A lady at work comes up and asks, \u201cI need to borrow a pen.\u201d<\/p>\n
I point to the coffee mug atop the partition separating me from the rest of the planet. It\u2019s replete with blue pen.<\/p>\n
She asks, \u201cNo, I need a black pen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then she\u2019s 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\u2019s scribbling on a sheet of whatever-it-is that\u2019s apparently important enough to spark off a martial arts fracas in the workplace.<\/p>\n
I use judo, she uses karate. Judo is the superior fighting style because of the diverse array of chops at one\u2019s disposal. Karate\u2019s fine, there\u2019s just a lesser emphasis on the chopping and I like to chop, okay? It\u2019s a personal preference, deal with it.<\/p>\n
Anyway, we\u2019re flipping about, doling out a hundred thousand skull-shattering kicks per second. We\u2019re 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\u2019re pretty impressed, avoiding grievous injury by mere centimeters, shooing away sparks from all the fireballs so their sweaters don\u2019t whoosh into flames. Not a bad Thursday at the office, right?<\/p>\n
So eventually I\u2019m charging up this stupid-powerful final attack, right? A cosmic laser beam type thing I\u2019ve been working on for a while. I\u2019m on fire and screaming and my hair\u2019s all standing on end and turning gold and whatnot. The crowd\u2019s losing it. My years and years and years of grueling training are about to pay off big time, you know?<\/p>\n
I guess the lady finishes off that dumb paper with her signature or whatever because she puts the black pen back on what\u2019s left of my desk like it\u2019s nothing. \u201cThere \u2019ya go,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
And then she goes and just walks off.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m halfway embarrassed, halfway super-pissed. I power down the cosmic laser beam type thing. The crowd\u2019s bummed out. There\u2019s nothing to see here. They head back to work all sullen and disappointed, and I\u2019m like, \u201cSame, guys. Same.\u201d There\u2019s grumblings of pastries in the admin commons too, so I get it. I\u2019d want to be first to that last cheese Danish if I too bore witness to such an astonishing anticlimax.<\/p>\n
Back at my desk, which now I\u2019m all regretful for blasting in two with an unbelievably savage judo chop, I\u2019m this close to reporting that lady to HR for taking my stuff.<\/p>\n
Even though she set it back down right where she\u2019d found it.<\/p>\n
Even though she kind of said thank you kind of I guess.<\/p>\n
Even though she\u2019s probably perfectly nice once you get to know her or whatever.\u00a0 Still though, you can\u2019t just take people\u2019s stuff. That sucks. It blows chunks, man. Get your own stuff.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anyway, we\u2019re doling out a hundred thousand skull-shattering kicks per second. Running up walls and punching support beams in half and smashing office equipment to bits. A crowd gathers because of all the righteous moves. They\u2019re pretty impressed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":23418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","writer-nick-gregorio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22481"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23419,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22481\/revisions\/23419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}