A Spicy Mix of People

May 24, 2011

What do you get when you take a Mormon, a Jehovah's Witness, a psychic, and mix 'em all together?

A whole lot of blog material--that's what you get. Please, allow me to explain....

Last week, I walked into my office, and much to my surprise, there was a woman sitting in the office next to mine. I hadn't heard that anyone was renting the space, so I went right over to introduce myself.

"Hi," I said. "I'm Amy. I work next door doing very important things for very important people making very large amounts of money."

Okay, fine. Maybe I've switched the details around a little bit, to protect the innocent...and make it more exciting, but that doesn't matter. The woman was friendly and warm and very pretty. Her office was completely bare, except for one upholstered chair and two lawn chairs.

"Hi," she shyly responded. "I'm Stacy. They haven't painted the walls yet, and I'm waiting until they do to  move my things in."

"What do you do, Stacy?"

"I do spiritual readings," she replied, just as un-self-consciously as some other person might say, "I'm going grocery shopping."

In my head I was thinking, NO SHIZ! YOU'RE A PSYCHIC! I'm scared of you! I think you're cool! I should probably stop going on facebook at work, because you'll totally know! THIS IS INSANE!

But with my voice I heard myself calmly saying, "Spiritual Readings. Fantastic. Very wonderful."

And then we parted ways.

And then I immediately moved my work station to the other side of my office, up against the shared wall.

And then I strained to listen to every word of every spiritual reading she gave--but not too hard, because that would be disrespectful. (p.s. some people really need attorneys, not psychics)

And then I moved it back, because she'd totally know I was snooping.

Then I tossed up a quick blog post about the psychic over my lunchtime.

Then I took it down, because she'd totally know what I wrote.

And then, I finally settled for doing my own damn work, with the door open, watching the spiritual readees come and go and come and go. Occasionally I got to play along, letting them know that no, they didn't need to check in with me before they met with Stacy.

In my mind, my office life was about explode with a healthy dose of f to the u to the n. Or, at the very least, it would be at a smidge more spicy than it had been when I'd break up my days by farting in various vacant cubicles.

The next morning, I came in to work, and I was so early that I was only person in the building. A few minutes later, I heard footsteps coming down the hall, and before I knew it, someone cracked my door about four inches, slinked through the opening, and was standing in my office with a frowny-nostril-flarey kind of thing happening.

It was my friend from down the hall, and her eyes were the size and the shape of quarters.

She pulled up a chair, sat down, took a quick breath and said, "I don't know if you know this already, but I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses..."

"No way," I interrupted! "I'm Mormon! You can knock on my door, then I can knock on your door, then you can knock on my door, then I can knock on your door, then you can knock on my door, then I can knock on your door! Why didn't I know this sooner???"

She scrunched down in her chair and whispered, "Have you met our new neighbor?"

I nodded.

"Well," she went on, making her eyes even bigger, "as far as I'm concerned, that woman is possessed by demons."

I had no idea how to comfort my friend, and all I could think to say was, "Her sneakers were very white."

Well I don't know?! What was I supposed to say?! As far as I'm concerned, I think peanut butter is possessed by demons since I a) can't stop eating it, and b) almost accidentally put it in James's snack bag every day, even though c) it's just about as dangerous as a loaded gun to some of his classmates. Evil, evil stuff I say.

Any way you slice this thing, I'm not about to get in the middle of it.

Does the psychic creep me out? Absolutely. She induces heebie jeebies every time we cross paths. Not because of the devil stuff, more because I'm worried that she knows I think she's chunky, even though she's not chunky, but I'm worried she can detect that I'm thinking it, so I think it just to test her out and then I regret it in case she's really magical and ends up thinking that I think she's flabby even though she's not. See? Creepy.

And the Jehovah's Witness? No creeps there, none whatsoever. She can hand me her pamphlet, and I can hand her my pamphlet, and she can hand me her pamphlet, and I can hand her my pamphlet, and she can hand me her pamphlet, and I can hand her my pamphlet and, so on and so forth.

So. Tell me. Who works next door to you?