Think Inside The Box

Since my triumphal return from Oregonia I find myself once again among the ranks of the Noble Proletariat. For the last couple of weeks I've made my paper as an elephant handler at the People's Glorious Cardboard Box Factory on the Island of Misfit Toys.

That's right kids. I said cardboard box factory. Just like the one Bart's class got to visit with Principle Skinner.

It's fascinating work, really. At one end of the factory is a big machine called the Boxinator. A team of happy lads feeds the thing big, blank, sheets of corrugated cardboard. The Boxinator chews on this stuff for a bit, makes several irritating noises, then spits out a bunch of printed, die-cut, finished, boxes folded flat and strapped together into giant stacks called "Units."

I sit at the other end of a big conveyor atop my baby elephant. She is painted yellow and has PK-4 branded on her left flank, but I call her Babu. It is our job to snatch the units off the conveyor belt, drop them on pallets, which she then stacks with her tusks in the ever changing landscape of the cardboard box factory that my boss refers to as, "Over there, dumb-ass."

I work with a guy who has been there twenty years. He drives an orange elephant. He is one with the animal and to watch them work together is an amazing display of synchronized box-toting choreography.

Babu on the other hand... Well, let's just say she's "special." Her tusks are uneven and she's a little slower than the other baby elephants, but bless her pea-pickin' heart, she gives it her all. Day by day I'm learning new tricks to get her to do what I want. I'm doing pretty well, I haven't broken anything expensive yet, and Babu hasn't stepped on anybody. We make a pretty good team for a couple of misfits.

"Up, Babu!" I say and she hoists a pallet of units high into the air with her mighty trunk. Sometimes the units are so big that she can't see around them. Then it's safer for her to walk backward with me looking behind us for obstacles and idiots just asking to be smunched.

The wild part is that our part of the factory is just one giant, enclosed space. There are no interior walls. aisles and workspaces are defined by constantly shifting stacks of boxes stretching upward to the ceiling. It is a dynamic maze, changing size and shape like an anthill as new corridors are opened and others filled by the ebb and flow of shipping and production.

It must look like an anthill to an observer too, as we make and remake our world. I and the other elephant handlers swarm past each other on the way to our various tasks. Sometimes it looks like the elephant ballet In the Dance of the Hours, from Fantasia. We whirl and swirl and swerve around each other, all swinging tusks and flailing trunks.

"Run faster, Babu!"

While I clean the production lines and stack row after row of boxes in the wrong place, Old Raymond loads out trucks. Somewhere lost at the other end of the maze a guy named Larry commands his elephant to feed the hungry boxinator more raw cardboard.

Most people don't know this, but corrugated cardboard actually comes from a type of bamboo plant, Bamboozal Cartoni. When the plant is cut, the insides are pulled out then rolled out flat to dry into corrugated sheets. The outer bark is used to make carpet rolls and mailing tubes. Small, tender shoots are harvested as spindles for wrapping paper.

Everyday is a learning experience.

Yesterday Larry's elephant pulled up lame and I had to give Babu up for the day. I got to ride a broom. Not a fair trade to be sure, but it gave me the opportunity to show what a team player I am.

The next thing you know, I'm pulling steaming buckets of crap out from under the latrine with Charlie Sheen.

Man, I'm too short for this shit.

I did score a trophy while cleaning around the loading dock. I found an old sign that says:

CAUTION! PULL OUT OR BACK IN ON GREEN LIGHT ONLY

I think I'll hang it over my bed. I know it isn't very sophisticated, but it is better than looking at that empty space where the Van Gogh used to hang.

Today was a learning experience too. I was afraid I might not have Babu today, but there she was with both the others, and a new little green elephant they got from Rent A Beast. Old Raymond tried to put me on the rental, but I insisted on working with Babu. At one point she got a unit stuck on her tusks. I climbed down and gave a mighty shove to dislodge it. My hand moved, but the boxes didn't. I could feel the raw edges of the cardboard slice into my left palm. I I looked down at the dozen paper cuts on my hand. Youch! That's a lesson I won't have to learn twice.

Tomorrow promises to be another exciting day, which in the box-making world starts at five in the a.m. So goodnight unto you all. Give me your hands, if we be friends-- Just mind the paper cuts, would ya?

Comments

[james]

just a tad bit interesting...and i read it with little blossom, yay!

[SamWise]

I like the "widescreen" format better, with all the credits at the bottom. Visually reads better. Good to see you back online, Frodo.

[Little Blossom]

Sup you?! Nice changes....easier to read and I can see the pics on all the computers now instead of just part of them, lolz. Laterz! *mwahness*
--Your Blossom

[Tie-Dyed Tehuti]

Thanks gang!

I thought it was high time to update the old Brainrays. Out with the old, in with the new, right?