The Transporter Couch

“Lunch truck is here” used to be the only thing heard on the Page All at where I worked in the mid-80s. I worked alone on a weird sort of evening/night/overnight shift for several months. Once, in a fit of sleep-deprived hysteria at around midnight, I got on the PA and said “Lunch truck is here” with kind of a sinister laugh. I heard two distinct set of footsteps run down the dark hallway and out of the building with the sounds of “ohshitohshitohshit”.

I later heard two programmers were on deadline when they became convinced that a maniac was in the building.

In a company I worked for, it was a common and open practice that if you didn’t want to deal with something, you found out who was on vacation, put a routing slip on a memo, and ask for the vacationer’s opinion. People actually advised me to do this.

I came back from three weeks vacation once, and there wasn’t a horizontal surface in my cube that didn’t have a folder or book with a routing slip on it. I got a couple of boxes, filled them up, and routed them to my supervisor (who was on a long weekend), asking him to prioritize the tasks.

When I was first planning to work on this site with Brian, I was on a walk. I haven’t found any playing cards in months. There was a time in my life when I would find at least one a week, and sometimes several in a day. This walk revealed two cards.

The first, the Five of Diamonds was face up on a patch of grass next to the road. The ace of clubs was face up in the gutter several blocks away. One end of it was frozen in the mud and didn’t make it out.

I don’t believe that the odd things I find mean much, but they get me thinking. I’m still thinking about this one. It’s too simple to divide the two cards into the two contributors here. I’m trying to find another meaning.