I begin today with a pressing question. How many nights in a row do you wear your pajamas? I need to compare myself to decent people. Or, you know, slobs.
Now, see, I should have put that query at the bottom of this post, because I notice my comment topics are in direct proportion to whatever subjects are at the bottoms of my posts. It's like y'all can't remember the stuff at the top. And I try to make my posts about three minutes worth of reading. You should all really stop with all the maryjane.
There were these annoying guys on the brother floor of my dorm in college, and yes, it was called "the brother floor," which is sort of gross given how many girls on the sister floor slept with guys on the brother floor, and no, I did not attend the University of the Ozarks, and anyway, they were high all the time, these particular guys.
That was all one sentence up there. Wow.
These high-ons used to knock on my door looking for my roommate Liz, and I would tell them she wasn't home, and--I'm lyin' I'm dyin'--15 minutes later they'd come knock again, having completely forgotten they'd come to the door already. This happened ALL THE TIME. I'll bet those two went on to fabulous careers.
I have never been good with the weed. The hippie lettuce. The jazz cigarette. Do you enjoy my euphemisms? Do you feel like you're watching Dragnet? It makes me feel like crawling into a hole where NO ONE CAN SEE ME EVER and eating chocolate-covered Doritos. Which is fun at a party.
But let's move on from that topic and talk about the baby at work. Because I have no idea how I got off on this tangent.
I was walking down the hall at work, having delivered some pages that I had copy edited, and have I mentioned there is a huge atrium in the middle of my workplace? Which is pretty and everything, but if you work on one side of the office, and you have to deliver your work to the POLAR OPPOSITE SIDE every time you finish something, you can't just walk across the office. You have to go in and out of doors and through that atrium and listen to the fountain and get the sun beating down on you and back through another door and through the lobby and you have to look at your childhood picture in the lobby then walk past the pool table and wonder why you can't play a little pool and it's a whole thing. It's a whole trip through time, is what it is.
So I was finally making my way back to my desk after one of these trips, all weary with torn clothes and a full journal, having made an intimate connection with my sherpa, when I heard a baby screeching.
I mean, I was very near hallucinations, I know that, but it was definitely happening.
"Is that Jim?" someone said, referring to a coworker and thinking they were hilarious.
Right there in an office, with a beleaguered-looking woman, was a baby sitting on a desk. And was she ever a muffin tin. Now, you know I am more of a dog person than a baby person, but she had all these blonde wispy curls, and giant blue eyes, and 238349502385 baby accouterments to keep her amused, none of which were working.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCCCCCKKKK!" she said.
So you know what I did? I went to my desk and got my dancing Hello Kittys.
Did I tell you I have those? My friend Dottie got them for me for my birthday. You connect them and press a button and they dance together. You can keep buying them, because the Hello Kitty people are not idiots, and then they do DIFFERENT dances as you add more Kittys.
My dancing Hello Kittys are a big hit in my office. Even curmudgeonly people press the button and do a little dance with the Kittys.
So I brought it in to the muffin tin baby with the giant blue eyes... (she was SO CUTE. Did I mention that? Had she been an ugly baby I'd have probably let her scream. Is that bad? She looked kind of like Tweety Bird with wispy blonde curls.)
(here we go again. I'll get the hundreds of emails. "June, why didn't you pursue your career in art? You have a gift.")
...and I handed her the dancing Hello Kittys.
"MINE!" she said, reaching her fat little hand out. I pressed the button for her, and the Kittys danced, and so did she. And so did I. She put the Kittys in her mouth. Which I guess is why everything in the world is a choking hazard.
"You can have this till it fails to amuse her," I told the beleaguered mom.
"You are the bomb," she said, looking tired.
And do you know it amused her till end of day? Or EOD, as they say in work emails?
I have no idea if this kid is an intern or what the story is. If that is the case, she has to get her own Hello Kittys.
So that is the story of how I amused a child with my own immature toys.
And don't forget to answer the pajama question. You forgot already, didn't you? Freaking high-on.
