Clockwatching

Excerpted from the up-coming memoir, "The Twilight Paralegal":

My identification card has expired. The old ID saw me through the first 13 of my 14 months here. Now they want me to turn in my expired card before I can get a new one, but I'll be damned if I'm going to wear a name-tag while they switch it over. The indignity of it all! I must now do battle with the head of the guards, a Nigerian who considers it great sport to call me by the name of a former Israeli prime minister (with whom I share a phonetically similar surname). Every time he does this, which is every time he sees me, he laughs exactly three times. Hah hah hah. How I will miss that magnificent bastard.

My new card, which I will have for one month, expires in 2009. Do they know something I don't? Barring that, a baker's dozen of work days is the barrier between me and the guys who sit out in front of Union Station with Dixie cups. Up here in the fortress of solitude (a.k.a. my seventh floor cubicle), all is peaceful. Padded walls of fabric and acoustical tiling bound my work existence. Looking around at the detritus of 13 months of work, pens and papers and post-it notes and other non-alliterative items, I spy an old yogurt container. Yes, that was a good yogurt. Banana and strawberry are a winning combination.

If I left my cubicle and walked down the hall, I would see the sun shining. It's 3:41 on a Monday afternoon. Maybe I should do some work today. Or perhaps I will continue to create small sculptures out of binder clips or mold paper clips into whimsical animal shapes. I already have a rabbit and a giraffe. I must now ponder the similarity in form and function between a staple remover and a saber-toothed tiger.

So many questions remain about the world, none of which have been answered by my time in the law biz. Will there ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark? Will actress Selma Blair ever smile? Can I ever find a work activity more professionally satisfying than using the automatic stapler? Despair.