Across the Street

In this team room I find myself, there resides my neighbor across the street. He is rather OCD. His desk is cleaned to a reflective sheen every morning, afternoon and evening. You could operate on his anti-bacterial desk. Even the grooming which goes for the devil-may-care look, is still too refined in shaped in place.

His work day utilities are all neatly arranged and also emit a mild shine when the sun peaks through the tightly closed blinds aligned to his back. No wonder glare is a such a problem. Upon this battlefield of guerrilla bacterial warfare there stands two large bunkers of bathroom tissue boxes. One hold the course paper from the cafeteria that surrounds eating. The second box, on the upper tier of this fortress of cleanliness resides the nasal blowing tissue dispenser.

Upon my frist arrive in this room of mixed media adults, I was pinned in the corner behind Mr. M. Sitting perpendicular to him, I watched through down cast eyes behind me as he did his triad of cleaning. Every few hours the bunker of tissues were adjusted to provide the perfection in symmetry and ease of access. The problem is, they never moved except when laid his hands up on them to adjust them back to square. Day after day, week after week I watched this ritual.

One cruel day, when I could not stand the shuffling of the fortifications, I moved one slightly off center. With a pretty large over hang of close to 1cm, I watched him return from the bathroom and promptly straighten the top bunker to the bottom bunker to provide the best structural integrity. A few days later I again moved the top box in the same direction, but only by 5mm. With his head on eye level with the bunk, cheek pressed against the desk, he adjusted the foundations of his defensive structure.

The third time, I tried something a bit different. I rotated the top box about 1 degree. The over hang on two opposing corners was close to 1mm. Upon setting his bag down, which contained a burger of sorts, he studied the bunker. With slow deliberateness he opened his lunch bag and with drew contents. Through the course of his meal, he eyed the fortifications. He even peered at them from the bacterial point of view. Nothing.

Some hours later, durning the post work day sterilization, he righted the boxes. Double and triple checking the alignment. I was waiting for as sextant to be with drawn to map precise coordinates and alignment of stars. I was disappointed that no navigation device was used, but perhaps they are high tech with GPS and gyroscopes. I mean, this is a high tech war.

So at least once a week, I have to play god to these little bacteria try to provide them with a breach in the defenses. Their overwhelming numbers seem to be prevailing cause this guy sniffles, sneezes and coughs more then anyone I know. Constantly.