Karmic Sob Story

"The maid quit," reads the sign taped to the cabinets in the office kitchenette, "and your mother doesn't work here! Please wash your dishes promptly and do not soak."

A semi-regular member of our Three-Martini Break Group has been in Europe for three weeks; he comes back tomorrow. He is, I'm pretty sure, the sole reason that sign appeared just a couple of weeks after he, Robbie and I started working there. He is also probably the only person in our area who has never noticed it.

He's just a little absent-minded, is all.

Jason eats oatmeal for breakfast every day. When he's finished he puts his bowl and spoon in the sink to soak. He leaves them there all day, every day; and the next morning, when he's ready to eat again, he washes them out and reuses them. On a couple of occasions, to his annoyance, they've disappeared.

Three weeks ago Jason made his rounds, at the end of the day, and said his goodbyes before heading off to Ye Olde Worlde. An hour or so after he left, I went into the kitchen to wash my coffee cup, and there, behold! was his oatmeal bowl, soaking peacefully in the sink, patiently awaiting his eventual return.

Of course I thought this was hilarious, and so typical of him. He didn't mean to leave it there. He just forgot; and as far as I'm concerned it's no big deal; then again, you should see my house. If I ever invited her over (which, quite frankly, I wouldn't), the panicmonger would fire me on the spot.

So I washed his bowl and spoon, giggling, and dried them, and put them away in the cabinet. But as I told the other 3MBGers about it, of course everyone felt it would be highly amusing to put the bowl and spoon back in the sink, the night before his return, with the nastiest, grimiest, foulest-looking substance we could find soaking in them, as if (of course) they had sat there untouched and festering the entire time he was gone.

We bounced around various ideas: slime, silly putty, fake vomit. I even thought about filling the bowl with dirt and planting a few clippings from my ivy. But then I forgot about it until late this afternoon, when it was certainly too late to go out and buy something. So I looked through the kitchen cabinets and improvised.

I found an old, dusty green foam florist's block, pulled it to pieces, and mixed the shreds with that nasty, flaky brown stuff that many state employees seem to believe is coffee. I moistened the resultant mix with some of the cold leftover brew and finished off the sludge with a dusting of black pepper. It basically smelled like coffee, but it looked as if a yak with alarming health issues had suddenly found itself unable to get to the toilet in time.

And I was pleased with myself, and I went into the bathroom to change for the bike ride home. And as I was changing, I thought about how if we did this to a lot of the guys, they'd get a huge kick out of it, but Jason would probably be thrown way off balance because we're not as close, and how it would probably make him feel picked on and really hurt his feelings, because I'm the same way and getting pranked just makes me feel stupid and hurt and embarrassed. And finally I couldn't take it anymore, and I went back into the kitchenette and poured the sludge down the sink and washed out the bowl.

Do you know what green florist's foam doesn't do? It doesn't dissolve. The sink was still backed up when I left. Tomorrow someone will probably have to call in a plumber.

I'll leave it to the others to convince Jason his oatmeal created the clog.