Impending Death, ENTERs, and Egg Nog

Dear Reader,

This morning there was an old, familiar face wandering around the manufactory. It was a guy who used to head up a department that works in league with mine. The stuff that my department does relies on his department doing its job right. As a consequence of his department’s general ineptness, this guy and me were often at odds with each other.

He got terminally ill about six months ago, and had to leave work to suffer through putting-off-the-inevitable treatment.

He wasn’t wearing his lanyard when i saw him today, standing there on his own, older and greyer and more haggard than i remembered, so i knew that he was just dropping by, and not rejoining the fray.

Death

He greeted me warmly, with a handshake that squeezed my knuckles out of alignment with a pop. He smiled at me out of his medication-plump face, and he kept on smiling, but as we spoke together, his eyes started to water.

He said that he wasn’t coming back. Work was too much for him [now that he was sick].

I sort of congratulated him on being able to take early retirement like that. Cos what else do you say?

He told me his life plans: go home; use up his sick leave; take his long service leave after that; resign.

Except they weren’t life plans; they were death plans. He’ll be dead long before he gets a chance to resign.

I thought, standing there with him in front of me, of him already dead. Marvelled at how his corpse had so effortlessly crushed my hand. Wondered how long before i could wash that crushed hand (that’s my OCD).

I realised that i was why work was too much for him. Me, and my asking him to make sure his department delivered.

I figured that he had probably seen my face in his night-terrors of returning to work. Had worried about me beating him down in my usual, cruel way, even as he lay there in his hospital bed, betubed.

He said goodbye, and i was half turned away from him and thinking that i would never see him alive again, and wondering how that made me feel, when he suddenly began to really beam, leaned toward me like he was going to land a punch, and slapped me on the shoulder a few times. He didn’t say anything, just slapped me. Then he walked away.

To die.

I never wanted to be a dying man’s bête noir; it just worked out that way.

So what sort of a prick am i?

ENTERs

Amelia dropped by this arvo (while Sybylla and me were at work) to catch up with Princess.

The VCE results have come out, and while she got a good enough score to go off and be a Forensic Missionary, or whatever, Trainboy only just scraped in a single point over last year’s Clearly In for his course. If three more ppl apply for it than did last year, he’ll have to go to UTas to get into a course.

But Amelia is safely in (unless something drastic happens and thousands of ppl apply to be Forensic Missionaries), and she is already looking forward to Uni life. She has promised Princess that the two of them will go out beret and scarf shopping, after the excessmas rush has passed, and the post-excessmas rush has started.

She says she’s thinking of buying a scooter. Not a Razer, but a Vespa, or something like that.

Ooh-la-la. The Beat goes on.

Egg nog

Sybylla invited a few ppl around last night to enjoy marvelling at her tree.

She insists on calling it *her* tree, and on taking full credit for everything to do with the tree. If anyone comes into the house, she makes sure that they hear the story of how she carried the tree home. She pointedly leaves me out of this legend altogether, or makes me a figure of comic relief.

« What about when ppl come over, » i challenged her, « and you’re not here? Huh? Aren’t you worried about what i tell them about the Legend of the Yule Tree then? »

« I’ve recorded a podcast, » she said, without looking up from what she was doing (cutting things with a huge pair of scissors). « I’ve put the URL on all my cards. Web two oh will ensure that the truth of the legend will be heard. »

The ppl arrived and we were sparkling, as usual, the three of us. Sybylla had made egg nog with way too much brandy in it, and everyone was shitfaced before the removes had even been taken from the table.

Everyone except me, that is. I like to keep a clear head when company’s over. In case someone gashes an artery and has to be driven to Casualty.

We heard once again the Legend of the Yule Tree (this time, i wasn’t in the story until the very end, when i petulantly asked for my overshirt back, Sybylla having used it to lash the tree to her back, carrying it home single-handed while i looked on, limp and useless).

One of Sybylla’s guests was a male. I thought that he was the bf of the blonde he’d arrived with, but, after dinner, when we all filed into the living room to sit and admire the dead tree, he sat next to Sybylla and put his arm around her shoulder pretty much straight away.

Despite everyone being still quite giddy from the brandy milkshakes that the evening had started with, Princess offered around festive UDLs, in true bogan tradition. As the empties piled up, the young man with his arm around Sybylla took more and more liberties with her personal space.

Someone suggested we watch a movie, so i set one running from the TV robot. The blonde turned the lights off, and, in the dark, as The Blues Brothers flickered through its big production numbers and car chases, i couldn’t help but notice that the boy sitting next to Sybylla had started drunkenly pashing her, and mashing her boob with the hand that wasn’t holding one of my UDLs.

I left in disgust to catch up with my Imaginary Friends on the Intertubes.

The movie ended and they were all too drunk to drive home, so they left their car and – even though i offered to drive them – took a taxi, the three of them.

It was the boy’s car they left behind. An Astra.

Astraboy came back today, while Sybylla and me were at our works and Princess was here alone. He knocked up the door and asked if Sybylla was home. Princess said she wasn’t, and he kicked the security door in a fit of pique.

Princess says he stomped to his car and took off in a squeal of angry rubber.

I doubt that, from an Astra. A squeak, maybe, but not a squeal.

Sybylla’s working late, so i don’t know yet what she has to say about Astraboy in confidence.

He seems to me to be a bit of a charmer. The girls all like young men who give them drunken pash/gropes and do burnouts in the street outside their house.

Needless to say, i’m rushing off to join FaceSpace so i can make him my number one friend.

Yours,
Gullybogan