I�m cold. It�s dark. I�m lonely. Early Monday morning is the worst time of the week for me. I�ve only seen a couple of people since Friday afternoon. Neither one of them stopped even though one of them almost knocked me over. What a horrible weekend!
It�s almost 5:00 now. In about an hour the lights will start coming on and people will start moving around. Then it won�t be long before it gets warmer here. The normal Monday morning crowd with the normal Monday morning complaints. You know the ones I mean� �Saturday was too cold to go to the lake� (they should have been here); �Sunday was too hot to cut the grass�(I would like to have had some of that heat here); �The kids were noisy and I couldn�t sleep late Saturday�(what I wouldn�t give for some noise Saturday morning!); and more complaints. I hear the same complaints every Monday morning and I am tired of them! Then there are the �Happy Monday� people. They make me sick! They act like being away from here for the weekend is the worst thing that could happen to them. I�d like to trade places with them. They love this place and everything around here. Yes, they had a good weekend --- but it is �great to be back�! Only 30 more minutes � I hear a door rattling. That must be Slimmer. I can tell because of the way the door is shaking. He can never get his key to work. He�s convinced that the key will not open the door till he yells at it twice and kicks it once. I�ve heard him do the same thing every day, five days a week, for almost six months now. He�s really a rather nice guy. His real name is not Slimmer, but that is what everyone calls him behind his back. I guess he got the name because he is always saying that he �lost five pounds last week�. That may be true, but he always seems to find the five pounds (and sometimes more) before the week is over. He is one of those �Happy Monday� people. The door is squeaking (hasn�t been oiled in years) and I hear him coming in. It must be raining outside because he is stomping his feet on the floor � either that or we have roaches again! He turned on a light. That means he should be here in a just a few seconds. I can�t wait to see him --- it�s been a long weekend. Where�s Slimmer? He should be here by now. I heard another door slam, but no other lights have come on and he hasn�t come by here yet. I hear the front door opening again. Wonder who that could be? It�s Tammy Sue! I can tell as soon as the door closes behind her. The wind blows the smell of her perfume all over the place. Everybody calls her Tammy Slew (behind her back of course). That�s because her perfume will slew (knock out) anybody within fifty feet of her. I think she must use at least a bottle of perfume a day � somewhere in the neighborhood of a half bottle before work and the other half at lunch time. Even though her perfume makes your nose wrinkle and food taste funny, everybody likes her. I see people standing around and talking to her all the time. Here she comes. �Hi Tammy Sue. How was your weekend?� No answer. She never talks to me, just pats me on the side as she passes. One of these days maybe she will talk to me. Oh no� hear comes Big Bob. I can�t stand that guy. He thinks he is so tough and important. If he had his way, everybody would have to bow down before him and kiss his feet. He isn�t big at all. The guy is only about five feet tall and really skinny. If the wind blew hard enough, it would carry him away. He yells at me a lot. He has even slapped and kicked me when he didn�t get his way. Today he stops for a minute and just stares at me. He�s bragging to Tammy Slew about how important his work is. Why doesn�t he just leave? He must have heard me � he�s leaving now. It�s starting to get warmer now that everybody is showing up. All the lights are on and the noise is great! Still nobody is talking to me, but they are hanging around and talking to each other. This place is really starting to come alive now. The warmth and the light � it is great to be around others again. Almost 10:30 now and things are starting to quiet down. Slimmer has been by four times already. He�s really upset about the way things are going today. He told me that he wished it was Friday and this week was over. He said he was feeling sick and may go home early. I really hope not, I kind of like the big guy. I�m bored� Nobody has been here to ignore or abuse me for the last 4 hours. Except for the lights and background noise, it is almost as bad as a Monday morning. Just a little after 3:30 now and here comes Big Bob. He was just talking to Slimmer and looks really upset. OW! Who does he think he is slapping me on the head? One of these days he�ll be sorry. I don�t think he and Big Bob are agreeing on anything today. OW! He kicked me! Now he�s walking away. �LOOK OUT BOB!� Too late. He didn�t look up in time to see Slimmer and Tammy walking down the hall. He ran right square into Slimmer. Slimmer is about twice his size so Big Bob just sort of bounced backwards onto the floor. Tammy Sue is laughing at him. I�d almost feel sorry for Bob, but I think he had this coming. Tammy Sue is still laughing at him and Slimmer is turning red in the face. I guess that hot coffee that Big Bob spilt on him didn�t feel too good. I love this excitement! I live for this excitement! 4:45 PM. Everyone�s gone and the lights are off. It�s starting to cool off again (still not as cool as it was this morning). I heard the door lock, which means I am alone again. This was really quite a day. Tammy Sue and Slimmer were nice to me. Big Bob got what he deserved. Only about 13 hours till the whole thing starts over again. The lights will come on, people will pass by (some will stop), and it will be warm again --- for a while. Such is the daily life of an office coffee machine. Ending #1 � How do others see you? If the water fountain or pop machine could talk, what would they say about you? Ending #2 � Do you overlook some people? Is there someone that you don�t talk to because you think they are unimportant? Are they really unimportant? In His Service, Allen R. Cook - Cookie Outpost Chaplain Belton A/G -- Belton, Missouri e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web page: http://www.GodForceMinistries.1colony.com/ _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp _______ To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe rangernet" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or visit http://rangernet.org/subscribe.htm http://rangernet.org Autoresponder: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
