When my daughter was three, and in a philosophical mood, she told me, “Some things happen and other things don’t happen.”
“Um, yeah,” I said. “That’s true.”
Some things happen and they seem like very odd coincidences. For instance, I was working at Harlequin Enterprises (yes, that Harlequin) on the night shift. I’m too tired and ashamed to type out the details of my job there, but one odd story stands out in my mind.
A woman who also worked on the night shift recounted her previous journalism experience. Uncaring, egomaniacal jerks surrounded her. That was my experience, too. In fact, I was one of them. Monica, the fellow employee of the Dark Empire, told how she was working on a story at a newspaper close to deadline when a nosebleed came over her. She bled copiously. I sat up a little straighter, remembering that the same thing had happened to me. I wondered if newsrooms in daily newspapers above the 49th parallel all have such uncommonly dry air that this might be a common experience.
Then she told me about how an editor came over to her work station and handed her a piece of paper. Something to be rewritten or a press release to follow-up or some such thing. She couldn’t remember. The grating thing about the incident was that he did not acknowledge her hemorrhaging in the least. Reporters are a dime a dozen apparently and if you bleed to death at your desk, you can quickly be replaced. I sat so straight at attention my bum felt light in the chair. The exact scenario had happened to me…to the letter.
Odd. Small world. Maybe it’s The Matrix Phenomenon: so many stories overlap because there are so few stories because it’s all fake. We’re just coppertops feeding the machines. Maybe. I’m just still egomaniacal enough to consider that possibility seriously.
In other news, I’m going to try pronouncing the “b” in the word doubt for a week and see if anyone notices. I wonder how often it will come up.
Filed under: What about Chazz?
C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m 