The Medicis Couldn't Take a Joke

A couple days ago, Donald stopped by my desk to talk to me a bit more about miming. He was a bit saddened to see that I'd taken one of the many and various screens and turned it into a temporary wall around my cubicle. I could see in his eyes that he knew that meant our days of discussing the art of mime, an art form he outwardly detested but that I suspected secretly held a special place in his heart. He also relished the ingenuity of finding something in the environment and turning it to good use.

"Jesus Christ," he says, scratching his forearm and mussing the little bit of hair on his mostly bald head. "This is fucking brilliant! Why didn't I think of that? We have so many of these screens just laying around . . . I mean, they were right here all the goddamn time!"

The conversation then somehow rolled downhill like farm boys in a tractor tire to wind up in an elaborate one-man show in which Donald pretended to be an enemy of the ancient Florentine Medici family. He told joke after horrible improvised joke about how the Medicis just can't take a joke and don't like to be publicly humiliated. I caught myself looking at him and thinking, "Where the hell am I?!" It really made no sense whatsoever, but I laughed and laughed anyway because that's what I do when my I feel that awkward inside.

A short while later, I tried to steer him back onto a somewhat relevant subject, and I mentioned a project that I and a co-worker are working on.

"How's it coming along?" he asked.

"We're ahead of schedule. Should be done early to middle of next week."

"Good God! Shit! You guys are fast! I really didn't screw up when I hired the two of you!"

And the implication was as clear as the windows we'd all thought about jumping out of at one time or another . . . he was finally acknowledging just how many shitheads he'd hired to work at AII.