Excess Travel, part three

Walking through the front door, D.R. met D.C. and myself with wonderful name tags, our first name emblazoned on them in bold, bold print. While better than serial numbers (no, I will not answer to “Big 1600.” Boy howdy, did I love high school.), I jot a mental note (in effect, thinking obsessively until it blends into the continuous background thoughts that plague me) to remove the label if I venture beyond the TS conference rooms or the bathroom.

I believe it was law school that conditioned me to take, take, take. At least in the realm of free food. Lunch was a nice spread of various sandwich breads, lunchmeats, salads, vegetable sandwich toppings, sandwich spreads (raspberry horseradish, really?), and those ever-loveable potato chips. Even though I wasn’t that particularly hungry, I still piled on the food, believing that the meeting would start at any second. Kaiser roll, eight slices of ham and turkey, thin onion slices, fresh green lettuce leaves, and a healthy dollop of that raspberry horseradish. Delectable, and served to distend my gut. Also lots and lots of caffeine. I want to get wired for the gambling, because there are borderline mental problems, and I need every aid I can find to combat the serial madness.

We broke and re-assembled in the meeting room. G.H., R.P. and I took a seat off to the far left, about as far away from the main entrance as you could manage. We were all provided by the casino a notepad, pen, and free individually wrapped Tic Tac Slivers. Yes, individually wrapped. I do not know if you have ever had any of them, but they are about the width of my pinky nail all around, and a tremendous waste of wrapping. Bronzed for the orange inside. I ate about fifteen in five minutes and accumulated an unkempt pile to my right. G.H. had one, left the wrapper neatly at his hand. R.P. did eat a fair amount, though he spread out his consumption over the course of the meeting, and the bowl was also right in front of him.

Now, let’s be honest. The main reason for holding a company meeting inside a casino/hotel is to gamble. J.F. was the first speaker, and probably the first to inform us that T.S. did not advocate gambling in any fashion (an airtight legal disclaimer if ever I had the opportunity to state one). Didn’t know what to expect, but I figured it would be straightforward and full of useful information that I would forget within ten minutes of leaving the room.

After a few more introductory statements, they named all of the experience employees hired over the course of the half year. Then, C.:. told all of us we were to introduce ourselves to the group.

Jigga what?

I was fourth on the list, and so three other people spoke before me. All very accomplished, comprehensive introductions. These people belonged, or at least made a good show of faking it. Meanwhile, I can feel my heart slamming against my ribs, and my palms soaking through the tablecloth, as I’m desperately trying not to fly out of there, or vomit, or fly out of there while vomiting. I believe they term such an action the “vomit comet”?

In hindsight, though not as accomplished as the other speakers, my journey from undergraduate to TS is definitely far from ordinary, and I should’ve just rolled with that, giving the entirety of my mad journey. Or, I could’ve made up a new life story, had I not been freaking out. Off the top of my head, I failed to graduate from undergraduate with a degree in math, coming up two classes short. Instead, I went to work as a garbageman in Baltimore City for several years, before I realized the error of my ways, and transferred into the actuarial division of an insurance company. After tiring of the grind of guessing when people were going to die, I finished off the degree and decided to start at TS. Instead, it came out something like this:

K.T.: Hi, I’m [K.T.], I’m boring, I have black hair. If you have any questions, I’m going to defer to [D.C.].

Then, C.L. let’s loose the bomb, that I’ve been to law school. Well, there ain’t no way I can dodge it now, much as I’d love to. Tarnation. “They” tell me there will come a day when I can stand tall and proud of my postgraduate degree, and I won’t attempt to hide it from people. Until then, I do what I can to avoid telling people, even if it means telling them I’m [short], dark and boring.