Foot Bone Connected to the Head Bone

No one can make me happy about working at my crummy job.

For the past few months, due to mismanagement and bad planning, my job has been a brutal nightmare. If I were not already highly skilled and efficient at what I do, I would surely have fallen apart. But the fact that I can make up for failures elsewhere in The Corporation doesn't mean I want to, or that I enjoy it, or that I should have to. I have complained about this all I dare in previous posts, so some who are reading this now are aware of my attitude. I'm a little grumpy.

Now, things are more or less back to normal and I don't have to use my super powers to get the work done, and this annoys me, too. Mind you, I don't take credit for this turn of events - it was just a happy accident. The various managers, supervisors, vice presidents and directors forgot to screw things up this month.

I refuse to act busy, so I find myself going around looking for things to do. At the Post Office or on a Teamster job, this might get me killed, but at my job they already think I'm a crazy misfit, so they barely notice.

I ran out of things to do by mid-afternoon, so I checked my email a thousand times, redesigned a form I want to start using, read a bunch of blogs and commented on a few, and then I just sat in my office for a while, sort of becoming one with the furniture. I tried to make my mind a blank, and it seemed to be working. But I looked in there and the thought that I found was this: I wonder if I can touch the top of my head with my big toe.

Think about it: The lowly foot getting to meet the head, home of the brain. They probably haven't seen each other since I was a very little baby, made of some kind of highly flexible rubber. The only communication they've had for all these years would be the brain sending down orders to walk, or run, or stop. One-way orders, no discussion, no compromise, no warning. The only way the foot would have had any input is if it sent pain signals, or if it simply broke. If I could touch my head with my foot it would be like a chauffeur getting a sit-down with the CEO. Who knows what good might come of it?

Remembering my psychocybernetics, though, I thought it would be the better part of valor to simply imagine vividly that I was touching the top of my head with my foot. Because as you know, the mind cannot distinguish between a real event and one vividly imagined, and besides, I didn't want to be carried out by my colleagues and driven to a hospital.

So I looked at my foot, gauged the distance and the bending that would be involved, and it only took a few seconds for me to say "Damn! I could actually do this."

Of course, that was just a theory, and it had to be tested. So I closed my office door, took off my shoes and got down on the floor, and yes, it turns out that I can touch the top of my head with my big toe. Not only that, but I can do it with either foot. OK, I admit I had to grab my ankle and drag my foot up there, and I can't put both feet up there at the same time, but what do you want? I'm putting it on my resume.

Sadly, the foot-brain conference did not take place. The foot got one look at the hideous haircut I got the other day, and went back to the garage, laughing.