In a recent installment of the project called
”
moving into our house,
”
a project that has lasted more than 10 years, otherwise known
as
”
going through boxes,
”
I discovered one of the rare white elephant gifts I’ve received
that has not been re-gifted.
I’ve kept it for several years because I love it for what it
is
– and for what it reminds me of. Here is its story:
In a recent installment of the project called “moving into our house,” a project that has lasted more than 10 years, otherwise known as “going through boxes,” I discovered one of the rare white elephant gifts I’ve received that has not been re-gifted.
I’ve kept it for several years because I love it for what it is – and for what it reminds me of. Here is its story:
The second and last Christmas I worked for Edie, things had already started to go downhill. She was still charming and glamorous and my co-workers at the association were still intelligent, interesting and underemployed.
But the work I was doing, figuring out how to get more graduates to join the association, bored me cross-eyed. I should have been good at it but I would never know because I couldn’t focus on it for more than five minutes at a time.
I had been trained to do this kind of work but it didn’t matter. I surfed the Internet most of each day knowing I was screwing up but not knowing what to do next.
My boss, Edie, didn’t help. For all her glamour and charm, as a boss she was inconsistent and quixotic, micromanaging and nitpicking, and – I began to see – an accomplished brown nose. At our weekly one-on-ones, she tried to tell me tactfully I needed to do better. I just wanted to talk about shoes, or, if truly desperate, the declining health of our respective parents. Anything but work.
And so we came to the night of the holiday party and gift exchange. Most of her staff were there: the pudgy gay designer, his boss, the delightful facilities planner, the products manager; the rest blur together by now. I knew that at least the products manager and the head of the design department shared my irritation at Edie. But they weren’t floundering in their jobs.
I sat there, knowing I was among friends but still wishing I were anywhere else. The room was hot and the gift exchange chaotic. Some of the group had already had too much wine, which brought the noise level up. And Edie’s 5-year-old boy suddenly decided he wanted to join the fun.
He interjected himself into the calculus of the gift exchange with, of course, no comprehension but unstoppable enthusiasm. His gift, wrapped in newspaper, turned out to be an airplane he had made out of a wine cork tacked to a small piece of wood for the wings. It was perfect.
I suddenly shook off my stupor and concentrated everything I had on engineering the exchange to get that airplane. Luckily nobody else really wanted it so it looked like I was just being gracious to the lad. By the end of the process, it was mine.
I suspended it from the ceiling of my beautiful, well-furnished, cage-like office. The monofilament cord from which it floated didn’t show, so it seemed to actually fly in the gentle office drafts, reminding me that creativity, freedom and escape were out there, somewhere.
