Pappillon

Last night I met a person who was celebrating wildly. She bought drinks for everybody. In this day and age, there is a fine line between generosity and naive ness. I wondered what triggered this unusual behavior. Fiona, got straight to the point.1

“Dring dring……dring dring……dring dring.” Imagine that horrible, ear piercing, monotonous sound, and when it finally stops, you pick up, only to hear an irritated customer at the end of the line. She hated her environment, so in order to make her life a little better she asked, if the office number could be linked to her home. Unfortunately there was still that annoying ringing, and still those difficult people.2

She told me that she hated her life and desperately seeked a new one, but she didn’t have the money. Although that was her excuse, it wasn’t really that, it was simply that she didn’t have the guts, but then who could blame her? Very few people even consider a career change. 3

We had quite a few laughs over her job, it could have been the drinks but I don’t think so. One time Mr.Watson, a difficult busy body, called her and said that he had a problem. He wanted to access a very important file on his office computer, but he had run out of mouse pad! Or else there was another person who had deleted all his office files and blamed Fiona, for his mess, even worse she almost got fired. But the best one by far, was when she asked a person what he could see on his computer desktop and he replied, “ a half eaten muffin, erm… a pen and paper, and an empty cup of coffee.”4

We even discussed her amusing bad habit. Every time she heard a phone ring she would answer it, and where ever she was, she would answer with the stereo-typed-customer- care-greeting, “Hello this is Computer Solutions, how can I help you?” She had become like a mouse in a behaviorist lab. She hated it, but what could she do, she had become depressed and realized what an unfulfilling life she led, but she couldn’t change it.5

As usual her boss’s call started her day off, to clock her in. The phone rang with the same irritating sound as always. A carefree butterfly was fluttering from lily to daisy on this beautiful spring day. All of a sudden it dawned on her that she had really hit rock-bottom, when pangs of jealousy for this butterfly, started to surface within her.6

She gazed at it, as if the world had just opened her eyes and it had become so simple, why couldn’t she live a new life? Why? What had been stopping her for all these years?7

She waited until the telephone stopped ringing. Then she sighed and left the house. It was over, her ordeal was over. Pappillon. 8