The Cubicle Next Door (9 page)

The giant stair stepper? “No.” The Incline, a bald scar drawn straight up the side of Rocky Mountain, was due to an old railway that used to run a cable car up to its top for tourists. The severity of the incline ranged from about 40 to 70 percent. And from what I understood, the entire hike consisted of climbing railroad ties all the way to the top.

“Want to?”

“Let me think about that for a minute. No.” Marathon runners jogged up the Incline for training. Military members hiked it for training. I’d never trained for anything in my life. Didn’t intend to now.

“What else are you going to do today?”

“I could do nothing and have a better time.”

“Come on. I bet the view is great from there.”

“I’ll bet it is too.”

“Are you afraid of a little hike?”

“No. I hike all the time. Now and then. Sometimes.”

“Where?”

“Mueller Park. The Black Bear Trail. When I can.”

“Then the Incline would be easy.”

I snorted.

“Really. It’s straight up. No figuring out which way to go. Just onward and upward with a view at the top.”

“I’ve lived here most of my life. I see mountains every day.”

“But have you ever seen the mountains from above?”

“I’ve seen them from below.”

“Totally different.”

“And how would you know?”

“Flying. During flight screening as a cadet.”

I’d walked right into that one.

“You’ve never flown over the mountains before? Ever?”

“I’ve flown, but it was always east. Over the plains.”

“Come on. Just one little hike.”

“One
big
hike. No thanks.” I stopped at a light and looked over at him.

He was looking at me with determination in his eyes. He wasn’t going to let it go.

I said the only thing I could think of. “So where did you fly?”

“Leadville. It’s where all the cadets go to solo. They give you a certificate for landing there. It’s the highest airport in the country, almost ten thousand feet.”

“My grandparents met in Leadville.”

“Was he a flier?”

I shook my head. “Grandmother lived there. Her father was a molybdenum miner.”

“I never say that word if I can help it.”

I felt my mouth twitch. Bit the inside of my lip to keep it from turning into a smile. “Grandfather was with the Tenth Mountain Division during WWII.”

“The skiing soldiers.”

“He joined up because he was a mountain climber, but he fell in love with skiing. After the war he came back, married Grandmother, and they helped run a ski resort.”

“So how come you guys are in Manitou and not up there in Vail or Aspen?”

“After he died she got tired of the winters. Moved down. Met Betty and Thelma and Adele. They’re all soldiers’ widows too.”

The light changed. I drove up the hill straight to Joe’s house.

“Are you sure you don’t want to hike it?”

“As sure as the last time you asked me.”

He got out, started to shut the door, and then stopped. Bent over so he could see me. “Don’t you get tired of viewing the world from the same angle all the time?”

“No. I never have.”

THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG

The view from here

What’s wrong with the view from here?

Why do people always think they need something new or something different?

What if I’m happy just the way I am? What if I’m content?

What if I like my life just the way it is?

Posted on June 25, in
The Cubicle Next Door | Permalink

Comments

Do you?

Posted by:
philosophie | June 25 at 12:04 PM

Forget everyone else. Do what you want.

Posted by:
beetru2u | June 25 at 08:58 PM

Nine

L
et’s go to the ramp.” Joe’s voice came from a spot somewhere above my head.

I looked up and saw him looking down at me over the top of the cubicle wall. “Would that be the Bring Me Men Ramp or the Core Values Ramp?” In a knee-jerk response to a sexual assault scandal, the Academy had removed the slogan “Bring Me Men…” from the ramp that led from the lower level of the complex to the terrazzo. The ramp was a key symbol for cadets. New basic cadets would march up the ramp to start their USAFA experience. Four years later they would march down as firsties, just before graduation.

Any feminist would only have had to read the following lines of the poem to understand the phrase was meant to be figurative, not literal. Even I could figure that out. But in politics, as in most things, it’s much easier to defend the black or white than it is the gray.

Joe mumbled something. I couldn’t hear what it was, but it almost sounded like a sneeze. He got off his desk and stalked down the hall.

I followed because I didn’t have anything better to do. Watching the year’s new basic cadets come in always made me think of the circuses in the old Roman Colosseum.

We took the stairs down several stories and surfaced on the second floor. Then we walked to the southern window-walled corridor and joined the crowd gathered at the western end.

We were late. Joe was tall enough to see over nearly everyone’s head, but I didn’t have that ability.

So I improvised.

I ducked into the Military Strategic Studies Department and went to chat with their systems administrator. I found him at his computer. “Hey, Dave.”

He turned around and swept a handful of dark hair back from his forehead. “Jackie. What’s the word?”

“In-Processing Day.”

“Today? Already? Didn’t they just do that last year?”

“Yes. But the gods of Harmon Hall demand new flesh every year.”

He gave a salute to his computer screen. “Hail, superintendent. We who are about to die salute you.” He closed out the program he was working on and spun in his chair to face me. “Should we have popcorn?”

I followed him down the hall to the MSS break room. He popped some popcorn while I pulled out my wallet and threw a buck in the coffee can for two cans of pop.

“Where should we watch? If the deputy weren’t in town, we could use his office.”

“Is the colonel in?”

“Watch the spectacle from the best office around? I like your style!”

The colonel, in fact, was in a meeting for the next hour, so we watched from his office.

The upperclassmen had spent the the previous week tidying up the pavement just in front of the ramp. At that corner of the cadet area, Vandenberg Hall stretches its arm out past the quadrangle of the terrazzo. At ground level, nestled up against the ramp, is the cadet post office. Out in front of the post office an area about half the length of the Vandenberg extension had been roped off.

It had also been delineated by a bold line of paint. And inside, forty pairs of footprints had also been painted. All of them facing Vandenberg Hall.

As we walked into the colonel’s office, a bus pulled up. It was filled with brand-new basics. They’d been told to report to the Academy with a toothbrush and a razor.

And that’s it.

Chipper upperclassmen in T-shirts, camouflage BDU pants, and berets moved toward the bus, whistling and smiling. Clapping. Waving. We could hear their noise from inside the office.

Dave rubbed his hands together in imitation of an evil genius. “Okay. First one on the bus to wave back. You call it.”

“Girl in the blue shirt.”

“Guy in the yellow baseball hat.”

I won. And as soon as she waved, a few others tentatively joined her.

As we watched, the upperclassmen circled the bus, still rah-rah excited about all those brand-new basic cadets. They reached their hands up as if they were going to high-five all those happy, excited young men and women inside. And then they started beating on the sides of the bus.

So hard it began to sway.

And that’s when the magnificent dream began to morph into reality.

Poor souls.

The upperclassmen marched onto the bus and began yelling. We could hear them clearly from where we were standing.

“First VBT. You call it.” I was giving him the honor of calling the first Very Bad Thing. I had to give him half a chance; this was only his third In-Processing Day.

“Um…”

“Hurry! They’re about to get off.”

“Hair.”

“Clothes.”

The bus started rupturing people. Each basic was supposed to run to one of those painted sets of footprints and stand there at attention.

Except…oops. Someone had brought a suitcase. Dang. A draw. But we both winced when we saw that. Either there was a giant toothbrush and razor packed inside or…? Nope. Oh. Too bad. He got double-teamed. Now there was someone yelling in both his right and his left ear.

Another guy didn’t quite get to his footprints fast enough. But then again, he’d decided to wear a Superman T-shirt. Oh, dear. Bad wardrobe choice. Now he was doing push-ups.

Ditto for the guy with the bleached Mohawk.

And the one with the Mickey Mouse tank.

It happened every year.

It was fun to watch, but normally I can’t last for more than three busloads.

I crunched through the last of the popcorn kernels. “I’m off. Thanks for the popcorn.”

Dave turned from the window and lifted his can of pop. “Thanks for the drink.”

I caught up with Joe outside. He was standing with a group of other bag-clad officers. Ostensibly watching the show outside, but doing more talking than watching.

“Hey, Jackie! You headed back?”

“That’s what they pay me for. To do my job.”

“I’ll go with you.”

There was a piece of popcorn stuck between my teeth. I hate popcorn, but I never remember why until after I finish eating it. “How did you survive all that?”

“In-Processing? That was the easy part. You’re so afraid the first day, you’ll do anything they tell you to. You lose your identity. You don’t have any of your stuff from home. They shave your head. Give everyone the same clothes. You totally disappear into the group. The group becomes your identity. It’s best if the upperclassmen never notice you.”

“You become a clone?”

“At first.”

“Didn’t that bother you?”

“Not really. You’re too busy trying to survive. It’s when you start to take back your identity as an upperclassman that this place really starts to bother you. Then you start to perceive the injustice.”

“Cramped your style?”

He smiled. “You could say that.”

“Come on, how bad could it have been? It was a free education with a guaranteed job at the end.”

Joe snorted. “Free? Nothing’s free. It was a $250,000 education we paid for one nickel at time. Clothes, computers, laundry, haircuts…everything was deducted straight out of our pay.”

“See, the experience of most college kids centers around the word
poor
, not
pay
. And what about all the great camaraderie? Wasn’t that worth it?”

“What? Bonding with roommates while you’re getting ready for the SAMIs? The Saturday Morning Inspections? Yeah, that was really fun. We’d stay up until three in the morning cleaning the sinks and light fixtures and organizing our underwear and then some upperclassman would come in and find dust on the pipes underneath the sink.”

“They’d look for dust on purpose?”

“They never found any by accident.”

“They did it every week?”

“Sometimes they had Morale, Welfare, and Recreation inspections instead.”

“Why? To catch you smiling?”

“To catch you drinking.”

“They let you have alcohol in the dorms?”

“No…but then, you’re not supposed to surf the Internet at work either, are you? There was one guy who hid peppermint schnapps in a mouthwash bottle. He added a little food coloring to make it green.”

“Isn’t that against the honor code? What is it? ‘I will not lie, cheat, or steal’?”

“And I will not tolerate those who do. Of course it is. But you’re not lying if they never ask the question, are you?”

“But what if they did?”

“You didn’t answer. You told them to go ahead and search.”

“Such a stellar example you all set for the freshmen.”

“It’s not like
they
were such innocent lambs. Try getting nuked once or twice. When we ate dinner, sometimes the freshmen would take milk cartons and fill them up with leftovers. Grease from the meat. Peas. Ketchup. Soup. Clam chowder was the best. Then they’d take it to their room and let it ferment. For days. Weeks. And then, on a special occasion, like an upperclassman’s twenty-first birthday, the freshmen would come find you and drag you outside and dump the whole thing on top of you.”

“And, of course, you never nuked anyone when you were a freshman.”

“Only the upperclassmen you really liked. Or really hated. That was the worst of it. You got nuked, you puked, and you still weren’t quite sure whether they liked you or hated you.”

“But you came back. You’re here. It couldn’t have been all that bad.”

He stopped climbing and leaned against the railing. “It was that bad. But not always. There was good mixed in. Good friends. Good laughs. Good times. But that’s not why I’m here. The department sent me away to get my master’s. Russian history, remember?”

I nodded. How could I forget with the sickle and hammer Soviet flag he’d tacked to his side of the cubicle wall?

“The idea was that eventually I’d pay them back by teaching. Of course, sponsoring a pilot is a risky prospect. It’s hard to get away from flying.”

“How’d you convince them to let you come?”

“I didn’t. They made me, after the headaches started. Some days, during my worst assignments, I used to think it might be fun to come back. Do something with the cadets. But not anymore. Not now that I have what I wished for. I’m here because it’s the only thing left I can do.”

THE CUBICLE NEXT DOOR BLOG

Greener grass

How is it that we always seem to want what someone else has? Or has had? Kids who were only children always wish they had siblings. Kids from big families wish they had been the only child. We can acknowledge that circumstances have made us who we are, but then we wish that same person away in an instant. Who might we have been if we’d lived a different kind of life? Is it envy? Or just curiosity? What if I were the boss instead of just a cubicle worker? Would I still be me, or would I be someone different? Do wishes exist only in utopia? Does a wish granted diminish the wish itself?