Investigation

So to earn extra money I sit in this windowless room that smells of dog and weirdo and I listen to tapes that fall mostly into three categories:

A. interviews done by a large ivy league university of people from corporations all over the world,

B. taped classes from same ivy league university, and

C. insurance companies interviewing people who have run over other people with their cars.

Sometimes there will be tapes of other things. Now you would think the tapes of the people-squashers would be the best, and mostly they are, except for that they tend to make you lose faith in humanity, and quick.

Anyhoo, what I do is I type those tapes up, word for word. Normally the room is filled with clickclickclickclickclickthunkclickclickclickclickclickthunk because you run the tapes with a foot pedal, much like a sewing machine, typing as long as you can before your ability to type up what's being said gets surpassed by what's being said.

But then yesterday the lights when out.

And nobody talked. It was this room full of silent social misfits. Naturally I started asking people questions. And I started with pith helmet.

As it turns out, he’s leaving at the end of next week to go back to Hardwick, VT, where he’s from. Then he's off to grad school. Anyhoo, after hearing p.h.’s story I found out about the middle aged lady who's dressed like a goth. Although on further inspection she's more Wiccan than Goth. She makes jewelry and sells it over the internet and was on the game show channel the night before, as someone with a secret on I’ve Got a Secret.

I also talked with a strange little redhaired man with a ponytail who’d lived in Norway for a year and let us know that it was Norwegian independence day that day and that in Norway they don’t have military men in their parades, just people dressed in local costumes and lots of happy children. I could tell that having to type and not talk all day had been just killing the little red-haired man.