The Beholder

"I have an eye for spotting men with designs. I have a sense for all the obvious signs. And pal, I know when someone's feeding me lines! Don't feel too bad; you had your try. You have the touch, but not with me! I have an eye." -- Lucie Arnaz

That quote sums up yesterday morning, and as such, it was a pretty amazing morning. Then I went to make copies. Scanned my document, asked for 60 collated and stapled copies, wandered away, wandered back, found the thing jammed and beeping on copy 47.

I'm unnaturally gifted at fixing copiers, so like any engineer with too much time on her hands, I peeled off my sweater, dropped to my knees, and popped the casing open. I twisted knobs, I flipped switches, I slid trays, and I found all the usual problem areas blissfully clear of paper. Then I noticed that one of my documents had been shredded in the narrow crevasse between the stapling tray and the output tray. And after a few moments of fruitless exploration, I realized that the machine manufacturers didn't account for paper ever getting jammed there.

I have thin arms and long fingers, so I was able to carefully reach inside the machine to tease the paper free in pieces. The jammed area had lots of sharp parts and little room for error, though, so I emerged from the experience with my right hand bleeding in four places. Open wounds aren't a good thing to have in my work environment, so I washed, treated, and bandaged my hand before returning to clinic. It looked pretty strange, but I swore off handshakes for the day and trusted people to not draw attention to it.

Then I got the hiccups. Big, scary, near-constant hiccups that refused to go away even after several hours. I held my breath, I swallowed three times, I drank water upside down, rightside up, and with a spoon in the glass, I endured countless colleagues jumping out of the shadows to spook me. Nothing worked, so I just came to terms with the fact that I'd have to talk to people around hiccups all day.

I perfected a little speech: "Hi, my name is Ashley. Before we speak about the research, you'll have to excuse me if [hic] I need to pause every sentence or so. I've had the hiccups all day [hic] and they won't go away." People tolerated it for the most part, surprisingly -- they laughed if I laughed first, but they had the grace to ignore my hiccuping if I didn't draw attention to it.

Then, at the very end of the day, after I had been speaking for several hiccupy minutes, one woman burst into hysterics. "Oh my god, this is terrible!" she said between giggles. "I can't believe you've been working like this all day!"
"It's been an interesting day."
"And if you don't mind me asking, what happened to your hand?"
I flexed my heavily bandaged appendage. "I had an altercation with the copy machine."
"Oh boy. You know what you need to do? You need to go home and go to bed before anything else happens to you today. Just get rid of August 20th a little earlier than usual and hope that August 21st is better."

I'm usually the one who sits in exam rooms and dispenses information to people, so to have it turned around on me was a peculiar change. Her treatment plan worked wonders, though -- I decided not to work overtime, declined happy hour with my colleagues, went home, changed into my oldest nightgown, and watched hours of Project Runway in the air conditioning. I woke up this morning with no hiccups and four beautifully formed scabs on my right hand.