A lady at work comes up and asks, “I need to borrow a pen.”

I point to the coffee mug atop the partition separating me from the rest of the planet. It’s replete with blue pen.

She asks, “No, I need a black pen.”

Then she’s using my black pen. The one I keep right next to my legal pad, right next to my Post-Its, right next to my big dumb body. Right in front of me, she’s scribbling on a sheet of whatever-it-is that’s apparently important enough to spark off a martial arts fracas in the workplace.

I use judo, she uses karate. Judo is the superior fighting style because of the diverse array of chops at one’s disposal. Karate’s fine, there’s just a lesser emphasis on the chopping and I like to chop, okay? It’s a personal preference, deal with it.

Anyway, we’re flipping about, doling out a hundred thousand skull-shattering kicks per second. We’re running up walls and punching support beams in half and smashing all sorts of office equipment to bits. A crowd gathers because of all the righteous moves. They’re pretty impressed, avoiding grievous injury by mere centimeters, shooing away sparks from all the fireballs so their sweaters don’t whoosh into flames. Not a bad Thursday at the office, right?

So eventually I’m charging up this stupid-powerful final attack, right? A cosmic laser beam type thing I’ve been working on for a while. I’m on fire and screaming and my hair’s all standing on end and turning gold and whatnot. The crowd’s losing it. My years and years and years of grueling training are about to pay off big time, you know?

I guess the lady finishes off that dumb paper with her signature or whatever because she puts the black pen back on what’s left of my desk like it’s nothing. “There ’ya go,” she says.

And then she goes and just walks off.

I’m halfway embarrassed, halfway super-pissed. I power down the cosmic laser beam type thing. The crowd’s bummed out. There’s nothing to see here. They head back to work all sullen and disappointed, and I’m like, “Same, guys. Same.” There’s grumblings of pastries in the admin commons too, so I get it. I’d want to be first to that last cheese Danish if I too bore witness to such an astonishing anticlimax.

Back at my desk, which now I’m all regretful for blasting in two with an unbelievably savage judo chop, I’m this close to reporting that lady to HR for taking my stuff.

Even though she set it back down right where she’d found it.

Even though she kind of said thank you kind of I guess.

Even though she’s probably perfectly nice once you get to know her or whatever.  Still though, you can’t just take people’s stuff. That sucks. It blows chunks, man. Get your own stuff.

Anyways, I toss a couple black pens in the coffee mug atop the partition I mentioned earlier in case that lady ever decides she wants to tussle with such an accomplished judo guy like me ever again.