January 24, 2010 in T
Felix didn’t expect
The sexual harassment claim.
In his police statement
He blamed the qwerty keyboard,
And the fact that the N and the B
Are next to each other.
-
Felix’s email to Maria in HR
Was innocent enough.
It was meant to say
“I have a great idea to improve staff morale.
Come to my office at 5.
I’ll give you a full run down”
-
But it didn’t.
a
January 20, 2010 in N
It was the spring of 1967. Judy had locked herself in her room because there were too many distractions in the rest of the house. She knew she had to knuckle down and come up with a song – a great song. The other members of the band were relying on her. But it wouldn’t come. For days she’d been searching for inspiration – but it had only resulted in a few very average refrains.
Her husband Luke was in the kitchen. He hadn’t seen his wife in days, and was getting a little worried about her state of mind. But he couldn’t help getting a bit annoyed as well. Nothing was getting done around the place. His life had ground to a halt. All the things Judy had promised faithfully to do, she hadn’t done. His attempt at cleaning the guttering had just been thwarted because Judy hadn’t taken the faulty ladder back to the hardware shop, as she swore she’d do the day before. And the day before that.
He wandered up to their room, tapped quietly on the door, and went in. He found Judy gazing helplessly out the window. He came up behind her and put his arms around her shoulders. “How’s it going?” he asked gently.
“It’s crap. I’m crap.” said Judy. “It’s just not happening, Luke. Every song I write is bad.”
He kissed the nape of her neck. He put on his most encouraging voice and said “Oh hey, Jude. Don’t say it’s bad. Take that bad song and make it not so shitful.” He started to leave, but turned at the door and added “Oh. Remember to put the ladder into your car. THEN you can start to make it not so shitful.”
She smiled at him as he left the room. She took a deep breath and thought about what he’d said. Finally, she closed her notepad and sighed “If there’s a great song out there somewhere, I’m nowhere near it”.
The band folded shortly afterward.
January 19, 2010 in G
Will really didn’t like getting his haircut. It wasn’t that his barber did a bad job – on the contrary, Alphonse had been cutting Will’s hair for over 40 years, knew exactly how he liked it, and always struck the right balance of chatter and silence.
As he walked through the door, he was greeted with a big Alphonse smile, and the customary “Hello Willy. Take a seat. I will be with you as soon as I have finished this one”. As Will sat down, the roll call of memories began.
He recalled sitting on the booster seat, while his dad stood behind chatting with Alphonse. He remembered the first time he got to sit in the barber’s chair itself, and how grown up he felt. He could picture his dad in the chair next to his, as Alphonse and his apprentice had races to see who could finish first. He remembered the arguments with his mum, when, as a teenager, he desperately wanted to keep his ear-covering, shoulder-length hair. Alphonse always sided with his mum.
He remembered the first time Alphonse bought out the cut-throat razor, and how it scraped across his sideburns and the nape of his neck. He could still feel the sting of the aftershave on his young skin.
“Your turn, Willy, my boy.” beamed Alphonse, as he shook the previous customer’s hair off the black plastic cape.
As Will made himself comfortable, he realised why he didn’t like getting his haircut any more. The mirror in front of him no longer showed a young man – it showed a receding hairline and an additional chin. The hair that fell onto the protective cape and then onto the floor got lighter in colour every time he visited. It used to have the occasional grey. Now they comfortably outnumbered the brown. Even the conversation had changed. It was no longer about school and football and cars and girls. It was about the garden and compost and the declining quality of journalism.
Will paid his $22 and immerged blinking into the sunlight. Walking back to the car, he tried to convince himself that the small amount of gel Alphonse had used to ruffle his fringe made him look younger and more interesting.
a
January 12, 2010 in P
She sensed that the people around her were obviously discomforted by the exchange. They were looking toward the ground, out the door, at nothing out windows. Or were they just getting annoyed that she was taking so long? She had lost the ability to tell.
Clarity began to return in the form of embarrassment, then anger. Since when did 17 year olds start to talk to their elders like that? What happened to the concept of respect? Or empathy? When did we become an inverted nanny state – where the youth dictate what’s good for the middle-aged? And when did that stupid law that forced bar staff to decide when patrons had had too much, suddenly become applicable in fast food restaurants?