Corporate Childhoods
Today I’m grateful for my body. It carries me for walks by our pond along that treacherous gravel path. It tolerates the alleged beef from Burger King that I shall devour here soon. It filters.
In this Burger King, there is an old playroom where there used to be a playset. Now it is a deserted conference room. How many of these are around now? I wonder how many families bring their kids in with their sharp suits and flashy PowerPoints to make use of these conference rooms. Certainly there was demand for them—it is here in this capitalist enterprise after all. I should like to witness one of these lectures. To open my mind to child-like wonder.
Maybe my presentation—if I were such a wise child—would be on why I feel like things must be “just right” if not perfect. My guides, the wisest children I know, would like me to remember that simple being is enough. Love is not dependent on the accolades or my sharp suit or neat tidy tie. Is it possible that just sitting in the conference room meant for the wise children with an open heart of wonder is “just right?”
My imitation burger hopes I say yes. I can’t detect the microplastics or petrol chemicals in my veins now. For now, it tricks my body into “just right.”
“Where did that come from?” Now I think. It doesn’t fit with my theme of wise kids in corporate lecture halls. And now I see an exercise in my adult-life editor filter working overtime to either ridicule this tangent for its misguided existence or re-imagine it as part of my masterful thesis. It cannot simply be.
So are we.
The toxic burger was delicious, by the way. I don’t understand how ingredients for paint and chalk can taste so good, but I’m grateful my filter is readily fooled.
Something has just transpired in the Burger King men’s room. One server declares that she is terrified of “people’s bathrooms at home.”
The boys and girls in their serious corporate attire work to hide their snickers and giggles. Even in corporate childhoods, poop is still funny.
“What is this shit?” my Editor cries, clutching and shaking this dispatch.
More furtive giggles.
“This isn’t wonderful at all!”
Now I have hiccups. Ah, now I can feel the chemicals disagreeing with me.
“You,” he wags a finger at me, “pay attention. Work on serious things! Refocus on child-like wonder!”
He does not see, and we shall not tell.
The secret to child-like wonder
is not the musings of philosophical hell
but to weigh a raindrop—to love thunder.
The meter is terrible. I only care a little. If only I were a better writer the words would have come to me. The children, though, think the rhyme is fun.