Metamfiezomaiophobia, or Something Akin to It

Today I was sitting at my desk, toiling away when Donald Marx (my boss) straggled out of his office, scratching his arm and picking at a scab. He looked around and saw me. I sit in the middle of the big open space in the office, so I'm kind of a sitting duck. Plus, I made the mistake of eye contact.

"Jack," he asks. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, like a nervous little kid. His eyes dart back and forth.

"Yes, Donald," I say, removing my headphones.

"Why do you think everyone hates mimes?"

Out of left field, you may think. But I've gotten used to this type of random conversation over the ears. I pretend like I'm mulling it over carefully before expounding, "I don't know, Donald."

And then he smiles and says, "I guess it's just because they're so goddamn annoying."

I half-laugh. "I suppose so," I say.

"I mean, I can really see how that would get under your skin, all that miming."

He does his best impression of a mime and the infamous "I'm inside an invisible box" mime because I guess if you think miming is annoying, the best thing to do is a lame imitation of a mime.

"Yeah . . ."

Don't know if I've told you this yet, but Helen, a co-worker of mine, is also Donald's girlfriend. So, she's not really a co-worker so much as a co-boss, but she's still technically a co-worker so I guess we're kind of equals although most of the time I think we're supposed to think of her as an extension of the boss, and to top it all off, she has one hell of a temper, so yeah . . . it's kind of messy.

So, right about the time our mime conversation is running fully out of gas, and Donald has just about run out of mime impressions, Helen storms out of her office in her holey tye-dyed shirt, black knee-length shorts, and flip-flops, her hair looking like it was styled by a hurricane and her face beet red. She stops and glares at Donald for a few seconds. He rolls his eyes at me before he turns and scurries off a few steps behind her, and they exit the office.