Gone, forgotten.

There were four of us former classmates sitting around a square table. As a conference organizer, it was my job to inspire my volunteer minions into completing a few menial tasks for me. I was not very successful. The conversation kept turning to one of our other former classmates, a fairly well-liked young woman who rose to the top of management chain with relative speed and dignity. Word had just come down the line that she was recently fired for conduct very unbecoming. It caused quite a stir.

"Let's send her a card," Plastic Patty offered up hopefully as she rummaged through her bag.
"Let's not," answered Mary. I've always liked Mary. She's a lapsed Catholic whom I would describe as having Tolerably Good Sense, grounded in that former Catholic sort of way.
With simulated indignation Plastic Patty got all impassioned on our butts. "Didn't you just love K----," she screeched, "It isn't fair what happened to her! If she hadn't gotten caught, she never would have gotten fired."
"If she hadn't messed up and behaved unethically she never would have gotten fired," Mary corrected her.
"That a girl," I muttered, though my contribution was not appreciated. Truly though, it's quite a world we live in where the sin is in the getting caught rather than in the deed itself. This does effectively erase conscience, though we get a hell of a good sense of sneakiness in its place.
"You'll sign the card, won't you Cheerleader?" Plastic Patty pleaded to our last, still silent member. Cheerleader, a lovely lass with girlish enthusiasm and frizzy, permed hair, took the card and signed. Mary soon snatched it away to read Cheerleader's short words of encouragement.
"'I look up to you.' I look up to you?! How the hell can you look up to her after what she did?"
"Well, I don't look up to her now," Cheerleader hedged.
"Then why did you write this?"
"Uhm, because I did look up to her then, so I can't write 'I still look up to you,' and I can't say 'But I don't look up to you anymore.'"
Cheerleader, at this point, was flexing her full linguistic potential. Mary looked peeved...but she eventually signed the card anyway.

I did not.

~~~~~~

Back on the home front, my immediate supervisor retired this week. My boss asked us all to submit memories of said supervisor so they could be incorporated into some kind of scrapbook. Much to my shame, I couldn't think of anything to write. It's not that my supervisor ever failed to make an impression. Far from it, she is quite distinctive. The memory of an exceedingly handsome woman with steely grey hair, as tall as a church steeple and as no-nonsense as a mother superior will stick with me for some time. The thing is that, as with most of my coworkers, we tend to remember her in her severity. She could give a verbal whipping like few others, though she cowed easily enough when challenged. How I remember her slapping my hands (and hard at that) when she was training me, though I also remember her kissing me behind a door one late night. Don't think anyone wants that story for the scrapbook.

I think I will remember her vanity best of all though. It was certainly not her defining quality, but it was striking because it matched the level of her incredible good looks. At 64, she never ceased in pointing out patients who were the same age as she and quietly noting, "Isn't it amazing how much better I look than they do?" Of course, she was right every time.

With no suitable story to submit to the collective scrapbook, I copied out some verse for my supervisor in my best uncial, which wasn't very good. Didn't seem to matter. The gift fell flat anyway. It's like reading poetry was too difficult; no one had the patience for the poem, which was a pithy 12 line Dickinson offering. I even picked it out especially for its accessibility. Lord knows how disappointing my gift would have been had I copied out the George Crabbe poem I was considering instead.