I know Fall doesn't official start until Wednesday, but I was eager to get started on my journey, so I took Floyd's advice. I went to bed last night and in a dream I went down into the basement of Casa Tehuti, past the Elvis Room, beyond the Inescapable Labyrinth, down deeper than the catacombs, to the acid cut tunnels on level E. I Turned left at the rock etched with the words, "No Kill I." Then I Hopped in the little boat that goes through the spelunker's cave and got out after that spinning barrel that makes you feel like you are going upside down. There I found a rabbit hole marked with a sign that says, "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here." I Ignored it. I went down the rabbit hole and sat in the comfy chair. I Took the red pill and the blue pill and a couple of Jolly Rancher suckers (but not the Hershey's miniatures) and I woke up this morning in the Underworld.
And you know what I found out?
They have the same stuff in the Underworld that we have here, only In the Underworld it's a little different.
For example, when I got to work this morning I found out I was Old Raymond. Of course I don't mean literally, but he was out having one of his Borg implants calibrated or something, so Babu and I were called upon to fill his shoes. A young pachyderm caballero named Raul played the part of Tehuti today. Not only did I get to step into a leadership role, I got the gift of perspective. I wasn't the freakin' new guy for a change! Not only did Young Raul look to me for direction, The Man put me onto all the important Raymondesque jobs like loading out trucks and twisting the valves on the big Heart Machine.
I felt a little out of my element plucking and picking units from stock to load out trucks and building giant Lego-like sculptures out of our glorious cardboard boxes while generally ignoring the routine of cleaning the line. But what was really odd was the way The Man was downright chummy with me. He even volunteered to un-tetris a unit of boxes from the particularly tricky cranny in which it was wedged.
"Sure Boss," I brown nosed. "I would love to watch the expert show how it's done."
He was feeling pretty full of himself until he got Babu wedged into the crevice sideways. Corrugated towers teetered precariously as Babu bumped her butt repeatedly against them.
"I think I'm going to knock these over, " he admitted.
"Don't worry Boss, I won't tell anybody," I winked as I climbed aboard Babu to un-sticky his wicket. Then it was off to check on Tehuti-Raul to make sure he wasn't swamped by output from the Boxinator. Fortunately, the evil machine had popped a thermothrockle so units rolled off the line at a leisurely pace. That gave me enough time to introduce the lad to some of my other usual duties.
"What's the big shovel for?" Raul asked quizzically.
I just smiled sweetly and pointed toward the elephant pens.
I wonder if Old Raymond will be back tomorrow?
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