostly duplicate bills, shrunkled (yes, I’m important enough to make up my own words) paper I’d pulled from the jammed copier and empty envelopes previously housing invoices. These were all very important. I shredded them. Then, throughout the day, I’d shred the cover sheets to faxes and any inter-office memo with my name on it. Even sticky notes became exceedingly critical.

“Melanie, what the heck are you shredding in there?” my boss finally shouted one day. “I hear the shredder going all the time.”

“Just some important documents,” I yelled over the din of the devilish device.

One day I fired up the machine and stuck the end of my important document into the shredder. My boss walked in. Over the racket of the motor and the snarling teeth chomping proprietary information into indiscernible fragments of confetti, she yelled, “What are you shredding?”

I jumped and whirled around, my eyes widening. There was nothing for it. I had to tell her the truth.

“My adding machine tape,” I said.

Her mouth dropped open.

“We wouldn’t want our competition to see our numbers, would we?” I explained.

A week later they took the shredder out of the closet and put it in the front of the office area where the rest of the accounting staff sits to “allow easier access for everyone in the company.”

I miss the shredder. I’ve gone back to throwing the empty envelopes into the recycling bin and I rarely shred my fax cover sheets. Maybe what I miss most is the weighty feeling of consequence. But I have to admit, I don’t seem to miss the "important" people hovering behind me.

Stuck with the Stapler

Okay, so I'm easily amused. I admit it. Itty-bitty things make me laugh out loud. Maybe that isn't so good when you work alone in a closet with a bunch of filing cabinets. Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. There is a lovely red fire extinguisher hanging right near the printer. It is so cheerful.

The other day I was stapling checks to bills and I came to the Staples, Inc. invoice. I placed the check on top, straightened the papers together and slid it under the stapler.

Bam.

Nothing. Out of staples. What are the chances of that, humm? I mean, running out of staples just as I processed the Staples invoice? My boss walked by the closet and heard my guffaws. She stuck her head in and her eyes grazed the room, noting I was alone. "What is so funny?"

I wiped the corner of my eyes and snuffled, reining in the mirth. "The Staples check. I ran out of staples. It is like the invoice just sucked the staples right out of my stapler. Like it called all the staples back to the mother ship."

She stared at me for a couple of heartbeats. One eyebrow rose.

"I write fiction," I defended, shrugging. I sent her a bright smile.

Her head shook side to side. "You are more than a fiction writer. You live a lot of your life in the make-believe."

I took that as a compliment.

Saturday Shopping

I drove out to the Columbia Gorge today, to do some shopping at Sandra Tucker's house. I didn't make it to the Larch Mountain Craft Fair due to freaking out about the weather and searching nearby stores for rain boots, gloves, ear warmers and chap stick for my sail on the Lady Washington. Sandra usually follows the show with a home fair with many artists in a folksy atmosphere of good friends. It is really so much better.

After buying several items, from Sandra and from Robin, although many other wonderful items were displayed, I settled into the kitchen. The wood stove ticked and creaked and spiced apple cider warmed on the stove. Several artists brought blueberry cordial, homemade hard cider, elderberry cordial and Sandra supplied the blackberry cordial.

I loved the elderberry, although I expected to see the little old ladies in Arsenic and Old Lace hover over me, waiting for me to die so they could drag me into the cellar and allow Teddy Roosevelt to bury me. Luckily that didn't happen. On the way back to Vancouver from the gorge, I snapped a few pictures.

Crown Point

Moss covered railing

Moss covered trees

I'm just trying out my new camera, but I think I'll have to break down and read the directions. Of course, it could have been the blackberry cordial.

Coyote Moon

On my way home from work, the moon cast silvery light through the dark shadowy trees. Its eerie beauty pleased me until the tires crunched along the dirt road to my house and the beams of my headlights lit the neighbors' garbage cans.

Dang. Garbage day tomorrow.

I backed into my garage, slammed on the brakes and heaved open the door, racing inside to gather the wastebaskets. Bathrooms, HobieCat and Schooner's room (they seem to make a lot of garbage), kitchen, garage, twelve Starbucks cups from my car, and a bunch of little packing

pellets from a cardboard box. I hauled it all outside

and splayed my hands, blindly batting the inky black for the obsidian plastic can. I felt the frosty lid and ripped it off, jamming in the spoils of my trash hunt.

The spindly wheels crackled across the frost-covered asphalt as I dragged it up the hill and around the center island to the end of the driveway, about a hundred feet from the house. Tall douglas fir trees and western red cedars blocked the moon's welcome light and I shivered in the 40 degree air, wishing I'd remembered to put on my jacket. When I reached what might be the end of the driveway, I tapped with my toe until the firm sound of leather against pavement was replaced by the tentative bite of leather on rocky dirt.

I set the can upright and began inching my way back toward the house. In the distance my garage light beckoned, but cast no light upon my path. And then I heard it. The threatening yip of a coyote, not far off. I froze and peered through the dark, my heart punching into overdrive. The whining wail whipped up the hair on the back of my neck and gooseflesh prickled along my arms. Another bellowing bark joined the first. They were moving in for the kill. In moments I expected the frenzied yelps as the pack closed in on the hapless victim.

My feet kicked into motion and I sprinted the last fifty feet, slipping on a patch of moss, recovering, sliding down the last of the driveway into the garage. I pounded the button and the garage door sprang to life, lowering in agonizing apathy, while my breathing burst forth in white puffs.

Before the automatic door finished its laborious task, I flew into the house and slammed the door, leaning back against it, sucking in gulps of air. I've lost pets to the coyotes. Everyone around here has. Even if you've never heard it before, when you hear the deranged, maddened yipping of coyotes making a kill, you know what it is. I knew HobieCat and Schooner were inside. They don't go out. Ever. But some poor creature met its end tonight, and my heart feels grief.