So I grabbed my Writer's Digest Writing Kit yesterday.  I begged people for this thing for Christmas, and I finally had time to try one of the writing prompts.  My first prompt instructed me to write a short story using the first and last lines from my favorite novel as the first and last lines of my story. 

I immediately grabbed Pride & Prejudice.  The first line was beautiful (Jane Austen of course) but the last line was very specific to that book with names of characters and places.  Not gonna work.  Next I grabbed Great Expectations (Hi Charlie...) The first line of that book was an opposite situation...line one talks all about how Pip got his name.  Nope.  Next I found myself standing in front of our book shelf as my eyes finally spotted Salinger.  I reached in for "Catcher."  Those lines would both work for this prompt, but as I pondered it for a moment, I realized that my love affair with young Holden Caulfield might get in my way of writing anything removed from his life.  Moving on....A Wrinkle In Time.  It was a dark and Stormy night....Are you kidding me??  LOL..I can't do that either.  Finally I saw Alice. Go Ask Alice was my favorite book in High School.  I have read it several times, and I remember it being the one thing that scared me away from any type of recreational drug use.  It terrified me, that is to say.  This would be the book I would use. 

So here it goes ...


Yesterday I remember thinking I was the happiest person in the whole earth, in the whole galaxy,  in all God's creation. I spent the afternoon on a pier over looking the Hudson River with my head in the lap of my sweet, all be it nerd of a boyfriend, as he read to me from his journal of poetry.  The sun was warm on my face.  The sky was such a soft blue with wisps of white clouds.  The breeze was gentle as it tickled across my bare feet.  My life was far from perfect, this I was aware of, but on this day...on this afternoon, I was golden.  I was as perfect as anyone person should wish their life to be. 

That of course was yesterday.  Before she arrived.  Before Alison Asher casually and confidently strutted her way into my life.  The moment she walked in through the front doors of our office building I knew she was a person of significance.  Although I don't know how.  Hundreds of people walk through these doors every single day.  They come and go without anyone ever noticing them.  Passing in and out of our lives without even a skid mark impression left behind. 

But Alison was different.  Alison had a presence about her.  She carried herself with an air of confidence that could not be ignored.  Her sheik lavender shirt wrapped like a scarf around her perfect curves, slicing down between her breasts only to amplify them.  Her smart gray business suit fitted perfectly to her body.  Flawless alabaster skin, deep sultry dark eyes, and absolutely perfect auburn hairs swept back from her face.  They weren't crammed behind her ear in a strife of nervousness, or even to seem pensive.  Just perfectly laid back from her face as if they too, somehow knew not to hide such perfection. Her look of course, completed by her cliché black stilettos. 

Who am I kidding, Her stilettos a cliché?  Her entire person is a cliché.  She looks like someone from a bad dramatic movie.  Or is it  comedy?  You know...where the frumpy underling shows up the perfect, super model, CEO boss, who in the end finds herself in a new job... a slight demotion, where she spends her days asking people, what they would like with their fries. Only in this scenario, I am the frumpy employee, and I am quite certain that me forcing Alison Asher to ever offer anyone fries is completely unrealistic.

My self deprecation is then interrupted by my own mental side bar wondering who the genius was that came up with that, "What would you like with your fries," campaign.

My deep wonderment is broken by the sound of a slamming book on my cubical desk top.  My co-worker Virgina is giving me the marketing numbers for an account I am supposed to be hard at work with.  I thank her and sit down in my swivel chair I'm quite certain was purchased for this building in the early seventies.  It's hard, kills my back all day long, and barely swivels, eliminating the importance of the Swivel aspect of the chair.  I turn to my PC which by this time has gone to black screen from lack of use...I catch my reflection.  I sigh heavily as my entire body becomes limp in the disappointment in it's own appearance.

Let me paint you a picture now of myself.  Let me tell you what I look like in this office.  I am the girl with absolutely no taste that no one notices .  It's not that I am so secure in myself that I don't care what people think.  It's not that I'm so evolved and free spirited that I don't even try, because I know that I am just solidly better then the rest of them.  I just have no taste.  I do try.  I buy cloths that I think are in fashion.  I try to make my hair nice and try the latest styles.  It just doesn't happen for me.  The clothing looks odd on my body and the hair is just that of a country girl.  There is nothing I can do about it.  It is physically unable to do what a NY woman's hair is supposed to do.  I have on simple khaki pants today.  A plain, lime green button down shirt, and a polk a dotted scarf I tied around my waist, just like the mannequin had it.  My shoes are flat and comfortable.  The kind that Alison Asher would probably keep at her bedside for midnight bathroom runs....if she even goes to the bathroom.  I am plain.  I am misshapen and plain in a way that I often think about marching straight down to the county office buildings and demand that they change my first name to Jane, just to make it official.

Alison is later introduced to the firm as our new Advertising Executive.  She is our new head honcho...oh goodie.  I hate advertising.  I made this choice when I was eleven years old and I wrote a cute little poem entitled 'WhyI'mGoing to Wyoming.'  If you say it fast and with that mid western draw to it, it sounds cute...when you eleven.  But every one congratulated me on being so adorable, and coming up with such a great little catch phrase title, that it became my destiny.  I would write slogans for a living.  So as the entire town of East Bum Wyoming gathered at the bus station to see me off to the big city, I had no choice.  I could not turn back.  I have the whole lot of them counting on my big success.

Later that afternoon we were summoned to conference room B to begin a run down of the accounts we are actively working on.  I melted into the comfortable blue cushioned chair as the muscles in my back exhaled in relief. Alison started the meeting and proceeded to go down the list in order of the accounts asking us what ideas we were toying with.  Ideas that we trying to build on, or maybe the plethora of suggestions that we are trying to weed out from. 

Next on the list was Todd.  Todd is your normal type A, X-jock personality that starts every line with 'Dude.'  He works here only because he wrote the lyrics to a really famous pop song that received mega radio play, but alas, became his one hit wonder.  He actually isn't that great at advertising.  Pretty Boy Todd released his idea for his Laxative campaign.  His suggestion, "Because some times when you're on the run you don't have time for them."  I snickered quietly under my breath unnoticed. Sometimes? I thought. You mean there are convenient times for the runs? I watched perfect Alison Asher for her reaction.  She was unaffected.  She just said, "Keep working on that one please," and moved to the next on the list. 

My account was quickly approaching.  I began to sweat, and believe me the irony I did not miss.  My current client made under arm deodorant.  And it's so horrible...they call it Stink Out.  Are you kidding me? This is what I have to work with.  I had a number of really bad ideas scratched down on my paper, but still feeling a tad bit jovial from the, 'Sometimes you don't have time for the runs,' thing, I piped out..."Because Some Times You Stink,"  and I grinned.  None of these lifeless dead beats were amused.  Alison for instance, was not amused.  She looked
up from her papers and over the top of her thin rimmed frames.  I tried to force a smile.  Alison sat back,
crossing her arms in front of her perfectly perky breasts.  I cleared my throat, and starred with determination
at my paper.  I prayed there was something redeemable amongst my scribbles.  There was nothing. 
I knew there wouldn't be.  I rattled off a few lame ideas and told her that I was still brainstorming.

"Carrie," she said. (My name is Mary...yes that's how boring and ordinary I truly am...Mary Johnson.) "Those really aren't working for me." Her patronizing eyes staring down the table at me.  "You need to come up with something better then that."  She looks around the table at the rest of the cast of merry loosers.  "We are a very reputable Advertisement firm people.  But this is not the work that I would expect to hear."  She pushed her pages away from her on the table.  "That is why I have been brought in.  My job is to make you and the work that you produce for our clients somehow better."

With that she looked directly back at me.  Why couldn't I have kept my mouth shut?

"With all do respect Alison (yes I called her by her first name) I'm trying to sell an item called Stink Out." I was so disgusted by every thing in the room.  The product, the Todd, the must in the window dressing across the table from me.  Virginia madly chewing on her eraser....biting it off in small bits and gnawing on it like gum...and of course Alison.  ug.

"I don't care what the item is called or what the item does.  It is our job to make the public want it."

"You would run right out and buy a deodorant called Stink Out?" I asked with a bit more skeptical conviction in my voice.

"Yes," she nodded.  "If it had a good advertising campaign I would buy anything."

"Please." I said shortly.

"Excuse me?"

I shook my head, "Nothing."

Alison Ashed sat still a moment longer and then realized that we needed to move on from this debate.  She picked
up her list and moved to the next item...A fancy new lipstick...now why couldn't I get that account?

After the meeting I walked lifelessly back to my cubical.  I hadn't the will to live.  "Hey Carrie," Todd called out slapping my desk as he swept by.  "On the run?" I called out after him.  "She'd buy anything with a great campaign slogan," I muttered to myself.  "Does that include the Laxative too?"  I thought about that for a moment...and here's where every thing went wrong. "I bet laxatives is where she gets that perfect waif of a body."

She was standing right beside my cubical, as I physically turned my non-swiveling chair around to sit. Those smoldering brown eyes were burning a hole right through me.  We made eye contact, and I was certain that I did not blink for a full thirty seven seconds.  I can't be certain, but I'm sure at some point during that moment, I may have squeaked out the tiniest, little nervous fart.

"Carrie." she said firmly. 

I pointed to my name plate above my computer screen, "Mary," I corrected her.

"What is our problem?"

"Problem?"

"You obviously have a problem with me.  Why don't we get that out of the way right now."

I took a deep breath.  Prepared to say there was no problem, I began my decent into uncontroversial oblivion.  I suddenly felt myself doing something I had never done before.  I have no idea why, but I was struck by the idea of sticking up for myself.  So instead of shrinking like a violet in front of the Sun Goddess, I instead told her what my problem was.  (WHY?)

"My product to sell is Stink Out.  That's the name," I added holding up the roll on.  "And I find it very hard to believe that a perfect, perky person like yourself," perky of course I said with hand gestures to my own breasts, "would buy this stuff.  I just don't buy it."

Alison straightened herself upright and placed her hands on her perfect 36 hips.  "We can sell anything to anyone if we are good at our jobs," she informed me. "As for my perfect, perky person, I take offense to that.  It's really not my problem if you are jealous of my appearance.  I am your boss however," she said leaning over  to me.

"Please.  You think I'm jealous?"  (I am, I am) "You think I want to spend my life eating carrots and rice cakes, then running to the bathroom to throw it back up again."

"Excuse me?" she answered indignantly.

I took a deep breath and looked away.

I know you are thinking, this is where the frumpy girl makes her big move and I will come out on top victoriously.  But I already told you...I am not that girl. 

Next Alison Ashed screwed her neck around to get right into my face.  With one hand still firmly placed on her hip and the other planted firmly on my desk top she said very quietly, but very bitchily so only I could hear, "Mary.  I don't think this is going to work out. I will give you fifteen minutes to pack your things and get out."

I said nothing.  I made no eye contact with her.  I simply reached for my Cathy mug and began clearing my desk.

Well I guess I did make my big move alright...I moved right to the curb with a box full of my personal possessions in hand.

I sulked for the rest of that afternoon, but the morning brought new light.  I eagerly scammed the classifieds and quickly found myself a new position dealing directly with the public. 

I pondered the events of the last few days in the back room of my new employer as I watched the training video. Then I placed my cap upon my head and strutted out to the front counter with confidence as I ask the first person in line, "What would you like with your fries?"

I guess in a way I am grateful for Alison Asher.  She may have fired me for the first time in my life, but she did me
a favor.  I hated what I was doing for eight hours each day.  I can't pay my rent now, and I certainly won't
be writing home of these events to East Bum Wyoming any time soon, but at least I'm no longer at that job that
I hated so much, pushing badly named deodorant.  It's all been good in it's own special way.  I guess. 

See ya.