Calendar Tongs
By: Diane
Dean-Epps
The heralded angels are
harking and it’s that time of year. Am I referring to the holidays? Nope, it’s NEW calendar season.
I won’t bore you with
the specifics, but I possess more degrees and certifications than I can count
on my fingers and toes, but I am undone every year by one simple task: Swapping out my old desk calendar pages of
date goodness for the new ones.
What is my undoing year
after year? Calendar tongs.
The need for the
featuring of New Year months begins in the fall; however, I usually put the
above-mentioned task off until right around January 2nd. That is when my fear of missing appointments eventually
exceeds my fear of tackling this annual challenge.
Every December I zing
around my office all motivated and energetic about applying a little feng shui
to my lair. I tap dance right on up to
the edge of the volcano doing everything I can think of (complete with unwrapping
the cellophane on my brand new desk calendar) short of the actual task itself. I even
clean out my “things to do in 2014” folder by dumping it all into the trash as
I trill, “Moving on!”
But it’s there. I can feel those beady calendar eyes on me;
its hungry presence felt by me so very keenly.
(“Hello,
Over-Personification Clinic? Sure…I’ll
hold.” Cue music: Duran Duran’s Hungry Like the Wolf.)
It always comes down to “the”
day when it’s just me and that small stack of pre-hole punched 365 days,
indexed by handy monthly tabs, and two small black spring-loaded calendar
tongs.
Though I’ve watched a
lot of Charlie Brown movies I always remain hopeful that things will be
different this time around. It will be my football year. This time I
will get these pieces of parchment loaded up on that small ipad-looking black
base of doom without asking anyone for assistance.
I approached my task
confidently, appearing to any outsider as if I’ve done this a thousand times. In point of fact, I have, just not
successfully. I racked up that papery stack of daily possibilities as
though I was a seasoned dealer at a Las Vegas casino, making sure the two “hold
the pages steady” holes were lined up just right. And they were. Perfect.
Next, I stood up to get
some really good leverage. (It’s for these moments that I work-out.)
Finally, I grasped one of the two calendar tongs in my right dominant
hand assertively and plunged it into the first hole with all of the confidence
I possess – or at least two-thirds of it. In my one-two plan of attack I
plunged the second tong into the second hole and mumbled, “Let the games
begin.”
Squeezing the tongs tightly
as though they were exercise hand grippers I tried to line up my stack
representing the future into that custom calendar tong hole that would get me
that much closer to marking this task off of my new 2015 “to do” list.
I made my first
approach, second approach, and at least six failed subsequent approaches
reminding me, once again, why I avoid anything that remotely resembles this
apparatus physically or symbolically. Two
of these reminders are clasping bracelets that cannot be self-snapped and
“relationship dresses” rendering me unable to get myself into a
buttons-up-the-back dress solo.
As the sweat began to
gather under my jacketed shoulders I began to experience some intense “Go to
the blackboard and complete this math problem” junior high flashbacks.
There I was all over
again in Mrs. Pacheco’s 8th grade geometry class, wearing my new micro mini
dress and Famolare wedges (not to be confused with a wedgie) as she yodeled out
my name, beckoning me to step up front and fill in the blanks. Not
coincidentally this request always rendered my mind a blank. You got it.
Tabula rasa. My recollection is
that I made it to the board without flashing any underwear or intelligence, but
I never completed the requested task. Kind
of like now with my O.K. corral face-off with the calendar tongs.
Time and time again I
squeezed those steely instruments of torment only to have them go flying out of
my hand and into the following items repeatedly: my in-box, my coffee mug
(where ironically my coffee break became cleaning up the coffee), and my
plant...may it rest in peace.
In the end I had to do
what any well-educated professional on a tight schedule with no time to waste,
lose, or spend does: I asked someone younger, faster, and more patient to
help me out, which narrows it down to ANYONE else in the office.
Next year I’m putting
this task at the top of my “to don’t” list.
To order a classy, unique,
and slightly “Oh, my!” calendar featuring the Calendar Girls actresses for the play by the same name opening in
the spring, please go to: http://questtheaterworks.com/
(Calendar tongs
optional.)
