Tragic Loss...

Well, all the world now knows that the Patriots lost to the Giants. I wasn't phased - I fell asleep just after halftime - but I had to listen to the lamentations at work the next day.

Sometimes I think that I was sent to my current job to be a mental health counselor (for which I am totally unqualified). Rick (names changed to protect the innocent) stops by on his way to the men's room to comment on the football game (who cares?) and then tease me about driving my sister to work every day. Hey, what's the big deal? I don't ride alone and we have a great time. Donnie stops in to chat with my office mate. He is hard of hearing (like I am) and when he gets going on his war stories, the noise is deafening and I don't get a stitch of work done. Marsha (not my office mate, but the other Marsha) comes in to lament about the football team losing but admits that she is over the tragedy because baseball season is about to start. And then there's my own office mate, who is oblivious to football but chatters incessantly about everything imaginable, all day long, sometimes on the telephone but generally to me. I am accustomed to silence while I work and the noise distracts me so badly that I constantly forget what I am working on. I have never been one to think out loud, and it is amazing (and distressing) to be trapped in an office with someone so very much unlike myself.

Isn't life good, that I have only these things to complain about? Isn't it??? I question my resentment toward all of these visitors - after all, we all need some sort of human companionship.

But I am finding that I prefer the silent type - not the strident voices, but the words on paper (I am showing my age, now). I have always preferred pen pals over phone pals. Why? I think because they give me the time and the space and the silence that I so desperately need in order to think.