Monkey See

It was Monday today. I know it was Monday all the world around, but it really hasn't been Monday in my world for a long time. And even over the past week as I went the distance back to work, it was new, and a little fun. Now it is just Monday, and I am expected to perform like a trained monkey. I am trained. The 23 year old who is training me is so pleased when I get it right, when thirty years of training (do the math) perform their alchemy and I know stuff. Stuff she didn't even think to tell me. Its magic.

She is very good at her job. She is the best there is. Ever was. She is so good, no one can take her place. And she has made certain that is not a secret.

I remember being the best there ever was. I remember making it my business to be better. I remember Mable Butts and her bedside table full of mints; and Cleve Walker, a drunk who got caught and landed in a nursing home, and when confronted by the resident zealot, said, "if people in heaven are like you, I don't wanna go." I remember Eudora Hood and her poem, "Those Golden Years Are Really Tarnished Brass." I was the best for them and to them. No one could do what I did. No one could do what it is paid people do for old people, which is to live their lives for them, like I did. I won prizes for it. I got employee of the month. Of the fucking century.

Then I quit my job. And I didn't even try to tell them how someone could take my place. I'd spent years convincing them no one could. They believed me. I forgot to tell them I wasn't staying. I forgot to tell them I mostly didn't even want to be there, would rather have been at the bar. That's how good I was. Liar Liar pants on fire....