The Office Tornado

I was working at a new job. My workmates included many people I’ve known at jobs or other parts of my life. Among them were Crow Norlander, Nancy Thornton, someone vaguely like my junior high schoolmate Eddie Bonney, and my grade school friends Ron Bocklage and Jack Backs. The office was laid out like Mr. Jackson’s biology classroom at WHS, but with darkness in the wings and with hip lighting.

My job had to do with programming and video—connectors on the backs of monitors, some kind of early-internet bulletin board communications protocol, developing some aspect of a 3D video game. Most of the others left the office for several hours to attend an off-site meeting. Meanwhile, one of the bosses asked me to accept shipment of a big, cutting-edge CRT monitor.

I was at my desk, getting this monitor unpacked, when the others returned. Jack and Ron make remarks, like, “Great. He’s responsible for procurement and naturally he buys himself the world’s best monitor.”

“It’s not like that,” I said, but then just petered out. I felt so tired of being misunderstood by workmates, of it always being an uphill battle to do a responsible job and be one of the gang.

A violent storm came through and busted open one of our walls. My equipment, everything on my desk, was getting drenched by rain. We all huddled further into the building, into a different room. But I slipped back to get a peek of the damage. Our part of the office was steaming and flickering, the aftermath of severed power cables and rain. I began to gather as much of my stuff as I could. It was scattered about, not just work belongings but personal belongings I had brought to the office, including some of my writing. I quickly realized that very little of the good equipment was left. It had been stolen by workers from an adjoining office building—my vintage stereo, my records, my expensive camera.

I’d had enough. I leaped the gap between buildings, jumping through our gaping wall and theirs, landing among drenched rubble and more sparking cables. Some of the guys landed beside me, making the same leap I had—Brent Mallinkrodt, Dale Pennington, Neil Wilson.

“Who took it? What’s his name? Where’s he got our stuff.”

I vaguely knew of these thieves. Their leader was “Jarduh” or something similar. Young men of that other building were still cavorting around the place, running up and down the hallways and yelling into the room where we stood, but they weren’t the main gang, just some of its jackass hangers-on. I cornered a few of these and got some information. Then off I went, tearing through that devastated building, looking for my villains.

This place was a Bible college, but not a devout one like the CBC, the one I attended back in my 20s. It was more a capitalist breeding ground, like BBC, my school’s inferior counterpart. Room after room was set up for a rave party: big speakers blasting, lights flashing. Only a handful of Bible bachelors in each big space, rocking away in dorky ecstasies, doing herky-jerky dances without partners and chugging alcohol.

I found a skateboard and commandeered it, tearing through hallways and collapsing rooms, dodging and jumping wreckage, ski-jumping down staircases—searching for our stolen property. Sometimes I stopped to interrogate ravers, brooking no bullshit. I was fearless. There were masses of audio-video hardware everywhere, but no sign of the specific kind of tech they’d taken from us. 

I came to a room with large horizontal lockers lining the walls. I got from a drunk nerd that it was everything they’d stolen that night, ready for shipment tomorrow to their buyer. Someone at the back of the room stood out in some way. There was something about his bearing—

“Jarduh!” I demanded. “We’re going to talk.”

This geek warlord came out into the middle of the room where I stood, accompanied by his goons, his bible school hoodlums.

“You’re going to get my stuff and give it back,” I said. “And not just mine. Everybody’s.”

This guys was dressed in black leather, with metal studs and all that kind of faux-warrior crap. “And who’s going to make me do that?” he asked.

I was the exact 65 year-old I am as I sit here typing. Full of stiff joints and slow reflexes and weak muscles., wobbly balance and cracked molars and poor vision, everything.

“That’s already too much talk,” I said, stepping forward and straight-arming him to the forehead with the heels of both hands. It staggered him. And I followed up with a series of punches, headlocks and kicks. In my mind I was asking, “What the fuck am I doing?” but outwardly I was just unstoppable, an unrelenting avenger. I knew I had only to master this one person: the others, for all their violent posturing, were just Bible college nerds pretending to be violent sinners for the night. They would crumble the minute their leader crumbled.