Month: February 2020

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The Leaky Faucet

Drip… drip… drip…

The sound finally catching her attention, she pauses her work, listening to the slow and steady flow of water from the faucet fifty feet away. Sighing, she continues to pretend she can’t hear it, but now the act is in vain: as her determination to ignore the annoyance grows, so, too, does the sound grow in the back of her mind, lurking closer and closer to the forefront, a shadow on the wall rousing suspicion to delay progress.

Drip… drip… drip…

On a normal day, she wouldn’t even be able to hear it. The office is typically quite noisy with the hustle and bustle of work, but today, she was the only person in. As a transplant from the northeast, she could handle a few inches of snow without a problem, and some deadlines made her wary of taking the day off. Her coworkers, however, all took the day to stay safe instead of testing road conditions. All of them.

Drip… drip… drip…

When she blinks, she finds her eyes straying to the top of her cubicle, hovering there, unseeing yet fighting the remarkable urge to glare at the leaky piping. Decidedly continuing to type, she can’t manage to draw her eyes away from their perch until she needs to proofread the paragraph – at which point she discovers gibberish as the result of consistently typng one character to the left of where she thought she was typing. Her fists clinch.

Drip… drip… drip…

It was an eerie experience, having the enormous floor of the even more massive office building to herself. For all she knew, she was alone in the complex; there was no guard on duty this morning in the main lobby when she swiped in. She often preferred to be alone when working on individual tasks, but it was weird to have so much space to herself. Distractingly weird, as it were, and her thoughts meandered with the droplets from the kitchenette. Such quiet was still welcome after the rush of the busiest season of the year. The solitude was generally helpful as the only interruption she needed to tune out to focus on her work was the pinging of her email… and that obnoxious leak.

Drip… drip… drip…

Forcing a strong exhale, she stands, tugging her blazer flat and buttoning the bottom button. She cracks her neck, slides her chair back under her desk, takes a deep breath, and strolls toward the kitchen, pumping her arms and lifting her knees high as though marching. As she turns the corner to face her adversary, she reaches out, gripping the wall and swinging around the corner. Foe in sight, she nods, determined to fix the problem.

Drip… drip… drip…

An inanimate object would make a worthy opponent for the simple fact that it can’t die. So, too, wouldn’t that make it an enemy not worth defeating because it doesn’t feel the sting of defeat? The saying that the sweetness of victory depends on the comprehension of escaping a bitter loss seems to correlate somewhat with schadenfreude: if the adversary cannot feel the pain of defeat or savor the taste of triumph, is the conquest itself nearly as glorious as it could be?

Drip… drip… drip…

Cranking the knobs, she discovers the problem won’t be so easily solved. Opening the underbelly, she purses her lips and crawls underneath; she knows little or less about plumbing and she isn’t interested in mucking anything up. However, she still looks, hoping for something that will pop out at her, be it a physical sign or an epiphany. Finding nothing, she traces the pipes with her fingers, hoping they might provide some direction. They offer nothing.

Drip… drip… drip…

Who wanted a kitchen on every floor, anyway? What’s the point to having a de-centralized cafeteria system? Sure, it takes a few minutes off of coffee-fetching time, but how many cups of coffee does the average person drink each day, anyway? And the food would be substantially better if it didn’t all come from a vending machine; requiring employees to go off-site to purchase a halfway decent lunch certainly had to cut into productivity. Maybe the owners of the building thought professionals all packed lunch from home. A silly assumption, but perhaps they don’t know better, or they think too highly of professionals generally to be realistic about their everyday decision making. Who knows.

Drip… drip… drip…

Sighing, she closes the cabinets and leaves the kitchenette, heading back to her desk. As she yanks out her chair, she plops into it, gliding back to her desk and drawing up an email to the office building maintenance. Careful of the wording, she ruminates on a phrase as she brings up an online radio station to stream classical music – or perhaps some jazz – to occupy the part of her brain fixated on the sounds and lack thereof of the office. As she sends off the email, she notices one hit her inbox from her supervisor with the subject line CALL ME ASAP – BEFORE 2PM. Glancing at the clock, she notices the lack of margin for error: it reads 13:52.

Drip… drip… drip…

Everything happens for a reason, right? The leaky faucet caused a bit of a commotion – departing from the cubicle to try to amend the issue then returning to request professional help – and resulted in catching an email on time that otherwise would not have been seen until too late. It’s curious the way such things sometimes work: perturbing us to action, that action resulting in an unrelated save on the day. And often we don’t even feel the gratitude that we should for such happenstances, instead just hurrying along as though nothing even happened. Minute quasi-miraculous interventions happen every day, yet we often miss these graces given to us. Perhaps we might open our eyes a little more every day to appreciate the simple gifts granted us.

Drip…

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Level Cleared

“Alpha team is clear! Bravo team, what’s your status?”

“… Clear.”

“Charlie team-“

“Clear.”

“Delta team.”

“Clear.”

“Echo -“

“Contact! Contact!”

“Move, move! You know the drill: one fireteam per squad stays vigilant in place, everyone else converge. Move!“

Rapid fire covers the sounds of footpatter, brass clattering to the ground.

“Sitrep!”

“Delta team leader took a hit.”

“Delta?”

“Fast to respond, slow to check the corner.”

“Delta team, get your leader to a medic; Charlie team, cover us. Echo team, what else?”

Sweat drips from their helmets as the Echo leader pulls his head up to look at her. “Else?”

She literally bites her tongue to prevent lashing out. “How many? What armament? Are we looking at well-trained guerillas or are we trading fire with our own soldiers who got lost on the way to the rendezvous?” He blinks hard, eyes falling as he grips his rifle more firmly. “Think and talk, Scolnar! Time is of the essence!”

He stutters audibly, wiping his face as he wriggles where he stands. “Uhhh…”

She grits her teeth, glancing at her watch. “Charlie team – clear the room!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Use cans! We know someone’s in there.”

Three of Charlie team yank tear gas cans from their belts; the last one slumps slightly and puts it back with a soft whine as the others send their cans flying. Condensed air sprays out as the canisters sail into the adjacent room, clunking on the floor as all the soldiers hold up against the outside walls.

“Bravo team, lead us in!”

“Yes, ma’am! On me!”

“Alpha team, back ’em up!”

“Roger!”

Clearing the door, they take the room. A youth stands near the far wall, ankles and wrists crossed; he yawns.

“Time!”

The lights flicker on.

He smirks. “I told you this level wouldn’t acquiesce so quickly, chica.”

She sighs. “Depends on your definition, gringo,” she scowls, “but according to the language of the task, we did win.”

“Balderdash.”

“‘Isolate and neutralize the threat.’ We had you down to the room, gassed the room, and all but had you in cuffs. You were dead to rights, sitting on your laurels at the window; doubly so given in a real life scenario a sniper would’ve taken you out.”

“You know the rules, chica.”

“Stop calling me that. And yes, I do know the rules, and unless you were hiding a suicide bomb, we won.”

“But you don’t know that I wasn’t, do you?”

“Actually,” she raises her eyebrows, “we do, because we did a scan before breaching the house; no dice. Also, no vest and no apparent trigger, so, yeah. Thanks for playin’, but either up your game or accept defeat.”

“Let’s let the judges decide.”

“Always. They have the script.”

Stripping off their gear, they remove the magazines, clear the blanks out of the chambers, and set the rifles down in the recently-reappeared container, meandering away to make room for others.

The speaker system blares on. “Sorry,” the older female voice echoes in the chamber, “we believe the foe intended to have a bomb challenge at the end, but it isn’t explicit in the script, and the terms for victory were technically met. Therefore, we render our decision thusly: the clearing company won the bout. Now,” she chirps more sternly, “off to dinner, all of you. You’ve been running simulations all day; at least pause for some nourishment, and preferably for some sleep as well.”

Gritting his teeth, he shakes his head to loosen his tension. Then he looks up, offering her his hand. “Well done.”

She grins weakly back. “Thanks,” she shakes his hand, “we have a great team.”

“Mmm,” he nods. Releasing their grips, they walk toward the exit together. “My team is still better.”

“Hah!” She laughs aloud, shaking her head. “Compare the datasets from our respective runs. We did better across the board.”

“Yes, while I was away.”

“Oh, balderdash. You’re good, but not spectacular. Your team was better without you,” she smiles playfully.

“We’ll show you up tomorrow, don’t you worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

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Focus on the Light

When’s the last time your wind was psychologically sucker-punched out of you? The last time you had a really rough day such that nothing was adding up and it seemed like you couldn’t see anything but the storms overhead? Maybe it felt like you couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of you, what you could see wasn’t promising, and taking even a single step forward felt like more energy than you had. Maybe you couldn’t see anything at all.

We all have bad days; it’s part of the human experience. They* say the peaks wouldn’t mean anything without the valleys. Still, knowing that doesn’t tend to make the valleys any easier to traverse; it may make them crossable, but not effortlessly so. Trials and tribulations eventually come to an end; there is always hope because there is always a slope to climb to get out of the gully. That’s what makes them gullies.

I don’t use the term “always” lightly: when taking a multiple-choice test, I automatically cross out answer options using the terms “always” or “never” because of how exceptionally unlikely an “always” or a “never” qualifier is to hold true. (The sky is not always blue; the grass is not always green; water isn’t even always wet!) Here, it holds: there is always hope. There is always a way forward.

They also say we write what we need to hear.

Today, I got a few doses of sucker-punches: two rejections regarding what I considered to be my two most likely paths forward. I was grateful for not being strung along – the responses were relatively quick – but it hurt. The first I spotted this morning as I was writing follow-up emails; as I was ruminating on wording, I flipped through my email categories, discovering it in a folder I normally ignore. I physically slid my chair away from my computer to catch my breath.

And then I pulled myself back in, grimaced a makeshift smile on my face, and clung to the silver lining. Pushing on, I finished the email I was working on before diving into another task, returning after a little alternative recovery. After sending yet another message, I paused for lunch; when I returned, just as I was feeling capable of handling the day, there was another rejection in my inbox. On top of a botched attempt to help last night and a few other things that seemed to hit me out of nowhere this morning plus a near occasion of sin while I was reeling from it all… Ouch.

My silver lining from the day is a four-letter word in the above paragraph: near. Also part of the human condition, we all have things we struggle with. I keep thinking I’ve escaped a vice only to find it lurking in the corner awaiting an opportunity. Somehow, today, I managed to say no of my own volition. It was weak, a pathetic whimper against the darkness closing in, but it held fast, like the tone of a clear bell through a dense fog. That whimper got me to sit up and take a deep breath. That whimper was just enough to remind me to look for the light.

I’m still looking for it, mind you; the weather is still overcast with the night closing in, but I know the light is there. It’s always there; there is always hope. Just because we lose sight of something doesn’t mean it no longer exists. (Peek-a-boo! Say hello to object permanence!) Knowing the light is always there makes all the difference because it means the reach, the attempt, the effort isn’t in vain.

So, here’s to hope. Here’s to finding that silver thread and hanging on to it until you pull the cloud out of the sky with it. Here’s to the dark nights that help us isolate the light. Here’s to perseverance when the slopes seem too steep to climb. Here’s to holding fast to the whimper of conviction in your soul. Here’s to knowing that the fight’s not over, that the best is yet to come, and that something beautiful will blossom from the struggle. Here’s to knowing that there is always a path forward.

Cheers!

*
The infamous “they” of common knowledge whom nobody seems able to pinpoint.