Mood Check (A story)

This is a day-time story for my fellow Corporate Americans. Keep up the "good" work, friends.

XO,

JM

Monday morning you file into the conference room. You choose a seat exactly halfway between the door and the back of the room and summon just enough enthusiasm to make your face look innocuous. Around the conference table, there is a lot of flipping through notebook pages and checking phones for emails, texts, tweets, status updates … anything to avoid being where you are. Anything.

“A-hem.”

Everyone looks at New Dave. He looks back. False alarm – he was only clearing his throat. Again. New Dave ALWAYS clears his throat. Is it allergies? Is he thirsty? Does he need a lozenge? Does he eat too much dairy? Do not roll your eyes, you think. Do not roll –

“AHEM,” says New Dave again. You roll your eyes.

You look down at your notebook and press the point of your pen into the paper making tiny blue dots next to the words you have written there.

Patty, your boss, finally arrives, five minutes late, per usual. “Good morning, everyone,” Patty says too cheerfully. She stands at the head of the table and constructs a tower of items: a closed laptop, an expandable folder full of loose papers, a manila folder holding more loose papers, a portfolio-style notebook with an imitation leather cover, an empty interoffice mail envelope, her two iPhones.

“Sorry I’m late. Per usual, ha ha.” Patty takes her seat and pulls out a blank sheet of paper from the middle of her tower. Placing it squarely in front of her, she looks around the table. Her eyes search for one person with whom she can make eye contact. She has explained that this ritual of locking eyes with exactly one person before the start of each meeting is called “Engaging.” It makes you squirmy. It makes everyone squirmy. Veronica, this week’s unwitting “Engagee,” is literally squirming while Patty is trying to make eye contact with her.

Veronica smiles sheepishly and adjusts her skirt. Veronica’s eyelids flutter in Patty’s general direction, which is apparently close enough to “eye contact” for Patty, because she finally begins the meeting by touching her fingertips together under her chin.

“And who do we have on the phone?” Patty asks the black, pyramid-shaped device in the middle of the table. No one answers. “Dave? Are you with us?” Patty looks back at Veronica, as if Veronica can somehow vouch for Dave’s existence.

Veronica squirms again. Patty says, “I guess Dave will join us a bit late– “

“HELLO?” a voice shouts from the center of the table. “CAN YOU HEAR ME?” The voice is all around you, vibrating the air, rattling the conference room table.

Patty stretches an arm toward the speakerphone, holding out her pencil to extend her reach. Her hand floats aimlessly over the device, searching for the volume button. “THIS IS DAVE … IN PITTSBURGH.”

Joel, from IT, pokes the volume button twice for Patty. “Dave? Hi, this is Patty. We’re all here in the Philly office, and we’re just getting started.” She grins at the speakerphone.

“Great,” mumbles Pittsburgh Dave, his voice now sounding considerably less epic. “Hi everyone,” Pittsburgh Dave adds. Only New Dave responds, with his customary greeting: “ahem.”

“Great. Dave, you already have the floor. How would you like to begin our Mood Check?” Every week, Patty phrases this as if it’s a suggestion. “Dave, would you please share with us, what is your mood this week?”

“Okay …” Pittsburgh Dave is quiet. “This week, I’m feeling …” he begins.

Patty looks at the speakerphone. Veronica looks at her skirt. Joel-from-IT checks his phone. New Dave also checks his phone. You look down at your notepad where you have written:

1. Optimistic
2. Constructive
3. Positive
4. Happy
5. Confident
6. Content

“I’m feeling optimistic,” Pittsburgh Dave mumbles. “And happy,” he adds.

The bastard! You silently curse Pittsburgh Dave as you draw a single line through the middle of each of his words. His double-down technique is unprecedented. If this catches on, you think, you’re going to be in trouble. In the margin of your notepad, you write, Find Thesaurus.

“Excellent, thanks for sharing, Dave.” Patty says. She jots something down on the piece of paper in front of her. “Who’d like to go next? Veronica?”

Veronica looks startled and like she might pass out. She shakily moves a strand of hair behind her ear. She smoothes her skirt. “This week, I am feeling …” There is moisture forming at her hairline.

“I am feeling …” she squeezes her eyes shut. “Con-fi-dent?” she squeaks. Slowly, she opens one eye at Patty.

“That’s great, thank you for sharing, Veronica.” Patty’s smile is meant to be reassuring. Veronica exhales in one long stream of air.

“Let’s just go right around the table, shall we?” This is only a question to the extent that compliance is expected. “Joel, you’re next.”

Joel-from-IT looks up from his phone. “Okay. Um, sure, I’m also feeling confident.”

“Great.” Patty cocks her head. She laces her fingers together on top of her paper. “Anything else, Joel?” She looks at Joel-from-IT, her eyes wide and imploring. She prefers each person to have his or her own mood. No repeats. No piggy-backing.

“Okay. Um, sure, I’m feeling … optimistic.” He adds a hopeful smile. Patty nods and makes some marks on her piece of paper. Joel-from-IT goes back to checking his phone. You cross another mood off your list and write, Thesaurus App? in the margin.

“Dave?” Patty asks. She turns to New Dave. “How are you feeling this week?”

“I’m feeling ahem … AHEM … constructive.” He turns both palms up when he says it, like he is making an offering. You tap the tip of your pen against your notebook and bite the inside of your lip.

“Ooh, ‘constructive,’ that’s a great one, Dave.” Patty approves. You underline item 2 on your list and add a star to remind yourself to put it on the list again next week. Patty jots down a note too, then turns her attention to you.

Your turn. All at once, it feels like only you and Patty in the room. If your life were a play, you’d be sitting in the middle of a dark stage with a spotlight on you at one end and Patty at the other end of a giant conference table.

“And what is your mood this week?” Patty asks. Her words seem drawn out and amorphous, as if you are only hearing the echo of her voice.

Your mouth is dry. New Dave’s throat-clearing suddenly feels contagious.

“I am feeling …” You desperately look down at your list. It has dwindled down to one, your only remaining choice. The tip of your pen is resting next to it: “Content” you mutter.

Silence.

Silence?

Something isn’t right. Maybe you hadn’t said anything at all, you’d only imagined you said it. “I’m feeling content,” you say a little louder.

You look around the table. Pittsburgh Dave breathes heavily though the speakerphone, making a shoooosh sound. Veronica looks nervous. Joel-from-IT looks intrigued, momentarily. New Dave looks like he needs to clear his throat. The empty chairs at odd intervals around the table stare back at you. Patty looks flabbergasted.

“Content?” Patty asks. She begins to scratch her pencil against her paper, but stops mid-mark. She looks up and locks eyes with you. You squirm.

“What do you mean ‘content’?” She makes finger quotes in the air as if, in all historical uses of the word, she cannot imagine how “content” could be used correctly in this particular setting. It is the same response she would have given if you had spontaneously coined a term for the specific purpose of describing your mood at this very meeting and had just then decided to introduce it: “This week, I am feeling ‘Flenderbul.’”

“I mean … I– I meannn …” you stutter. A follow-up?! Follow-ups are not part of Mood Check. As Patty had clearly explained, Mood Check is one, simple question to, in Patty’s words, “take your temperature.” There are no follow-ups in Mood Check.

You try not to panic. You look at the empty swivel chair next to you, noticing its stiff mesh back, it’s uneven armrests. You blink back at your notepad. Say something, you think. Anything.

“I am feeling content … because …” The items on your list are swimming around on the page; they fall out of your mouth in a pile: “I am optimistic this week will be constructive, and I am confident that having a positive attitude will help us all be happy with our work. So …” Your voice trails off. You cannot think of one more thing to say, and you pray to any god that will listen that there are no more follow-ups to this follow-up. Because your list is shot.

“Ahhh. I see,” Patty nods. Thank god(s), you think. “That’s excellent, thank you.” You smile wanly and move your head in the world’s smallest You’re Welcome nod.

“My turn, I guess.” Patty says. “This week, I am feeling … good!” Patty offers a satisfied smile. “I feel good, don’t you?”

Pittsburgh Dave mumbles, “Sure” through the speakerphone. Veronica nods her head rapidly. Joel-from-IT says, “Okay.” New Dave says “ahem.”

Awash in numb relief, you attempt to raise one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug.

“Good! Alright, let’s dive right into the first item on our agenda. Now I know there have been changes around here. I’d like you to see these as opportunities. Opportunities to shine, to lead, to blaze a trail …” Patty says.

While Patty chirps through her discussion items, you look down at your notepad and draw a line through “content.” You place an “X” over each letter, obliterating the word from its rounded beginning to its jagged end, just in case you get confused – or develop amnesia – and attempt to re-use it.

1. Optimistic
2. Constructive *
3. Positive
4. Happy
5. Confident
6. XXXXXXX

You summon a modicum of enthusiasm.

You check your phone for emails, text, tweets, status updates ... anything.

You look down at your notebook and press the point of your pen into the paper again. But this time, you add to your list a mood for next Mood Check:

7. “Good.”

Hearing Loss, Smoke Monsters, and Waiting Rooms: How to be a Grown-Up

I remember being eight years old and listening to a family friend make fun of my grandparents. Her call-and-response impression of my impatient grandmother and my unflappable grandfather was flawless:

“Pete …”

“What? …”

“Pete …”

“What? …”

“Pete …”

“What? …”

“Pete …”

“What? …”

“Pete …”

“What? …”

“PETE!!!”

“WHAT?”

“YOU DON’T HAVE TO YELL, I’M RIGHT HERE!”

It was funny to me because I had never heard anyone mock my grandmother before (that is, no one had dared mock my grandmother before). It was funny to my parents because, as golden-hearted as my grandfather was, he also had a very, very dry sense of humor.

We had an eerily similar conversation with my father recently, when he walked into a room where music was playing and asked:

“Who is this singing?”

“Straight No Chaser”

“Who…?”

“Straight No Chaser”

“WHO…?”

“STRAIGHT NO CHASER”

“OH. I THOUGHT YOU SAID ‘STRAIGHT, NO GAYS HERE.’”

Ouch, it still makes me cringe. It had to be a terrible, hearing loss-related joke, right? I mean, right??

Either way, I have a sneaky (and terrifying) suspicion these conversations will only get worse. At 30-mumble years old, I am now at a stage where my parents are becoming the grandparents, and my siblings and I are now “The Grown-Ups.” Some days, this strikes me as a bizarre plot twist – when did we get so responsible? – but most days I realize that, of course, this was bound to happen because life is nothing if not a series of paradigm shifts.

I thought being a grown-up person would mean having my act together. I imagined saying things like, “My husband and I have decided to purchase a lilac farm, once we return from our third cruise ‘round the world in our sailboat.” (Naturally, as an adult, my sophistication would be evidenced by a British accent.) Instead there is a lot of sitting in traffic, sorting through junk mail, listening to hold music. And sometimes, as Elizabeth Bishop points out in one of my favorite poems of hers, “In the Waiting Room,” being “one of them” can be surprising, uncomfortable and even horrifying (see the anecdote above … or on second thought, don’t).

To me, being a Grown-Up is like being a character on the TV series Lost. You end up with a crowd of people somewhere you didn’t quite intend to be. A few people in the crowd are your traveling companions, but most of them are total strangers. You’re not sure how you all arrived – everything up to this moment is a blur – but you realize you’re going to be here for the rest of your life, so you should figure out some of the essentials, like who you can trust, and who needs help. And with the violent storms, the sometimes-violent people, and the daily struggle for survival, you’re not entirely certain how long you’ll be able to convince yourself – or anyone else – that you got this.

Having sat in a hospital waiting room myself a few days ago, I agree with Bishop. Realizing that I am now one of The Grown-Ups can feel like “falling off the round, turning world into cold, blue-black space.” It can be disorienting, disempowering, disillusioning. (Both the sailboat and the lilac farm seem like WAY too much work. My only “accent” is from Western New York, and I try very hard to cover it up.)

I’m learning that, like the Lost survivors, Grown-Ups have only a moment to decide how to balance their daily must-do lists with the unexpected. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about polar bear attacks, or being held hostage by a megalomaniac, or deciding whether to detonate a 20-ton hydrogen bomb (#LostPeopleProblems). But the unexpected can be just as life-threatening. Just as devastating. Just as grave.

Even so, somehow, as with those on the island, Grown-Ups get up every day and do what needs to be done. They trust and help people – even when they’re pretty sure they may need some serious help themselves – until they suddenly realize the hike from the beach to the caves has become a well-beaten path; and that odd shift in the air means rain is coming (or, just as likely, the Smoke Monster is coming); and a pattern of hoofprints and broken twigs will lead to a wild boar that may be prepared for dinner.

You can call it Divine Grace, Adaptation, Blind Luck. But, by some sweet confluence of the cosmic, the human, and the supernatural, you might just make it as The Grown Up after all.

Some days, like the day I spent at the hospital, I think this remark from one of Emily Dickinson’s letters perfectly sums up How to Be a Grown-Up: “This world is just a little place, just the red in the sky, before the sun rises, so let us keep fast hold of hands, that when the birds begin, none of us be missing.”

Other days, I think Dr. Jack Shepherd’s words sum it up much better, if not more succinctly: “Live together, die alone.”

And other days still, I get up to do what needs to be done. I trust and help people, and I tell myself, Hey, I’m one of The Grown-Ups now … And – at least for today – I got this.

XO,
JM