My stuntman days are numbered.

This sterile environment sure makes it easy to feel sick. It doesn’t feel clean to me. The old man was sitting in my station when I got here, and it smelled of sweaty underwear, so I rudely began spraying hospital grade disinfectant under the desk and he tried to start spraying the de-greaser they have provided to wipe down our work stations with. The trouble with that stuff is that it isn’t a disinfectant. It’s an industrial strength compound that isn’t safe to get on your skin, and more than once I have gotten it in my eyes. I guess most people don’t read into what they are doing as much as I do. Maybe I expect too much from them. If competence is too much then I am guilty of having high expectations.

There is a tremendous amount of white noise in here. At least there was until I got up off my butt and shut the door behind me. I didn’t open the door, the door is actually located behind where I sit inside a circular desk type thing in the middle of the foyer of this building. I am in this spot first a couple of times a week. I’ll move a few more times today. I don’t mind being still, but I prefer to move around. There is a daycare during the week and the business/administration offices are upstairs. It’s too early for this kind of noise, and I feel that aside from the general irritation and headache that it causes, it also makes it hard for me to do my job. It’s hard to listen to people when you cannot hear.

The only explanation that I can come up with, the only justification for what I consider to be intolerable behavior(the everyday incompetence of most) is something that I have termed goldfish memory.There are two, very large fish tanks on either side of the lobby here, and from where I sit I can see one if I ever look beyond the computer monitor in front of my face. There are about seven different kinds of fish contained and living in these tanks. And there might be about the same number of types of folks wandering around in this building(container) on any given day of the week. They call them personality types. Anyway, according to modern mythology, fish forget what they did almost as soon as they do it. Now scientists are saying that their memories may last longer. My memory is great. I don’t forget much. I eat fish. It serves me well. I get paid to observe and report. It’s my job. And, from what I have observed in this place, the majority of people act like big bulbous goldfish. They walk into buildings one behind the other bumping into the walls blindly accepting everything as safe, sound, and sanitary. It makes me sad and mad.

People are dangerous. They put themselves and the world around them in harm’s way. And so I work and toil, and I do a good job. I get paid peanuts and health benefits to sit and wait for somebody to have an accident. To me, this is ridiculous. I am not so smart. But, I try to avoid injury, and I hurt people’s feelings. I am ridiculous. And so it goes, and I can’t help it, but this is what I see right now. There’s no cause for alarm… just doing my job.

Tags: art, belief, creative nonfiction, emotional sobriety, inner peace, meditation, memoir, observation, quietude, sanity, storytelling, survival, wellness, work, writing