Be Polite and Avert Your Eyes

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” -A Girl I Knew

The sound of rough boxes sliding over smooth floors, air so heavy it could compete in an  amateur MMA match. Shirt clinging to your back as if it fears that you may escape. The anxiety humming in the air akin to the fervor expressed by a crowd of Pentacostles harassing a Timber Rattler to become closer to their God. We were easing out the back door before anyone thought to knock on the front, heads down, eyes averted, apologies on our lips. Fleeing the guillotine before the blade fell,  leaving the school before the last bell.

I have learned more about people by the things that they do not say rather than the things they do. A married man hesitant to speak about his wife, a CEO taking a left and hoping that you, the housekeeping staff, are taking a right. A small smile and a kind gesture given freely with no explanation or expectation. We contain multitudes and swing madly in between who we are and who we want to be. In relationships, friendships, and the workplace there will always be one who is the planet and one who is the moon and the lines tend to blur regarding who is who.

The world is still spinning and the pandemic is still winning. I am in training for a new job, in a new town, with a new company. My trainer thinks that the pandemic is a hoax, the left are controlling the currency, and that talking about politics with strangers is a good idea. I slowly started scrolling through job postings, the deeper he went into his conspiracy theories, the more creative my resumé’s became. I was not built to smile and nod, sometimes my facial expressions speak louder than my mouth. My only saving grace is the fact that my face mask hides my distaste and muffles my quiet screams.

You can find me currently somewhere on a map nestled between point A and point B. We left our jobs in the Florida Keys the day before most of the staff was laid off due to Covid-19. Jesse and I returned to our small house on our quiet street somewhere amidst victory and defeat. It is widely known and universally accepted that if you find yourself in the middle of a pandemic, knee deep in economic uncertainty, it is an unwise idea to leave a job and attempt to find a new one. On the other hand due to that fact, the job market was not flush with strong competition and we were both able to sign contracts shortly after returning home.

So here we are again standing precariously on the edge of a future we cannot fathom. We have all stumbled into a new world defined by fear and hate and no one is quite sure how to cope. Do we carry on and take our blows, do we accept defeat and lock our doors, or do we pick up the pieces and use this as a wake up call that our world is in drastic need of swift and sudden change? I do not have the answer but I am hoping I will find it somewhere at the bottom of this bottle of cheap red wine. It will sparkle and motivate and right all the wrongs that were made, it will be clever and precise and taste well over ice.