CHAIR SQUEAKER

CHAIR SQUEAKER

I have a BA in Business. This course of study came about as naturally to me as ballroom dancing would to a three-footed penguin. Deep inside a voice kept saying, “A square peg in a round hole will no matter how tenaciously it is shoved into the hole,” but I was determined. I could be like everyone else if I tried hard enough was all I kept saying to myself.

The screen on my Alexa App read, “Staff meeting at 3 pm. What would I ever do without Alexa? I sighed pulling a hand through my wavy brown hair.

The sharp clanging sound of the cash register drawer opening made me jump slightly and my mind was jolted back into the present moment. Customers were beginning to line up and the business of the day was starting. Suddenly I could feel the senior manager’s eyes cut through the back of my shirt like laser beams.

“For heaven’s sake, Bickford, what are you staring at? Can’t you see you have customer in front of you?”

The words hit me as if they were giant waves crashing against the jagged shore of my consciousness. I looked up at my boss and his clenched teeth.

“Huh?” I said “Yeah, I know that…I was just checking in with Alexa. I see we have a staff meeting at 3 pm. I’ll need to be ready for that, I said nervously.

“Well, you never mind that. Take care of your customers. We had another cashier call out sick today, barked the manager curtly.

I goofed again. I thought. Why can’t I get my priorities straight? Suddenly I noticed that there was a button missing on my shirt. Oh, damn, I breathed. How could I have missed that? But at least my shirt was not on backwards like it was yesterday.

The coffee machine sat on a shelf right next to my register. I went to it like a drone to a hive. I just hope it doesn’t make me hyper, I thought as I let the first sip roll down my throat.

I often felt like Dorothy Gayle in the land of Oz when I was at work, even though I do not have a floating pink goody-goody, like Glenda, The Good Witch of the North, or a pair of ruby slippers to protect me. And besides that, I am a guy.

The thing is, my coworkers seem to like me when I’m in a good mood. My wacky sense of humor often makes them roll their eyes and chuckle despite themselves. Some of them even find me not so occasional clumsiness charming. Sometimes I get my words mixed up and instead of saying, I would like to speak with you, I say, I would like to sleep with you, or squeak with you. I always correct myself immediately, but not before my cheeks start glowing like to red devils. Still, charming or not, I

had lost or quit five different jobs in my seven year sojourn in the working world. Having an above average IQ and a talent for creative thinking isn’t enough to make the grade, I soon learned.

“Perception is everything” My last boss informed me a week before he fired me. Sometimes I deluded myself into thinking that I was just like everyone else. Inside my state of denial, I could not imagine why practically everyone I met considered me a deviant from the mainstream crowd. I wondered if anyone else had this problem. Was being able to see yourself through the eyes of others the key to perception, I wondered? Maybe I could get someone to video-tape me giving an impromptu speech and then I would see…

“Day-dreaming again, Bickford?!” said my swiftly approaching boss.

“No, I’m serving a gourmet meal to some hungry lions,” I snapped, regretting it the instant the words left my tongue. My boss just gave me a hard look and walked away.

“Damn it all!” Sometimes I think I should have taken the postal exam instead of going to business school. I hate it when I shoot my mouth off before thinking!

5 o’clock didn’t come soon enough as I walked out of the store letting a gasp of relief escape my exhausted cheeks. But now I had nothing but empty space to fill.

The mess in my small apartment glared back at me like the aftermath of an airstrike as I sat on my bed feeling overwhelmed. My favorite rocking chair was piled high with last week’s clothes, cat hair carpets the floor, and a box of spaghetti has fallen off the kitchen counter. The pasta is scattered like so many pick-up sticks under the kitchen table. Looking at the mess just makes me feel tired. It’s not long before I my eyes start to close, and I make my way into the engulfing world of sleep.

I wake up an hour and a half later to the chiming of my hallway clock. I opened my eyes and stretched wondering how I would fill the time. I glanced at my computer sitting on the far side of the room. It wasn’t long before I had logged on and became seduced by the lure of the virtual hearts game on my desktop. But after munching on the dark queen three times in a row and getting the blue moon twice, I quit in disgust and logged onto the web.

Web searches fascinate me. I like to make up words and search for anything I find. So, I hit the prompt for the search engine and my butterfly mind raced like a colt in the wind The last time I searched the we, I found a site about arterio-venous fistulas and something called Interventional Neuroradiology…Don’t ask.

So, I tried to type in the word, “addresses.” But I pressed enter after the second d by mistake. A site called, ADD friends popped up in front of me. Hmmm…ADD friends. I’d sure like to add friends, I chuckled to myself, thinking I had found a porn site.

To my surprise, I began to feel excited as I read the site. This was a site about something called attention deficit disorder in adults. I had heard about this disorder in children, but never had a reason to investigate it. I read the list of symptoms, inability to focus, excessive loquaciousness, mental flightiness and confusion with words, periods of involuntary inattention, the ability to hyper focus, and chronic difficulties with organization on all levels. An eerie feeling of calm washed over me as I continued to read. I would get a similar sort of feeling upon biting into a peppermint patty.

I felt an odd sense of community reading this site and yet, I felt profoundly alone too. I had never known anyone like myself, but then again, I didn’t really know what that meant either. I continued to read: Many ADDers are poor self-observers despite having high IQs, are unusually creative and have a unique sense of spontaneity coupled with and uncommon exuberance and a well-developed sense of the absurd.

“Yep, that’s me all right!” I could never quite figure out why my teachers said I was bright, even when I pulled C’s and D’s in their classes. I hated getting bad grades, but I had trouble focusing on the material I was being taught, especially if it was dull. I could not always catch my thoughts, much less organize them on paper. But then I used to write these wildly imaginative short stories in English class that my teachers loved to read and share with the class. But invariably they would turn on me like the lying hypocrites they were and say my writing skills were weak. They said I did not make persuasive arguments and that my thoughts seemed disjointed. Some said my punctuation was poor and my grammar needed work. These judgments always baffled me. But, then again, even Albert Einstein had reading problems in grade school and look how he turned out in the end. I bet he and I could have been real pals!

As I read on, I saw a link for a support group for ADDers and clicked on it. This was a place where people with this disorder met to slay their dragons in a safe and accepting environment! All were welcome. Hot digity dog, I muttered to myself. And I could not wait to unsheathe my metaphysical sword along with the other soldiers. I decided to find the meeting the following week.

Work was a drag today. All I could think about was the impending ADDers meeting. I was so eager to meet the other Adders that I arrived half an hour early to the meeting. I was the first one there. I quickly took a seat at the long conference table and tried to calm my nerves by doing simple math problems in my head. My fingers tapped a repetitive beat on the table while my mind did cartwheels as I sat waiting for the other fearless knights to arrive.

About ten minutes later, a few people started filing into the room. One of them brought some name tags and some colored markers with her. I smiled at her and blurted out, “I’m Bickford, the fearless!”

To my surprise, she just looked at me and, “Hi, welcome to the meeting.” Hmmm…she is not exactly a barrel of laughs, I thought. But then there is always one party-pooper in every crowd. I dearly hoped the others would have more pep to their countenance.

Soon the room was filled with so called ADDers and I got excited again. First we played the name game and then took turns spilling our guts about all the crap we take from neurotypicals or normal people who don’t understand ADD. But the truth was that many of them sounded like my sparkless coworkers when they spoke. Suddenly it occurred to me that they were all on dope! Then I got the notion that ADD stood for, annoying dork disease, and I burst out laughing, the way I always did in church when I thought of something funny while the minister was preaching.

Suddenly I felt like an outsider again. I unconsciously started to swing my legs back and forth under the table. The hinges of my chair must have been old or rusty because they made a slight squeaking sound as my legs moved back and forth under the table. I found I like the sound. It was constant and rhythmic, like a heartbeat. I imagined my childhood swing set in the back yard of my home in Connecticut. I used to swing for hours and my mind would skip shamelessly over the rainbow while no one was watching.

A friendly tap on the back of my forearm broke my silent reverie and I realized it was my turn to speak. I introduced myself and my story spilled forth like so many assorted candies out of a broken pinata…but no kidding, these people were about as much fun as three-day old corpses. And as this thought popped into my head, a voice appearing to be out of nowhere admonished, “Would the chair squeaker please stop squeaking his chair?”

I pretended I didn’t know who the speaker was talking about. But of course, I knew she was talking to me. Inside my head the conversation went something like, “Normal people can sit quietly in their chairs. What is the matter with me? Why can’t I follow the rules, like other people? What are the rules anyway? I cannot believe these people! It is not as if I were playing a harmonica in here. I thought we would all be kindred spirits. Who do they think they are being so judgmental? I don’t believe this! I’m not even normal in a crowd of freaks! These characters are all potential candidates for Darwin Awards if they can’t see…”

And before I knew it, my mind had transported me back in time to my pathetic sojourn in business school where I was the proverbial round peg in a square hole. And in the very next moment, I had drifted off to somewhere over the rainbow. Deep down I knew I was created to be a chair squeaker and this had always been the unescapable truth. So, I just sat in my chair and rocked back and forth, squeaking away on the hinges of nonconformity for the rest of the meeting.

The next day at work I kept hearing the voice of Judy Garland in my head: Where troubles melt like lemon drops, oh way above the chimney tops, birds fly, birds fly!

“Oh, am I doing it again? Sorry. I will pay more attention next time, I promise. Just give me one more chance…I pleaded in the pathetic tone of a criminal who has just been given a life sentence with no parole.

Then I wondered if ruby slippers come in size 12 1/2.?