Shame of the Soft Hands

It was about August 21 when I moved into my new office in remodelled Campion Hall, now named Kalmanovitz Hall after the beer lord who made the money that funded the foundation that gave the grant that gutted the building that contained the office that hosted the professor that wrote the blog that ....

Ready for an etc., little buddy?

In any event, it was about August 21.5 when I asked for more bookcases. My old office was a filthy little hole, but it had a grand view of the church and it had bookcases elbowing great swaths of desk space, which left almost no space for me.

But my goods were accommodated.

The new office had only two inadequate bookcases, so I asked for two more, not the tall ones but merely the low, for I am not piggy. The first one showed up last month, followed by the second a week later. But the second bookcase was in a box in pieces, and there it sat, useless as a Republican.

Today my resentment at its impudent uselessness was too much. I decided to put it together myself with the little screwdriver I keep about my person.

Well, I won't drag this out. As in a Greek tragedy, let us keep the carnage offstage. I put it mostly together and then it mostly fell apart, just ripping the very crap out of the hardware and fiberboard.

It's not the loss of bookcase that hurts. That loss is a mere frustration. It's the loss of face, enduring the snickers of the maintenance guys who will sort out the wreckage*because once I was a blue-collar guy, a working-class guy, a guy who spent his summers in the steel mill and the auto plant.*

And now I can't bolt together a darn bookcase. And I do mean darn. I have lost the right to use savory language.