Coffee Helps

I started an elastic band ball on my desk at work this week.

 

It began with two bands I found in my desk drawer. It is now roughly the size of a golf ball. I have tended to it on a daily – sometimes hourly – basis, with the help of the postman, our suppliers, and of course Dell, who send us rubber-banded bundles of useless information approximately every 20 seconds. Lovingly, and with the excitement of a new parent, I am watching its steady and rapid growth.

It got noticed for the very first time yesterday, by the Happy Rep who was chatting to Zed and I at my desk. He enquired about the ball, and nodded approvingly when I explained its recent arrival.

“Our receptionist has one on her desk, too,” he says conversationally. “It’s sort of got a bit out of control.”

We look at my little elastic band ball. It seems fairly harmless. Difficult to imagine how it could get out of control. It is, after all, a ball of elastic bands.

“Ahhhhh!” says the Happy Rep knowingly, “just you wait!”

It turns out that the receptionist’s band-ball had become so large that it started rolling around all over the front reception desk, occasionally leaping off it altogether and attacking innocent passers-by. The Happy Rep is making gestures with his hands to show us exactly how enormous this monster has become. If his indications are accurate, it is the size of an overweight Pitbull Terrier. I have no reason not to believe him.

“But they got it under control eventually,” he says reassuringly, seeing Zed and I looking dubiously and nervously at my baby band-ball. “They made it a wee stand out of papier maché. Now it’s the talking point of the office.”

Sometimes I worry about people I come into contact with through work.

But mostly I worry about myself. And the fact that I want my band-ball to grow to be bigger than the Happy Rep’s company’s receptionist’s band-ball.

Filed under: conversations, elastic bands, sheer silliness, weird, work