Another day

A.K.A: "A million little inaccuracies"
by Ivan Saldarriaga
Disclaimer: After reading...gosh I know you've already heard it from me... A million little pieces, let's just say I was inspired...

I breathe in deep, mentally going through worst case scenarios in order to brace myself for whatever episode is about to occur. I have just come home from work, a long, exhaustive 12 hour stretch at the cramping cubicle they stick us interns at. They say that it’s one of the largest corporations of the world, but we certainly wouldn’t know that by the five by five cages. The computer itself takes up about half the space in that damned compartment, leaving me with barely enough room to yawn.

Actually the day’s problems all began with that dumb computer. This was the second day of work and all the interns were being introduced to the computer network system, a pretty ordinary procedure really, just a matter of inputting a password here and a user ID there and boom, good to freaking go. Well that was the idea. Everyone’s login worked like clockwork. Just following the directions we were handed:

1. User Id is just first six letters of last name and first initial: ok, no sweat, typetty type type type.

2. Password is just going to be first two letters of mother’s maiden name and six digit birthday: again, not bad, a little weird since I don’t remember giving them my mother’s name at all, but a company this big, with enough power to take over a small third world country, they probably have the resources to look up someone’s mother. So again, typetty type type type.

I look around; everyone’s doing great, like they were born knowing how to do this crap. I’m a little slower, I just didn’t want to make a mistake and look stupid. Who does, right? Well, I put in my user ID: bloomt. Not bad, pretty much half way there. Then I start with my mother’s maiden name. Ok that’s Isley, now the first two letters, “I” and “s”. Great, now my birthday, ok that’s just “042385”. I hit enter and wait and I allow the computer to load my information. By this point I’m feeling pretty slick.

Then, the shit hits the fan. The worst message imaginable pops up: “Invalid Password”. Crap, I could’ve sworn I had typed it in right. I try it again. Same message: “Invalid Password”. Damn it. I one more time, carefully and deliberately, punch in the password, one character at a time. Again, the same message, with an evil twist. “Invalid Passport: Locked 1 minute”. I run through a long list of curses in my head as the login screen counts down from one minute. I look around; everyone’s freaking having a ball with their computer by now. I look at the empty password line with the blinking cursor, mocking me with every wink. I close my eyes, and try to compose myself. I hate asking for help.

“So, did any of you guys have trouble logging on?” I tried to phrase it so I could ask for help without explicitly asking for it.

“Nope, it worked fine for me,” they all chorused.

“Oh, ok,” damn, none of them caught on that I needed help. “Think one of you guys could help me out?”

They all looked at each other as if I had just said a botched joke. Super, so much for not looking stupid. One of them finally stood up and came over. We went through the directions, with him reading them out to me, slowly and steadily, just in case my problem was in the not understanding of the directions whose simplicity was only matched by the instructions on Pop-tart packages. We went through it warily, typing in the user ID and password. I held my breath as he pushed “Enter”. But the same damn message that popped on the screen took out all the air I had in me. It popped up with an additional message of “Locked 3 minutes”. Crap, it’s getting worse.

“Are you sure you know your mother’s maiden name?” Is he serious? Did he just really ask me that? Would I get fired if I slap that dumb head of his?

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I do.”

“Well, maybe you should call your supervisor.” Great, second day of work, and I’m already having to involve my superiors.

“I guess so…”

So, I called up my superior, but nothing came out of it except the eventual message of “Locked 15 minutes”. Poor supervisor was even more lost than I was. He asked only one question though: “You sure you got your mother’s maiden name right?”

Next idea was calling IT help. Supervisor Ned dialed in and, of all things, got transferred to India. Beautiful, I’m making this damn login an international affair, if I’m not careful, I could get us somehow involved in another world war. After a while though, I see Ned’s once optimistic smile melt into an expression of confusion. He says, “Maybe you should talk to him about this issue.” Sure, why not?

“Hello?”

“Hello! Yes? Tyler?” asked the IT guy with a slight Indian accent.

“This is he,” I sheepishly replied back to the man half of a world away. At that moment, I didn’t even have the patience or the presence of mind to think about him in a completely different culture than me, in a completely different time zone. I didn’t even try to imagine him in his own small cubicle, thinking about what small dinner he was going to share with his family.

“Ok, now tell me your mother’s maiden name.”

“Isley”

“Nope, that’s not it.”

Could this guy be serious? “I’m pretty sure it’s Isley.”

“Well that’s not what we have. Tell me your birthdate.”

“Four, twenty three, of eighty five.”

“No, that’s not what we have either. Sorry.”

“Are you serious? That’s my birthday, man, I should know.” I wasn’t thinking if he rode his bike to work, or just caught the crowded buses I see all the time on TV shows about India. I was just thinking about punching him. “Can’t you tell me what you have, so that I can at least just login?”

“Sorry, we can’t do that. What if you are not Tyler Bloom? You see, I have no way of knowing. Very sorry, have a good day now.” Yeah, it’s only now that I start to wonder about him, his very, very different life.

At that time, my supervisor and I consulted with each other, and we despairing concluded that we had to go to my supervisor’s supervisor. A gorgeous start for me.

We walk to her office and knock on the door. We hear a “Come in” and walk into the dark office; she only had her desk lamp shining. We explain to her my problem.

“And right now, the computer’s sitting there, saying, ‘Locked for 30 minutes’,” I told her.

She asks for my name and gives an, “Ohh,” as she begins to shuffling through some papers spread across her desk.

“Oh, why I thought we notified you about the change,” she tells me. “We sent you an email telling you that we had changed your password from using your mother’s maiden name and birth date to 1-2-3-4-5. You should have received an email.”

“Which email address did you send it to?”

“To your company email.”

“Isn’t that only accessible through the company’s intranet?”

“Yes it is. Oh, I see, I’m very sorry. You had to be logged on in order to receive the email. Well, glad we sorted this out.”

“Yeah, so am I,” I said. I walked slowly back to my desk, feeling, with a certain degree of certitude, that I had just wasted 3 hours of my life. I sat down, and logged in, as easy a pie, as if I was born knowing how to do this stuff.

After two hours of completing all the preliminary forms, I found myself idly sitting at my desk, completely bored. My internet access was still in the process of being set up, a process of 24-48 hours and my supervisor had very little idea on how he could use me. So, I sat there. Taskless. Internetless. Importantless.

The rest of my afternoon was taken up by my frequent visit to get complimentary coffee (which subsequently caused frequent visits to the bathroom) and listening to my fellow interns talk. And, Chrissake, they could not shut up about this one topic. About how they were, “Sooo bogged down right now. You have no idea how busy I am, man my supervisor took me for a tour of the plant, and I’ve already started working on four of the machines in the plant. Man, if he were to ask me what their names were, I wouldn’t be able to tell you, but I sure could tell you what they do har…har…har.” And on and on and on…

I walked out today with a piercing headache and a strong desire to run away. Maybe the west coast, I hear the sushi’s good there.

But as I was driving home, I started bracing myself for what I knew was coming, the worst part of my day. There’d been activity I’ve been trying to evade for as long as I can remember in my family. An event whose core principles I grapple with whenever it is mentioned. An event that causes my stomach to turn into knots and makes me light headed: Confessions. I’d managed to postpone the activity for about a year. But mom will only yield so much, and I’d reached the limit, hell, maybe even passed it. Why you might ask, must a grown man be forced to confess? But, you see, as far as my mom is concerned, she IS the Roman Catholic Church, and as she has always said, “Never question the Catholic church, that’s blasphemy!” Instead of getting the same old speech of my burning in purgatory for the off chance of skipping one another confession appointment, I got home in time to pick her up. We drove silently in the car, I was still “decompressing” from work, and she…well, honestly, I can never really tell what she thinks about.

But through my mind, these rebellious thoughts began to emerge. I consider my age; I’m practically a damn adult now. Shouldn’t I be able to say whether I want to confess what I did to someone? I begin to think about the implications of confession without the true conviction to repent. Isn’t that the greatest sin of all? The lying to a priest, telling him that you completely and agonizingly repent the things you are uttering to him, when, deep down in your heart, you know well that you feel no true remorse, and, very likely, you’re going to do many of the things you tell him in a matter of hours? Aren’t these great sins in themselves? As I began to ponder these thoughts, I slowly grew braver. I began to develop a flawless argument to present to my mother. One involving God’s gift of choice, sin, and my being on average a good enough guy to not need to confess. As my argument grew, my rehearsed speech for the priest began to escape me. All those carefully crafted lines about, “Forgive me father, but I have had impure thoughts,” delicately intertwining with, “I have not been honoring my father and mother,” slowly began to disappear.

But as we neared the church, this argument dissolved away in the dark crevices of my mind; ;leaving me with nothing but nervous emptiness.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I turned to my mother and said, “Mom, I don’t think I’m going to confess today, I’m really tired, and plus it’s not right that-“

Her silence cut me off. I don’t exactly know what it was, maybe it was her steely, cold gaze piercing my heart like a freaking dagger, or maybe it was her bone while knuckles tightly grasping her umbrella in a menacing way, or perhaps it was because she somehow communicated to me without even uttering a word, “You better walk your butt into that church, get confessed, or I will yell to the top of my lungs in front of everyone!”. Whatever it was, the message was crystal clear: I was going to be getting confessed, whether or not I wanted to.

As I walked in, eagerly urged in by my mom’s cold stare, I saw there was someone standing in front of the confessional. I gave out a quick sigh of relief, seeing this as my opportunity to rehash some of what I was going to be telling the priest. The man turned around, looked at me, looked at the confessional, asked if I was going to confess? Before I could manage a “yes”, my mom answered for me, “He most certainly is. Now, are you in line?”

“Why no, your son can go right ahead.” You have no idea what kind of disservice you’re doing to me, man. I looked down at my feet, letting myself come to terms with what I had to do, and let my legs start taking me into the confessional.

Once inside, I drew a complete blank of what to say. I began saying things I wasn’t even sure were sins, but I said them anyways in order to avoid silent moments. I started confessing about not doing well in school, about bad grades, about days I slept in. I started confessing about looking lustfully at girls, professors, cartoons. I told him what I thought of my supervisor, and my supervisor’s supervisor, about my co-interns. I told him how I felt on rainy days, about watching Braveheart 8 times, about what I felt about my upcoming graduation. I even told the poor man how I felt about small dogs (man, I hate small dogs).

Once I felt like I had run out of things to say and confess about, I sat there, and waited for my penance. Instead, there came only silence from the priest. I peeked up, looked at him, and saw his eyes closed and saw him mouthing softly some prayers. I looked down at my hands, and began, of all things to wonder where I had gotten that reddish bump on my pinky. My attention shifted from the quiet priest to my pinky. The more I looked at it, the more it itched. I didn’t want to scratch it, I didn’t want to make any noise. So I just sat there, in front of the silent priest as he probably contemplated just what he was supposed to make of what I said, and I just looked at my hand, hoping that the red bump wasn’t poison ivy. Damn it, I bet I got it while I went running the other day. Damn it, I just said damn it in front of a priest. Just then, the priest looked up. Damn it, he read my mind.

“Well, I believe the important thing to consider here is that you have the will to confess. Nobody is forced to come in here without the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.” I began to laugh inside. My mom forced me into this, you telling me, father, my mother’s the Holy Spirit inspiring me to confess? I began to laugh inside. I could hardly contain myself, and almost started choking on my own laughs. In order to try to ease the situation a bit, I put my head down and looked back at my hand. Damn poison ivy.

I guess the father mistook my quick laughing spasm as me getting ready to sob, because he quickly dispatched with a Hail, Mary and told me to try to think of God more often in my life. I quickly promised I would and scooted out, giving him an awkward handshake.

I picked up my mom and left the church. We were both silent on the way back home, lost in our own thoughts. In hers, I think she was proud of herself. Proud to consider herself a good enough catholic mother to be able make her only son confess. My thoughts were still on what the priest told me, about the Holy Spirit. I looked over at my mom, and saw a faint glimmer of a smile on her face. Yeah, unmistakable, there is a bit of holiness surrounding her. I begin to smile too, larger than my mother’s smile, much larger. The memory of the day’s events floods through my mind. I consider each event carefully, like a butterfly collector carefully observing his fragile specimens; I tenderly looked over my day, sure to not disrupt any of the delicate experiences. As I ease the car into driveway, I take all of these memories of today and gently put them away. I’m finished with them. I lean over and kiss my mom and the cheek, surprising her slightly, and give out a soft laugh. Maybe my mom knew what I was thinking, maybe she somehow realized just how weird some days can be, or maybe she had a secret she was keeping from me. Whatever it was, she just looked back at me, and gave out a small laugh before she got out of the car, leaving me with a another day behind me and a promise to consider thinking more of God in my life.