Please Accept this Individually Packaged Coffee Creamer as a Token of my Esteem

I don’t want to get bogged down in the facts – as one does – but I’ve been working for a little more than 100 years now.

What?  Sure I’m including the door-to-door selling of greetings cards in second grade.

I’m also including the clarinet-polka stylings of my misbegotten teenage years.

As my father once confided to me over a can of Pabst (his, not mine), “You work and you work and then you die.  Are you writing this down?”

I was not - I was six, after all - but I recall the words as if spoken yesterday; and I relay this to you now:  HELP ME.

Not big help.  Not pay-my-bills help.  A joke, maybe.  A Netflix recommendation.  Because if there’s one thing I think we could all use, every now and then, is a distraction.

My new boss has been wonderfully distracting. 

We are in our honeymoon period, and I'm thinking of buying her flowers.

“Can I just tell you that I feel we could be friends outside of work?”

I grin at her.  “And can I just tell you that I feel that we are friends, inside of work?”

She smiles.  Rochelle is attractive and slim, a quick-witted chick.  She stands.  "I know this is our touchbase, but can I leave you here while I run to the bathroom?  Sorry."

"Of course," I say.

She leaves.  I rifle through her drawers, take out a credit card in her name, and send her husband a picture of my feet.

"Sorry about that," she says.  "I have no bladder."

"Really?" I say.  "None at all?"

She sits down at her desk, frowns at her phone and puts it back in her purse.  "Not really,"  she says.  "I am just the peeing-ist person you'll ever meet."

"We should do a Happy Hour," I say.

"In the bathroom," she beams.

We laugh; and for a moment, we're both distracted.