Suess's Pieces

by Thirteen of Clubs

I am writing this Reflection Sunday post at 7:38 on Saturday evening. It’s dark outside, so I can see my reflection in the French doors. (Excuse me while I close the curtains. The neighbors really don’t need to see this, and the last thing I need is a six-foot-wide mirror. [Six-foot-wide or six-feet-wide? I did a brief search, but lost patience. So someone just tell me the answer, mkay?]*)

Cool. I have a blip.fm account now. Not sure how long this will keep my attenti…

Oh, look. Someone on Twitter just reminded me to turn my clocks back an hour before I go to bed. Spring ahead, fall back.

Joy of joys! An extra hour. I need to plan for this. This is big. I know, I’ll make a list and choose the best one.

Top 10 things to do with my extra hour:

10. Mark as read a few thousand more blog posts about NaNoWriMo in my Google Reader.

9.  Finally list my wedding dress, my blue and white dishes, my leather blazer, Dan’s broken deep fryer, and that big piece of furniture we’ve started calling The Magic Box™ on craigslist.

8. Actually fold the laundry this time.

7. Sleep in. I’m going to need that extra hour of sleep to stay up for The Walking Dead on AMC.

6. Wonder who at AMC decided that filling Mad Men‘s time slot with a show about zombies was a good idea.

5. Bake that guy cookies.

4. Read this post a few more times.

3. Figure out how to hug that mom.

2. Fill in the editorial calendar for the Suess’s Piece eNewsletter through December 2012.

1. Nothing. Realize that this is the same bleeping hour those jerks kidnapped months ago. Only now it’s used and it smells bad and it has Stockholm syndrome.

* An aside within an aside. Be amazed, people.

When I was nineteen, I worked as an account clerk for the City of Henderson, Kentucky. I sat all alone at a big, curved desk in the lobby at city hall. I wore one of those ridiculous headset receivers and answered the switchboard. I took messages for everyone in the building. And when I wasn’t taking money from grumpy taxpayers or putting returned payroll checks in numerical order, I was listening to Muzak and counting and rolling the filthy change collected on city buses.

“Grant,” I called the city manager by his first name one day as he walked through the lobby.* “I have messages for you.” I held up a handful of pink message forms as he made his way over to my desk.

I was waiting for him to take his messages, but instead he condescended. “You should just give those to my secretary.” He tapped the counter in front of me twice with his open palm and he walked toward the elevator. Embarrassed that I had apparently spoken out of turn, my cheeks flushed. I went from 5 feet, six inches to two feet, no inches in a matter of seconds. Grant rode the elevator all the way up to his office on the third floor.

Stevie Nicks was signing in the background, when a middle-aged Henderson resident came around the corner to pay his city wheel tax. Holding his registration in front of him he paused and looked up at the Muzak speaker in the ceiling. He swayed a little and closed his eyes. Opening one eye, he looked at me. “Do you mind?” he asked. “I need a moment with this song.”

I just shrugged.

When he and Stevie were both finished, he said, “One day it’ll mean more.”

*Grant wasn’t actually his name.