Tell Me Again Why We Thought This Was A Good Idea…

First off, Happy Memorial Day to everybody. Secondly, unless I can say second off, this will probably be my last blog post. There’s also a very good chance that today will be my last day on this nice little planet. Why you ask? Well, I fully expect to be killed fairly early tomorrow morning. I’m no fortuneteller, but I can say that the time of my death will be approximately 8:34 AM.

See, that’s usually around the time that Female Coworker arrives at work and gets situated in her office. When she does that tomorrow, she will notice the ‘truly good natured prank that went awry’ that Mr. Coworker and I played on her in her absence Friday afternoon. The later it got at work Friday, the more bored we got. It became so bad that when Mr. Coworker approached me and asked if I wanted to play a prank on Female Coworker, I was in the middle of licking stamps to see if I could detect even the slightest of flavor differences among the various priced pieces of postage. Naturally, I said sure. It was at that exact moment that the great king of symbolic imagery hammered the last nail into my symbolic coffin.

Mr. Coworker’s prank idea was innocent enough. We were just going to turn a wall map and a calendar on her padded cubicle walls upside down. Surely the price for that would have been a broken arm or busted nose at the hands of Female Coworker. We knew those risks and were willing to accept them. Being the chronic overachievers that we are (well, not at work), we kept going. I say we, but the idea was mine. Basically every inch of Female Coworker’s walls have something on them and now every one of those items is upside down. Again, if we had stopped there, the penalty would have been the loss of an eye or a blow to the head with a blunt instrument. However, caught up in the excitement, I again insisted we keep going. We turned all of the family pictures on her desk upside down, her phone upside down, all of her desk supplies, her trash can and her in and out boxes (which didn’t make our secretaries too thrilled) upside down. It really was the master prank, but then that’s the risk you take when you are bold enough not to be in the office for the Friday of a three-day weekend.

It’s no stretch to say that we fear Female Coworker. Nor is it a stretch to say that she could (and now will) easily destroy us with her bare hands. As the hours went on Friday, I began having severe doubts about the prank we had played. I came to grips with the fact that it would be my last weekend alive and I hadn’t even seen Lucy and Ethel grow up yet, I can’t find my other blue sock, I’m still working on my musical version of ‘Welcome Back Kotter’ with Squiggy playing Horschack, I’ve never eaten fries with gravy on top and I still haven’t found the gopher ruining my backyard. Clearly, I had a lot to live for. Mr. Coworker and I made a pact that we would do whatever we could to prevent each other from going back in and undoing the prank. Clearly, the thrill and the fear forged a bond that made Mr. Coworker and I much closer. Well, at least until the clock struck 5.

While the bond may have strengthened, cracks began to show. When I proudly photographed her office to have a permanent record of our tomfoolery (I have been waiting 323 posts to use that word), Mr. Coworker mocked my brilliance for having taken images of our crime. He said that it would make it much easier for HR to bust us. I told him to relax and that no one would know where on my hard drive I had saved the photos I took, which had been placed in a folder called ‘Office Redecoration.’ Oops, forget that last sentence. A little later in the day as other people began milling around Female Coworker’s office amazed at our feat of ‘prankness,’ Mr. Coworker began distancing himself from some of the things we overturned. We were brothers in arms suffering under the stress and weight of our responsibilities.

We recognized that we were turning against each other and did the one thing comrades do when the battle becomes too intense. We walked across the street to Dairy Queen to get ice cream and praise each other for what we had done. We ended our triumphant, albeit last Friday by laughing, recalling the tales of our adventure, accepting our imminent deaths at the hand of our coworker and yes, writing our statements to HR knowing that we would be asked for them Tuesday morning prior to our executions.

If you email me, I’ll be sure to save you something in my will. And now, I must take my leave of you to enjoy my final sunset and sunrise. My premature departure is sad, but I guess when it’s our time to go, there’s nothing we can do to change it. Don’t feel bad for me. I knew the risks; I accepted them and am ready to face my fate. Besides, the timing of my impending death couldn’t be better. I haven’t finished the big report due for my boss tomorrow morning.