Mickey Hadick

There was a time in the not-so-distant past that the garage was the official man-cave, a domain of dirt, grease, and dangerous tools. Calendars from Rigid Tools adorned the walls, and broken memories from a man's life lay scattered among the jars of nails and screws on the workbench. Projects begun and abandoned lay hidden beneath the bench, obscured by gasoline cans and the box in which came the weed-whacker. Bicycles are jammed into the corner and held in place by the lawn mower, and an impossible tangle of baseball bats rests against the door jam, just one angry breeze away from an oversized game of pickup sticks.

But in this modern era, women exist in the garage, claiming space for their SUVs and gardening supplies. They may have even cordoned off a section for the annual garage sale, accumulating the cast-off clothing from the family with delusions of a future cash haul.

With two adults commanding the attention of a single place, conflict is sure to follow. The mess in a garage can determine the fate of your marriage, especially if you live in a temperate zone. More specifically, if it snows where you live, parking inside of your garage should not be seen as a luxury. So neither spouse should dare consume more space than would be considered fair, but fair in a marriage is not fair by any other measure (say, for instance, a courtroom setting).

In a normal, modern home, there are things that go outside (lawnmowers, rakes, and various dangerous liquids) and things that go inside (furniture, food, clothing) and the garage becomes a no-man's land, jammed with crap from both inside and outside. When one spouse upsets the balance, something has to give, and it's usually one of the cars.

You can tell which families in the neighborhood are on the road to divorce by measuring the number of cars parked on the driveway. If one car is out there regularly, say the husband's, you know he's either a slob and packing his side of the garage with lawn tools he doesn't really use, or he's a wimp who lets his wife fill his side with old, "skinny" clothes intended for the next big sale. This marriage is fine, because they have worked out a system that can sustain the marriage, even if the husband's soul is ground into mincemeat.

If both cars are out there, it means both spouses are slobs and their house is probably more of a disaster than the garage but, again, they are meant for each other and they have a working system that will likely sustain their marriage. No problem in that house.

But when there is one car in the driveway and it changes regularly — husband's car one day, wife's car the next — there is trouble inside the home, and they are fighting over parking privileges. That's a marriage that is on the rocks, and one day soon, the switching will stop because there will only be one car driving home.

Labels: mistake

I was once in my cubicle, settling down to enjoy an iced tea, when something bad happened. Like most cubicles, it was cramped, and to make up for the lack of space, I had taped project documents all over the walls and shelves surrounding my computer monitor. It's one of those principles to help you remember things by keeping them in your periphery sight. So I had papers everywhere.

So I was drinking iced tea at the time. I go in streaks; sometimes it's coffee, other times hot tea, and others still it's iced tea. So I lean back to take a chug of tea, iced tea, sweet, cold, and I'm bored and bothered at my tiny cubicle with paper all over the place, and so I tip the cup to my lips, and the ice tea goes down my wind pipe. I spit this huge gulp out, spraying half of my cubicle and my computer. The sound is like a sharp roll on a snare drum.

This being a cubicle farm, all of my neighbors come to see what has happened. When they arrive, tea is now dripping from every sheet of paper onto my desk, my monitor is soaked, and puddles have formed in between the keys of my keyboard.

So I gave everyone something to talk about that day.

I'm going to explain to you a few of the things that are wrong with living in a cubicle:

![[Cubicle Farm]]
* too small
* not enough desk space
* no amenities for cleaning
* no running water
* too noisy
* neighbors too close
* no privacy
* no escape

My cubicle is six feet by seven feet, smaller than a normal issue. I can't stretch my arms without scraping my knuckles. In prison, your cell is eight feet by ten feet, and you get to nap on a bunk, and you have full bathroom facilities right there. I know there are drawbacks to being in prison, but at least the guards will open doors for you. At work, you have to open doors for yourself.

Not only are the cubicles small, but your neighbors are so close that they become like family. You don't get to choose your family, and you don't really choose your coworkers either. But you have to learn to get along. Sound carries in a cubicle farm, so you quickly learn a lot about your coworkers if you care to pay attention. There are some things you simply have discuss on the phone at work.

Um, I'd like to make an appointment.
Well, I'd rather not say, can I just get an appointment.
I have this thing.
Yes, a thing.
It kind of hurts.
No, not all the time, just when I touch it.
I don't touch it like that, but it itches.
Yes, it itches, so I scratch it.
I'd rather not say where the thing is.

Heaven forbid if you need a second opinion about your thing. So the people around me know about that problem, but it's okay, I know the social security number and credit card numbers of all my neighbors.

The worst part of phone conversations in a cubicle farm are speaker phones, because both your neighbor, and their guest, speak louder to be heard across the phone circuit.

If you will refer to page seventeen, there is a typo.
Page seventeen?
Yes, seventeen, third paragraph.
Which paragraph?
The third.
Okay, what about it.
No, wait. it's the fourth paragraph.
Mine doesn't have four paragraphs.
Why not?
I don't know.
Hold it, did I send you the latest?
I don't know.

Nobody in the row can get anything done until those two get on the same page.

You just hear too many sounds in a cubicle farm. You hear the chairs creak and bump into the edge of the desk. You hear people arguing with their wife, or trying to talk reason to their son (at least my neighbors hear that). The one sound that bothers me the most, though, is the sound of someone clipping their nails. I know it's a simple, common sound, and something we all must do, but when I hear it, I'm never sure if they're clipping their finger nails or their toe nails. It bugs me.

People eat at their desk, so you begin to smell things. There's maple flavored oatmeal in the morning, and then a horrible succession of lean quisine: salisbury steak, quesadias, chili con carne. Then the leftovers come out, and you get spaghetti, beef stew, and chicken stir fry. I sit next to the microwave, so I get every smell and learn to identify the cook by the odor. I can also set my clock by the popcorn schedule: Teri at two, Thurston at Three, and Fred at Four. I'm not complaining, because I could be sitting next to the men's room, and you do not want to set your clock by that schedule.

After you eat at your desk, it's time to nap at your desk. It's something that no amount of coffee can prevent. But I've learned to sleep with my head up, and keep my hand moving unconsciously on the mouse so that the screen saver doesn't kick in and give me away.

I worked in one place, a State Agency that will remain nameless, where people would bring yoga mats to spread out under their desk, and they would nap there. I always thought it was cute, so I'd make sure they had milk and cookies waiting for them on their desk when they woke up.

Because a cubicle reminds me of being in a public bathroom without a door on the stall, I feel very exposed. I also sit with my back to the door, so I have a rear view mirror set up so I can see who is there. I think we all know that the real real reason for that is to know whether or not you should hide the web page you have displayed when someone enters. But, to be honest, I've gotten over that. If you close the web page quickly, you're just admitting guilt. I leave it open, and stare at the person to see if they look at my monitor. Especially when I'm shopping at Victoria's Secret. I'm just daring them to ask me what I need to buy from there.

Another reason I shouldn't complain is because I have a window. It's a small sliver, but it's something, and most people would kill to have that little bitty bit. Warner Brothers had a cartoon about a naughty little boy named Ralph that stared out the window all the time, and then lost himself in an adventurous day dream. I'm the same way, so when I see the parking lot gate malfunction across the street, I think, I'll save the day. Let me get my trusty jackman tool, and I'll fix that right up. Or if someone has trouble lighting their cigarette, I want to run right over and strike a flint for them.

Let's face it: anything is better than work.

We people are animals that like to stay in herds, and cubicles are slightly better than standing around next to each other while trying to earn a living. And we're not quite as bad as veal farms, where the animals are chained to their stall. But at least then food is brought in, and waste shoveled out for you.

If I could use a yoga mat for my naps, I might just apply for a job there.

Labels: toastmaster

In Cleveland there are two main highways that lead into the city, and both of them stay high above the Cuyahoga River. That area, the Cuyahoga Valley just south of downtown, is an industrial wasteland where steel mills and chemical plants operate — not like they used to, of course, but they belch smoke into the sky, and burn off noxious fumes from their chimney stacks sending red, orange, and blue flames into the night. Riding on those highways, Interstates 71 and 77, is the closest thing Cleveland has to offer that compares to the "It's a Small World" ride at Disney World. In the span of five miles, you see the tops of buildings that once were the pinnacle of American industrial society, creating wealth for a few lucky ones, providing jobs for tens of thousands, and creating deadly pollution that damn near killed the entire region. Both my maternal and paternal grandfathers found work in those industrial mills, started families that thrived in Cleveland, and ultimately created me and my brothers.

I lived with my brother for eighteen months while I was going to graduate school at Cleveland State. He had a house in Parma, and I commuted from there to CSU, which was downtown. I took I-77 and never grew tired of the surreal view of the vestiges of Cleveland's glory. Being a city college, CSU only offered evening classes for graduate courses, and so I also had the advantage of commuting into town when most drivers were fighting to escape. My brother was also getting his law degree at CSU's Marshall College of Law, so he was there most evenings as well.

One day, my brother and I had reason to commute downtown together late in the afternoon. It was between four and five P.M., and traffic was heavy but not thick. We found ourselves pinned in behind a truck pulling a flatbed trailer, and on the trailer was a large industrial machine we couldn't quite identify. We were behind it for a couple of miles on I-77. Because traffic was slow, we had quite a few minutes to wonder what that machine might possibly be.

The machine was made mostly of stainless steel and absolutely filled the flatbed behind the truck. It had a large arm that hung over a massive round body. It was oddly familiar, but neither of us could quite place it.

That particular stretch of highway is rough and abused. The speed limits are not really necessary because the potholes and half-assed repairs keep only the most insane from going over 50. As we approached downtown, we noticed that the shaking from the bad road had caused the massive round body on the strange machine being transported ahead of us to spin on its axis.

As the Terminal Tower and BP Oil building came into view, we recognized what was before us: an industrial sized mixer, and the massive round body was its enormous mixing bowl. The spinning gave it away. Here was a machine capable of making enough dough to bake a loaf of bread the size of a Buick. Of course such things had to exist, for how else did ten thousand loaves of Wonder Bread appear on the shelves of A & P and Krogers each morning if some huge machine did not spit out ten thousand balls of dough? If you saw a leprechaun or a unicorn in the morning mist, you would believe; so it is with industrial sized mixers being dragged above the smelly wasteland of Cleveland: once you see it, you believe.

As we neared our exit, East 9th Street, the mixing bowl spun faster. It warbled and rocked, and before our disbelieving eyes, that mixing bowl spun off of its trailer just one hundred feet in front of our car. It bounced a good six feet off of the pavement, and bounced again still spinning.

My brother eased off of the accelerator, but because of the traffic we didn't dare slam on the brakes. For a brief moment I know we both thought that the stupid giant mixing bowl was going to bounce onto our car and crush us. It was a funny feeling that did not induce fear. We were going to die, but in such a bizarre way that it wouldn't seem like dying, but merely suffering the ultimate prank — the bucket propped on the door, filled with paint, but that also chops off your head, or the electric buzzer in your palm intended to shock you but which instead stops your heart — and so the story explaining what happened would obscure the fact that you were dead and never coming back to this world.

When it hit the pavement the second time, now less than fifty feet before our car, the spin of the bowl took it out of our lane. My brother hit the gas and we surged forward. The bowl bounced again in the next lane, and then slammed off of the cement barrier dividing the highway. We tore ahead and took the exit.

I did turn back and saw the huge mixing bowl bounce back across the highway, and somehow, as if guided by the practical joking hand of God, it missed all the other cars as well. We spun down the ramp, down to the level of the city, and began making our way past the abandoned storefronts, the condemned apartment buildings, and the empty warehouses, and we said a quiet prayer of thanksgiving. Then we began to laugh.

Labels: story