Word of the Day: Irresponsible

Thurman took just one more second to pay his final respects to the gold fish now bobbing in the toilet.  He truly regretted naming it.  With a roar, Daniel Goldstein was flushed into the sewer system, then several days later spat into a nearby lake.

What a stupid carnival gift.  Thurman knew it was a cheap way to make people think they had actually won something, but considering how many times he paid for chances to win the damn thing, it wasn’t even that cheap.  He probably would’ve stopped trying if he hadn’t been so damn drunk, and though it goes without saying, if he hadn’t been drinking, he also wouldn’t have had to try so many damn times to win the stupid fish in the first place.

It was a coincidence that the arresting officer that night happened to have “Gold” in his name.  Thurman tried furiously to explain to Lieutenant Goldstein that his pet wouldn’t make it through the night if he was hauled off to jail without proper fish accommodations, but of course, Thurman’s rants fell on deaf ears.  To Lt. Goldstein, Thurman’s was just another rambling voice smothered in the din of all the other testimonies spewing from all the other idiots who’d swerved their way home from the county fair.

The cops could have taken Daniel Goldstein out his bag and put him in a bowl while Thurman slept off his buzz in the drunk tank.  That’s the least they could have done.  Instead, like a cruel joke, they handed back a dead Daniel Goldstein with the same bureaucratic airs shrouding the return of Thurman’s lighter, wallet, phone, iPod, and diary.

Now Thurman was without pet, without money, and for the next 18 months, without driver’s license.  As Daniel Goldstein circled the bowl, Thurman started to cry.  Not to mourn his dead fish, but because he felt ashamed at what he’d done, and for the first time in his life, someone other than his parents, the local police, had been the ones to reprimand him.

Then his best friend Barry called, ecstatic with the news that Lynyrd Skynyrd was coming to town.

Word of the Day: Advisor

“Hmmm.  Hmmm.  Yes.  Yes, I see.  Very strong.  Yes.  Yes.  Very, very interesting.”

Not sure if these were cues to begin the conversation, she just sat nodding and smiling.

“And I see you also volunteer your time at the animal shelter.”

“That’s right.  Once when I was little I witnessed a dog being-”

“And you’ve also got musical talents, I see.”

“Yes, last Spring I was named to the Southern Illinois all-regional-”

“But tell me, do you aspire towards excellence?”

“Well, of course I do.  I never once-”

“Because if I’m going to see to it your application be accepted, I want to make damn sure you won’t let me down!”

“I don’t mean to sound pushy, sir, but I think my-”

“Let me tell you a story.  A story about a boy who was once your age.  He sat right where you’re sitting now and he promised me, promised me, dear, that I could forward his application with utmost confidence in his abilities.  And do you know what happened?”

“No, sir.  I can’t imagine-”

“He’s now the president of the Chicago Board of Trade.  Can you imagine!?  The Chicago Board of Trade!”

“That’s terrific, sir, I’ll bet you’re awful-”

“That’s right.  And he owes it all to me.  Do you know when I last heard from him?”

“I assume you-”

“Yesterday.  Just yesterday!  Isn’t that remarkable?”

“Truly inspiring, sir.  I just hope-”

“He calls me as if I were his own father.  And why does he do this?”

“Certainly it’s because-”

“Because without my divine intervention, he’d be half the man he is today.  And he knows it!”

“You are undoubtedly-”

“Now, how can I be sure that you will be the same success as that boy so many years ago?”

“Sir, all I ask is for a chance.”

“Fine then, I’ll inform you of my decision next week.”

Word of the Day: Sector

“Look, I’m sorry, but there’s just …it’s getting harder and harder to justify your research, okay?”

“So that’s it?”

“Come on, don’t make me out to be the bad guy.  You know I’m on your side.”

—–

“When we brought you in, things were different.  Industry standards have changed, and we’re just not sure your data is commercially viable.”

“Commercially viable?  Commercially viable!?”

“Please, calm down.”

“You calm down!”

“Dave, please.  You’re acting like a child.”

“HA!  Show me a child making breakthroughs in reptilian metaphysics!  Come on!  I’d like to see a kid wrap his head around that!”

“Dave.”

“This was Randal’s decision, wasn’t it?”

—-

“Wasn’t it!?”

“He’s the president of the board, Dave.  Of course it was.”

“That guy’s been out to get me ever since he hired me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It’s true!  It’s all true.  He never liked me.  He never respected my work.  He thinks I’m a hack, thinks I’m wasting precious endowment money on crackpot pseudo-science.”

“I mean, you are studying reptilian metaphysics…”

“So now you’re on his side?”

“Look, Dave.  You’re making this harder than it has to be.  Let’s not pretend you didn’t know what you were getting into when we brought you on.”

“You mean getting stabbed in the back?”

“You have until Friday to vacate your office.  Isn’t that enough?”

“I thought you were my friend.”

“It’s just business, Dave, you know this.”

“Yeah, business as usual.  Business as usual.”

Word of the Day: Behalf

In the days prior to the ceremony he had coached himself how not to cry.

Watching broadcasts of the Academy Awards was always an emotional experience for him, even though over the course of his own life he’d never once had to deal with the kind of emotional polarity he imagined an award recipient must bounce between.

He figured  it was a very cathartic process, that in the moments just after hearing one’s name called, all the creative turmoil, the childhood wonderment coming to fruition, the friends, the enemies, the good times, the bad, all these things would be flooding into an Oscar recipient’s consciousness, and that triumphant walk from their seat to the podium was a chance to relive the culmination of the seconds, weeks, and years that led to this moment of unspeakable glory.

And then, with trophy in hand, gazing out at the hundreds upon hundreds of talented, famous, and beautiful attendees, knowing that around the world millions more had tuned in to witness this day, the day when you were universally honored and acknowledged for your work, for what you had done better than all the others nominated or even those mired in the trenches of the unknown, at that specific moment, the rush, especially for a first-timer, could only result in tears.

So, on the day they dedicated a new garden in memory of his father’s service, when he stood before dozens of members at Wayside Presbyterian, most of whom he considered part of his own family, and all of them grateful for the years of ministry his father had given the church, he knew that at any moment he’d start to well up.

But he didn’t.  He took just a second to reflect on everything his father meant to him and to all the people there, he smiled back at everyone, led them in a short prayer, just as his father would have, and ended by simply saying, “thank you.”

Word of the Day: Spur

Usually just raising her voice would suffice.  He was a good son, and almost always did as she said.  But, he was a child, and children get scared.  And sometimes their fear becomes anger.  Heck, sometimes their anger is the thing they’re afraid of in the first place.

They’re emotional wrecks, children.  They want so dearly to be just like the people around them, but they have no idea why.

He’d never had to deal with bullies before.  Like his father, he was tall and broad.  His physicality alone was enough to keep the couched cruelty of his fifth grade classmates at bay.

Then he reached the middle-school, and the torment began.

Before then he wasn’t held to those standards-of-cool enforced by teenagers bigger and cooler than him.  His plastic lunchbox was never an issue.  Nobody ever used the word “gay” to describe his clarinet  or his embroidered Phantom of the Opera sweatshirt from the family trip to Toronto.  Girls had always been, well, girls.  Never mean, never caustic and certainly never violent.

Confusion set in.  Deep in his gut, his anger, his fear, and–not least of all–his puberty clashed into each other, creating a silent Hellstorm in his bedroom, the place where he’d sit in solitude every night after dinner, wrestling the anguish of being eleven and some how different from everyone else.

His father had spent the last week at a conference in Tempe.  Now that his youngest sister had started school, his mother had gone back to her old job working as an accountant for a local manufacturing company.

It was a simple request: watch your sister while I go to the store.

His resistance was entirely unprecedented, his screaming, crying, and limb-flailing unlike anything his mother had ever seen from him.

The commotion frightened his younger sisters, and their mother soon had an entire throng of crying children on her hands.

Exhausted and without her husband, his desperate mother grabbed his shoulders and lay one full-palm slap across his face.

Each of the crying children went still.

Silently, they got their coats, followed their mother to the car, and went with her to the store.

Word of the Day: Specific

His employees resented his penchant for specificity.  Behind his back they called him things like “a condescending prick,” but since he so often demonstrated his arrogance through passive aggression–or at least what was perceived as passive aggression by those particularly irked by his specificity–nobody could really point to a clear instance when he had knowingly and overtly insulted the intelligence of one of his workers.

Instead, long, explicit emails and voluminous office memos (never less than three pages) were met with silent, begrudging scorn.  As he was also keen on random face-to-face recaps, and personal assurance that his intentions were both received and understood, his messages, no matter how long, never went unread.

To his employees he was a blowhard, an overbearing, micromanaging pain in the ass.

His superiors also disliked him, and they had absolutely no intent of ever promoting him, in spite of his exemplary work.  At last year’s Holiday party he cornered the company CEO and spent upwards of 15 minutes explaining how during his pre-dinner toast, the CEO’s use of the phrase “self-fulfilling prophecy” was erroneous without proper consideration for the “positive feedback” component.

He never met his real parents.  His mother gave him up for adoption just hours after he was born and he grew-up with an elderly couple from rural Missouri.  Their closest neighbor lived almost four miles away, and their house was situated between two different school districts, not officially within the borders of either one.

At an early age he learned to do magic tricks and he performed them for small crowds at churches and union halls.  He stopped doing magic in college after a drunken audience member at one of his campus shows called him a fag.

Nowadays, due in large part to his commitment to thorough correspondence, he has little room in his daily schedule for anything other than work.  He routinely clocks 70-80 hour weeks (always over the course of seven days), and the receptionist swears that she’ll occasionally find him sleeping at his desk in the morning, still wearing his clothes from the day before.