Cellphone Etiquette

The whole juicy desert world was silent--like a deaf person watching wet, green leaf lettuce, showered in the mist of a produce isle sprinkler system. Schools of vanilla cream fish, swam in black coffee pools that steamed, mixing with the sweet citris tang of hotel air freshener dripping out of lemon-bee hives hung in one dimensional floral carpet forests. And there I was, floating inches above the firmament, my naked toes and brain-fingers swimming through salt waves of buttered popcorn, watching edited-for-TV golf soap operas.

Lunch time. My time. The whole world empty--I alone, free to roam the 78 kingdoms of cable television.

Enter boss man talking loudly on cell phone. With billions of light years of space unfolded in infinite directions, he chose to make noise in my fold. My lunch break serenity was laid to ruin when my boss came into the break room and blabbed loudly into his phone, just three inches from my ear.

"Oh, Matt, you don't mind if I talk to my brother on my cell phone do you?"

In a parallel universe I said something clever, making me the boss and also very very... very rich.