And This is Ed

And This Is Ed By J.D. Walker I feel invisible, most days. I work in an office so deep in the bowels of my building, it makes that guy from the movie Office Space look like he works in a castle. Okay, so yes, I managed the housekeeping staff, and our supplies were housed down there, too, but still. Whenever I attended a head-of-department meeting on the top floor, most of the other managers treated me like the bastard child of a hundred crazies, or whatever. No wonder Freddie Krueger went nuts. It was the same at office parties. I would be introduced to a new staff member as, “Oh, and this is Ed.” Then someone would inevitably crack a joke about needing to take out the trash and hand me an empty can. I was rarely amused but I never reacted. My job wasn’t glamorous. Fine. I’d like to see them try to do if for eight hours. There were times I thought that I’d get my revenge by not having offices cleaned for a day or two, just to see how they liked it. But then my sense of duty would overcome my vindictiveness. Damn it. One of my other sins, apparently, was that I didn’t talk much about myself. I flew under the radar at work, and remained calm in the face of the worst insults they could invent. My “peers” assumed that, because I didn’t drive a fancy car or brag about a big screen TV or hot date, that I should be written off as uninteresting. What could I possibly have to offer, or some such nonsense. The truth of it? I was a private person, and I didn’t feel the need to spread my personal stuff around to all and sundry. Because of that little quirk, I was labeled a nonentity and boring. Barely tolerated, as though I didn’t have any right being treated as an equal. I was a pretender, in their eyes. It wasn’t everyone, really. Mainly the maintenance and security heads and assistants who gave me the most grief. But I could handle their ignorance and childish behavior. I knew who I was, and didn’t need their approval or to be part of their “in” club. Though it would be nice not to have my guard up all the time at work, bracing for a taunt of some kind. My mother used to say, “Forget that crap about limes and lemonade. Oranges are much sweeter!” Whether or not I’ll ever fully understand that gem of wisdom, I simply went my own way, did my job well, and sidestepped the idiots whenever I could. Thus, when an anomaly in my sphere of existence showed up one day, I was totally unprepared for my world to be turned upside down.