#21 a day at the office ...and then some.

Today I slept, and slept, and slept. Wish I wasn't lying. How do you sleep when they slam on the overheads at six am? Some can, like crazy "Bob", the maroon that got me my new jobski. "Bob" could snore his way through armageddon. I figure he will. When the evening is done and all is quiet, everyone is abed, tucked in and exhausted from the day, you can hear "Bob" , at decible 13,486, attempting to singlehandedly cave in the roof with the ungodly racket coming out of his sleeping mouth and nose. If you heard and saw it in a bad "I Love Lucy" rerun, you would watch, frustrated. Impatiently wishing that the show wasn't so over the top. That was "Bob".Every single bad episode of "I Love Lucy", all rolled up into one fat neurotic dork who snored like a house on fire. Kill me now.

In any case, this morning was the same as most other mornings. I rousted myself up, only I did meander instead of rush through the particulars. In any case, I was too groggy from yesterday's whirlwind trip to Shreveport, Clansville of the north, to be fully awake. I finally dragged my sorry rump through the door of headquarters at about 9:30. What decadence. Needless to say, Boss Daddy and the girls were all there waiting for me, paperwork at the ready, with big grins on their faces. I had promised them that today I would re-up. What was I thinking?

So far, my first ARC stint had been designed by the same guy that thought "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", was entertaining. Oh yeah...it was. Never mind. You get the idea. It was like living in the funhouse without the fun. Like looking in those crazy mirrors and having a laugh only to leave the mirror maze and find out that the way everything looked in those bent and twisted mirrors was how things really were. That was a good part of the reality of the ARC. The rest of the reality was all of the nice competent people who made up for the bulk of the midway. I guess I was signing back up for them.

I went through all of the rig-a-ma-roll to re-up. Go here, sign this, go there, sign that , answer this, no, that's wrong, answer that. Oh, we made a mistake, you have to start over again. Is that right? No, ask her, oh, ask him. Yes that is how you do it. No it is not, yes it is. Do you need more money? No? Why not? didn't you spend all of yours? No? Why not? Oh, well, ok, but if you need more, then let us know by tomorrow. Is there a supervisor who know how to do this? Yes, but she just signed on today, she won't know. Do you know? Yes, I told them I knew. This is how you do it, this is what I sign. These are the right papers, these are the wrong papers. They believed me. After multiple hours. I was in again for the next four days at least, if not longer. What next?

As you stick around Baton Rouge and the Red Cross, you began to get a feel as to those who fit in and those who didn't. There was a kind of uniform. Not that stupid smock with the big red cross on it. Those were for the hicks and the newbies, those who wanted to be a visible part of the club, for whom this was summer camp and a chance to trade collectable pins. Not for us, we were the cool kids. Our kind of uniform that developed out of practice and convenience. For example. No one in our department wore that idiot smock. It fit noone, got in the way, and in any case, if you were running around the inside of the building with a Red Cross badge around your neck, bearing your picture, someone would figure out eventually, that you were actually with the American Red Cross. Good grief!

Our cell phones were these little jobs that got lost easily. Several of us figured out, that if you folded the thing over the cord holding your ARC badge, it was readily available. A necessity, as someone or another called you every 2 and 1/2 minutes on the average. Easier, than running around looking for you in the cavernous old WalMart where we were stationed. We wore comfy clothes and sports shoes. Unlike my real self, here, I wore makeup and perfume every single dang day. Can't really tell you why. I just felt it was more corporate or some semblance of what I thought corporate looked like on TV. In any case, Mascara and Moschino were derigeur as far as I was concerned. So there we were, mostly women, mostly made up and scented, trotting around in hip hop clothes with little phones swinging from cords around our necks, carrying clipboards and writing while walking most of the time, while talking on our flip phones. We looked like a really lame, ugly cult.

About mid day, I got a call from "Dora" up in Shreveport. You remember, the ultra Christian woman from Kentucky who's son in the airforce had married that nice jewish girl? She had an awful story. Turns out that the night I stayed there, she had left her wallet on the bedside table. "Dora" had apparently forgotten it was there when we left the next morning. When she returned to the room later, "Dora", discovered that the wallet had been stolen. Lock stock and barrel. Damn damn damn!!! Ok, she didn't say that, but she was really upset about it. I didn't blame her. If it was my wallet, I would have been upset about it too. She asked me if I had seen it at all? I told her that by the time I crawled into bed, the lights were out, and I didn't notice a thing. Not even the next morning as I was packing to go.

She pushed me to remember something. Anything. "Didn't I see it at any time?"" No, I wish I had." "Well," she said, "the police will be calling you ." She had filed a report, and there was an investigation in progress. "It was going to be really serious." "DIdn't I remember anything? The police would call and they would be questioning me in depth."I thought that was silly, as I had just told her that I hadn't ever seen the wallet, but I didn'[t say anything. Instead I sadi, "No, I remembered nothing at all about her wallet. Never even saw it" We continued to speak as I walked across the building. I was incensed that this nice woman had been robbed. I told her that, "she should be able to leave her damn wallet out in plain view with cash hanging out of it, and all anyone ought to think about it, is where to return it to." She agreed wholeheartedly. She said that "she only wished that →whomever← had stolen it had taken only the money, and had left her identification and the rest of the contents." The poor thing. I felt so sorry for her.

I got back to my desk and told Boss about "Dora's" wallet. everyone in the department listened raptly. They exchanged glances that I didn't pay much attention to at the time. As I walked back across the building to make some copies, I was thinking, "hmm...now, I bet I could get copies of her identification for her, as we had those here in headquarters. Yeah, that's what I would do!" Midway across, I came to a screeching halt and clapped my hand across my mouth. If I could have writhed on the floor on my back, kicking my heels, pounding my fists on the ground, screaming at the top of my lungs, while throwing my head from side to side, at that moment, I would have. Son of a bitch!!!! "Dora" thought that "the Jew" stole her wallet!!!!!!!!! That was me, "the Jew" !!!!!

She actually believed, and had evidently told others that I had stolen her wallet as she slept. That was what the call was all about, and I had missed it. Here was a woman, that had spoken at length about her Christianity and her belief in God, yet there it was. "The Jew stole her wallet". I realized, that no amount of fact would ever convince this woman otherwise. She would go to her grave thinking this was reality. There was little I could do.

I ran back to Boss and blurted it out. He and everyone else had already gotten there on their own. Beat me to the punch in fact. They were madder than I was if that was possible. Really, though, I wasn't mad at all. Just disheartened. "Dora" and I had talked into the night. I believed naively, that I had made an impression upon her that "Jews" were just like her. We lived the same lives, dreamed the same dreams, raised our children with the same love and worry, shared the same God. I was a fool. I had to laugh at myself for it.

Even funnier, was the fact that my father was a Jew. I am technically not. That would have required a conversion that I had not had, but this was the south, and ergo I was a jew. I had never been so Jewish in all of my life. I waited for the police to call. Of course they never did. I was able to confirm later that yes, "Dora", believed to the bottom of her heart," that Jew ", had stolen her wallet, even though others told her that they had been robbed by the staff at this particular hotel. Later, the whole crew moved to another hotel because of the thievery, but "Dora" still held on to her beliefs.

Weeks later, Boss still wanted to call her up and have a serious talk about it. I told him not to bother. Even though I didn't tell him, he knew that it broke my heart.