ok, here’s this week’s unedited version of timeline. i highlighted the edited parts for everybody this time out but next week you’re on your own. - tms
BONUS: each week immediately flowing timeline will be a bonus snap fiction piece from a collection I keep under my bed called: “This Perfect World.”

Yeah, the women tear their blouses off
And the men, they dance on the polka dots.
— Leonard Cohen

10:a.m.: For starters, everybody can go to fuck themselves.
10:02 a.m.: Sales guy sits in the waiting area of our office and at the sight of me jumps up and shouts, “T-man, what’s going on? You look great! You are the ma—” and immediately collapses into a chair. “God, that took a lot out of me,” he says. Are you all right? I ask.
10:03 a.m.: “I’m sorry T, I couldn’t sustain it.” That’s OK, I say. The high-energy greeting will kill you. What were you thinking?
10:04 a.m.: “I’m just trying to be upbeat and stay positive,” he says. Why? I wonder. There’s nothing to be positive about.
10:05 a.m.: My boss is an idiot and his boss is an idiot and her boss is an idiot and his boss is an idiot…But I’m not an idiot. So what the hell am I supposed to do? Am I the only one in this predicament?
(I will keep trying get that one in/ts)
10:06 a.m.: Go over to my desk and take my Cub Scout uniform out of the dry-cleaning wrap. Everybody was supposed to bring in personal historic items today to hang up around the office Hard Rock-style, and this uniform is about all I have left from my glorious past.
10:07 a.m.: “I’ll take that,” says Carrot, who’s acting as the curator for the exhibit. “I know a spot where the light won’t fade the blue too much. Oh, you only have one merit badge?”
10:07:12 a.m.: So? “You were supposed to bring in something you’re proud of. Whatever,” she says, whisking it away.
10:15 a.m.: I take a quick look around to see what other people have brought in. There’s a paintball gun from a 2002 Urban Action Tournament in which Marti placed second and an old cassette tape recorder that our film reviewer used to interview Crispin Glover in 1999.
10:16 a.m.: Red carpet girl is trying to decide between the fairy wings she wore to the recent Renaissance festival or the Cher costume she wears to work every other day anyway. Music guy is pulling an outfit from a plastic tub. “This is what I wore to the final Phish concert,” he says. “I didn’t take these clothes off for six days.”
10:17 a.m.: And he apparently never washed them. The smell is ungodly. “Those stink! Hey, Curator Carrot, tell him that’s not going up on exhibit,” Tiara yells across the room.
10:20 a.m.: “Outside with it,” Carrot says, snapping her fingers.
10:21 a.m.: “That’s bullshit,” music guy says. “Nobody else has to have their stuff exhibited outside. Can’t we at least display it in the men’s room? You promised it would be part of the permanent collection.”
10:21:31 a.m.: “It will be, until some wild animals carry it off,” Tiara says.
11:04 a.m.: Tech girl is trying to position her Girl Scout sash, which is covered with 188 honor badges, right next to my Scout uniform.
11:06 a.m.: She’s trying to make me look bad because I have only one tiny merit badge. “Oh, I didn’t even notice,” she says, playing dumb. “I just thought it would be nice to have all the Scout stuff together. You really only got one merit badge? What was it for?”
11:07 a.m.: Saving a life! I saved a fucking life, that’s what it’s for. When they write up the little display card, it’s going to say, “Terry’s merit badge was for saving a fucking life!” and yours is going to say, “She got 188 merits for trivial things like cleaning out a birdcage and having her face painted.”
11:08 a.m.: “I’m proud of my accomplishments,” tech girl says.
12:02 p.m.: Carrot is removing our company “PRIDE” awards from a glass case to make room for her siren-red thigh-high boots. “They’re my ass-kicking Charlie’s Angels boots. On my last job, I wore them to work the day I knew I was going to get fired,” she says. You don’t seem like the type who gets fired, I say. What happened? Were you caught in a compromising position? “You’re the last person in the world I want to talk about positions with,” she retorts.
12:05 p.m.: Go to lunch to eat alone.
12:06 p.m.: HR guy sees me heading out and asks, “Mind if I tag along?” To eat or as a sociological experiment? I ask. “What?” he replies.
12:06:12 p.m.: Sure, come on, I say.
12:19 p.m.: “This isn’t working, is it?” HR guy asks.
12:19:12 p.m.: No, you should probably gather up your food and go.
12:20 p.m.: “You could have at least tried harder,” he says, scowling back at me.
12:20:49 p.m.: Hey, I say, I don’t go to lunch so I can fucking try harder.
12:21 p.m.: “Loser!” he says turning back at me with a scowl.
12:21:04 p.m.: Winner, I say.
12:21:16 p.m.: “What the hell are you talking about?” Yeah, you’re a winner. That’s what you are. A winner!
12:22 p.m.: “Why are you calling me a…” ‘Cause that’s what you are. You are a winner. You are the absolute best this world has to offer.
12:22:11 p.m.: “Fuck you, loser.”
12:22:09 p.m.: Fuck you, winner.
editor note: Terry, this winner loser transaction doesn’t make any sense to me.
reply: do me a favor and take everything out that “does” make sense to you , you fucking winner!

1:11 p.m.: Get back to office, and intern is wearing my Cub Scout uniform. Whoa, that’s just for show, I yell. “Yeah, I’m the show, baby,” she says, spinning around and strutting off.
1:12 p.m.: That’s just not right.
2:04 p.m.: New guy’s breakaway pants are going up over the entrance to the east wing. “I didn’t know you were on the basketball team,” supervisor says.
2:04:32 p.m.: “I wasn’t,” he replies.
2:04:55 p.m.: “So what the hell are you doing with breakaway pants?” supervisor demands. “You some kind of pervert?”
2:05 p.m.: “Yes.”
2:17 p.m.: Red carpet girl wants boss’ bright-orange hunting hat removed from over the copy machine. “It’s blinding me. What does he hunt with that, escaped prisoners?”
2:18 p.m.: “Squirrels,” Tiara says.
2:38 p.m.: People are starting to mess with other employees’ items. A temp just smashed the Crispin Glover cassette recorder, claiming it was following her everywhere, like the eyes in a creepy painting. Everyone thanks her.
2:41 p.m.: Curator Carrot doesn’t even notice what’s going on because she’s preoccupied with hooking up a small hammer to the glass case next to her boots. “I want to be able to smash the glass and rip out the boots fire-extinguisher-style in case of an emergency,” she explains. “You never know when you’re going to get fired. Could be any second now.”
3:01 p.m.: Go outside and read a magazine under a tree. Along the canal, I can see the new guy wearing the boss’ hunting cap and shooting at egrets with the paintball gun. “I’m using pink,” he proclaims, waving up at me. “I’m going to turn all those fuckers into flamingos.”
3:08 p.m.: Boss is heading toward his truck. “Yo, the intern looks hot in your Cub Scout uniform,” he says.
3:20 p.m.: Sales guy comes over and says, “Hey.”
3:20:30 p.m.: I see you have your greeting back down to an acceptable level, I say. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “What are you thinking about right this second?”
3:21 p.m.: I was wondering how early I’d have to get in tomorrow so I can be alone to put on that sash and feel what’s it’s like to strut around covered in real accomplishment for the first time in my life.
3:22 p.m.: “Yeah, I been thinking about wearing those boots and intimidating the shit out of people.”
3:23 p.m.: I want to tell him I don’t think the boots would work for him anymore than the sash would work for me or the fairy wings would change the boss (well, maybe), but I can’t stand the stink of dead Phish out here anymore. I’m only two trees down from what now looks like a tie-dyed lynching.
3:24 p.m.: As I stand up, sales guy is gazing out across the field toward the horizon. “These days,” he says. “It’s so hard to see your own future.”
3:24:04 p.m.: And then, he screams, and the left side of his face is instantly the most vibrant shade of pink I’ve ever seen.

Joy Ride
Kendra was in the 38th minute of what AAA said would be at most a 45-minute wait when she thought about reconsidering, thought about just watching the VH1 Behind the Music marathon. She wanted to see the one on Styx again.
But then the truck was out-front and the guy wasn’t even waiting for her. “Hey, hey,” she said, coming out of the duplex.
“Hey, yourself,” he said with his eyes fixed on the rigging and his hands jostling the chains.
She watched him hooking up her ’88 Civic and marveled that he was shorter than her, even with the 10-gallon hat. If someone asked her later, she would describe him as “not quite Guatemalan, but maybe.”
He had on a lot of that Southwest cowboy, kinda turquoise jewelry. She always thought those stones were pretty and she’d like to perhaps have one piece, one little turquoise adornment for certain occasions, but the rest of the world seemed to wear it to clunky excess. And to Kendra, that kind of ruined the thought of having even one tiny fragment of turquoise jewelry in her possession.
“Where we takin’ it?” the driver asked.
“Well,” Kendra said. “I got a mechanic.”
“Well,” the driver said, “where might he be?”
“Well,” Kendra said, “I wanted to check with you first. My parents got me this AAA Plus when I first started going to school here, which means I can be towed more than 10 miles with no extra charge, right? But I’m not sure what the limit is and I can’t pay any extra charges.”
When she first left Ohio to attend the University of Miami, her parents made sure she never had to worry about extra charges. “You just concentrate on school. Leave everything else up to us,” her father had said. But by the third semester, as her grades began to drop so did her parents’ financial support. And by the time she bombed out of UM and began attending Miami-Dade, she had to start working nights.
“You can go pretty far on the Plus,” is all the driver said.
“OK, I’ll get my things,” Kendra said, darting back into the duplex and returning in seconds with a small bag and a cell phone.
The driver wanted specific directions but Kendra told him it would be easier if she just showed him and climbed in. She appreciated the big bench seat that put plenty of distance between her and the driver, and except for pointing him here or there, she mainly sat quietly and stared out the window until the driver said, “We’re almost out of Broward County here.”
“Is that OK?’ Kendra said.
“Not really, how much further?” the driver asked.
When she didn’t answer right away, the driver said, “What’s wrong with the car?”
“Radiator,” Kendra blurted.
“That’s all,” he said. “Because I noticed when I was hooking up that the transmission is missing.”
“Oh yeah, that, too,” Kendra said matter-of-factly, her eyes staying glued to the window.
“You don’t have a mechanic, do you?” he asked.
“No,” she said immediately. “I always hear people say things like, ‘I’ll have to have my mechanic look at it on Tuesday,’ so I just kinda said that. Like people say my bakery or you have to go to my pizza place. But I don’t have a my anything down here.”
She told him briefly about how her boyfriend was going to swap out the tranny but she swapped him out before the job was completed, and how her hours got switched at the restaurant so now she was going to have to go to school at night when there’s just “a bunch of old people there taking computer classes.” So, she’s going back to Ohio before they shut the utilities off at her apartment and ...
“Lion Country Safari.”
“What?”
“I’m coming clean,” she said. “I just want to go to Lion Country Safari. I always hear about it but since I’ve been down here, I’ve never had the chance and ... ”
“You called a tow truck to go to Lion Country Safari?” the driver asked. “Nobody’s gonna tow you all the way to ... ”
“My plan was that I would get towed more than once. Is there a AAA limit to how many times you can get towed in one day?” she said, frowning at him.
The driver began talking to himself to get it straight. “So, you have a car towed that you have no intention of fixing and you figure every time a tow truck reaches its limit in miles, you’ll just call another tow truck. ... Am I even the first one? Was that your house back there in Dania or ... ”
“That was a friend’s. I actually live in Kendall. But you’re only the second one,” Kendra said, hoping that would make him feel special.
“It ain’t so great,” the driver said.
“What?”
“Lion Country. It kinda sucks. That’s what I hear anyways.”
“Kinda sucks doesn’t sound so bad,” Kendra said. “It’s a beautiful day.”
“That it is,” the driver said. “I did hear they won’t let people in with convertible cars or them old vinyl tops ’cause the monkeys or something will rip ’em up.”
“Really.”
“The baboons. That’s what I’m talking about.”
Kendra reached into her little bag and pulled out a Pepsi can with a Lion Country special offer on it. “I saw it on this can and just started daydreaming about it,” she said, holding it up. “I just decided I wanted to go before I head back to Ohio.”
They were well into Palm Beach County now and Kendra just watched the exits going by while holding her breath. The driver seemed to be shifting even when there were no higher gears to be found and every time there was a grinding sound, she took it for anger. But when he turned off Southern Boulevard and started heading west, she felt a happy tingle shoot up her spine, like the first time she ate a champagne blue Freeze-a-Pop.
“I’ve never been there, either,” the driver said. “I don’t know why. I took my boys on that wooden roller coaster up on I-95. That wasn’t much to speak of either but ... Answer me this: How were you going to get around the safari once you got dropped off? You can’t walk around in them wilds, you know.”
“You know what?” she said, grinning. “I pictured all these big yellow school buses lined up waiting to go through and I’d just kind of invite myself on and I’d squeeze in next to some girl named Ashley and we’d fight over window space and laugh our heads off at some rhinos having sex or something.”
“This is a good time a year for daydreaming,” the driver said.
“I get things in my head, that’s what happens,” Kendra said.
When they pulled in — 110 miles from the memory of Dania Beach — there were no big yellow school buses or even so much as a Little Dude Ranch Daycare van.
The driver paid and got $5 off with the Pepsi can. “There’s some snacks in the cooler behind the seat if you want,” the driver said. “Got some Nutter Butter in there and some fruit roll-ups.”
Kendra grabbed a berry fruit roll-up and asked the driver if he minded if she rode in her own car behind him. “The cassette player still works so I could listen to some music and my camera’s back there,” she said.
“Oh, OK. But keep the windows up,” the driver said as she climbed out. “Those baboons can get crazy.”