Coop

Lunchtime is loud at my office. It sounds like a chicken coop in here. Like a bunch of squeaking and cackling with intermittent, mostly indecipherable words of English and Spanish and a couple of small dog yelps mixed in. It’s kind of embarrassing on the professional level for them to act like that, but at the same time it’s an interesting slice of human behavior that we have for lunch each day here. I lay my head down on the desk and wish I was outside smoking.

It kinda makes me feel like I’m tripping if I let the sounds flow in my head without trying to really understand what they’re talking about. Just appreciating the timbre and resonance of the laughter, screams, and whispers as they happen. One of the girls sounds like a muted trombone. Like Charlie Brown’s teacher after two packs of Camels. When she hits a real belly laugh it shakes the floor and I can feel my desk vibrating. There must be something very funny that one of them said.

I head up to the main office to find out what’s caused all the commotion and there sits half a dozen huge turnips, intermittently typing and eating soup. One of them says, “Do you want some?”

Of course, the answer is, “No.” I think it might be turnip soup or alphabet soup with turnips in it.