untoward happenstance

Today wasn't necessarily a bad day at work, mind you. I performed my duties most efficaciously, by my own modest estimation. I discharged my office as obituary-man most diligently all day, and it was a busy day. I hate to cast a pall over Labor Day, but a lot of people seem to have died over the weekend. Or rather, their relatives picked this Tuesday to come in and deliver their hand-written obituaries to me. This included one woman, whom I'll call Anna, who was crying. Now, how do you go about asking somebody for their payment information when they're still grieving over the death of the person whom the obituary is for? I ask you, how? It wasn't easy, I'll tell you that. I felt the most insensitive brute. But I kept my voice low and sympathetic, made eye contact, kept my movements slow and docile and respectful, and discharged my office. The young man in question had died at age 28 of something that wasn't written on the obituary form. Something sudden, judging from Anna's behavior. Her eyes were wet and her voice cracked and wavered as she handed me the obituary. There was a photograph and a ten-dollar bill attached to it with a paper clip. I handed her back the ten and told her (somehow) that we'd calculate her total after I'd finished typing up the obituary, on par with our employer's new policy of reproducing people's submitted obituaries in exact facsimile. Apparently there was a nasty incident with one man some months ago, during which he screamed and burst into tears over the phone just because the paper hadn't printed his obituary precisely the way he'd written it...that is to say, rife with spelling and grammatical errors. So there I was, feeling like the farthest person in the world from Anna's grief, stringently clean-cut and in a spotless white button-down shirt, putting the word out about her nephew's untimely death. As I walked back into the recesses of the newsroom, I glanced over my shoulder. Anna's head had slumped down onto her arms, which were themselves resting upon her knees. Emotions warred within me: the officious, callous working man who told me to avert my eyes and hurry up with that obituary; and the sentimental softy who insisted I could've done a better job comforting the poor woman. No clear rapprochement had been reached by the time I reached my desk and began to type. And so it went, all morning and into the afternoon, a ceaseless pile of obituaries and free death notices (which, as the name suggests, cost nothing...but are clinically distant and brief). No sooner would I start in on one than the receptionist's voice would come on the horn summoning me up to the lobby yet again. Not that I'm one to complain, mind you. It kept me busy. The morning flew by. Neither would I complain about people's spelling. After some of the heartrendingly sincere sentiments I've seen expressed in some of these obituaries, pockmarked as they are by childish spelling and punctuation errors, I've sworn off criticizing anyone for their lack of proper education. Still, the rush-rush-go-go feeling I've mentioned does not sit well with me. I was mentally drained (and therefore physically) by lunchtime. To compound matters, the editor-in-chief gave me a new challenge: not only to write up some news stories, but to come up with the topics and angles myself. Now, this is the real deal. It's the task of the true reporter: not only to accept assignments but to set them for himself as well, to generate news rather than synthesize it. Once again, I say that I am not complaining. However, I angered myself by not being able to come up with a single thing. I had a pretty good idea for a story about the rising welfare population in San Bernardino County (spawned by a previous story I've been working on about anchor babies), but that was dampened by the fact that the most recent reports weren't fully finalized yet. That idea had to go on the back burner. The only other notion I had was a feature story about cheap, fun things to do around the Victor Valley that people my age would enjoy (and that haven't been written about a million times already). I got some good inspiration. The editor wants a bulletized list of my activity ideas on his desk tomorrow, so I'll work on that. In the meantime, however, I generated not a single tangible article for tomorrow's paper. True, I didn't start actually working on this until about 3:30 p.m., what with the enormous load of obituaries I had (which even the obituaries editor commented on), but still...I've been here nearly three weeks. It's time to get with it. I've vowed not to disappoint the editor-in-chief, and I mean not to. Lunch, on the other hand, was excellent: leftover stir-fry with some golden raisins and a pear on the side. Halfway through it, Doris, an elderly lady who works in the features section (the B pages, doing paginating and some photography) came in and sat down at my table. She's an interesting lady, she is. Somewhat pessimistic and curmudgeonly, but in an entertaining and lighthearted way. You get the sense that underneath her downer exterior there's a jocular sort of person just sitting back and giggling at the lunacy of this world. There's some bitterness, of course; during our conversation I got the sense that she missed her looks ("I used to be a femme fatale; now I'm just fatale."). Previously she'd also spoken to me about how she used to be a more prolific photographer before she hurt her back and couldn't shoot so well anymore. But for all that, she is still an honest person with a great deal of pithy things to say. She's easily one of the most quotable people I've ever met. Some of it's intentional. She told me a quote that she proudly said she had made up herself: "Secrecy is the enemy of truth." Stop and think about that for a moment. There's a great deal of depth there. That sounds almost like it could be a Zen koan or a Confucianism, to me anyway. At one point, we were discussing career experience, and Doris held up one employee as an example (who was sitting only ten feet away at another table in the break room). This, of course, led to a discussion about discreetness. "I can't even open my mouth without putting my foot in it," I said, to make her feel better. "I've just gotten used to the taste," she replied, and I realized I didn't need to. Shortly after 5:30 p.m. I walked outside to my Jeep. It was at this point that I remembered that, eight hours earlier, one of the fellows who works back in the printing section of the building had informed me that I'd left my headlights on. Somehow I'd forgotten that salient fact. Upon reaching my car, I remembered. I now knew that it would do no good trying to start the car; it was as dead as a lump of iron. This had happened to me once before, you see. Drove to work at 8:00 in the morning with my lights on for safety purposes, and left 'em on in the parking lot. Killed the battery. I had to enlist Patrick Thatcher, another reporter, for help. Thankfully, this time (after a quick call to my mother, and then a frantic cancellation of her services just before she pulled out of the driveway 40 minutes away) I found someone else to help me. Joyce, a nice lady who works in the...in the...she told me where she worked but it's slipped my mind. She pulled her SUV up beside mine, I connected up the jumper cables (for the first time by myself) and fired up the Jeep. While disconnecting I accidentally touched the red and black clamps together; but thankfully nothing came of it but a few sparks. Satisfied with myself (but a bit irked at the delay), I headed out, got some money out of an ATM at Food4Less, purchased $40 of gas, and returned home to martinis, tortilla chips, salsa, and homemade personal pan pizzas. Not a bad day...just hectic, with a fair bit of untoward happenstance in it. Now I must simply figure out what in heaven's name I can do an article on tomorrow.