The Peanut Gallery and The Bad News Bears

Work isn't worthwhile without something to keep you laughing. I sit across from my friend Karen and we recently started referring to ourselves as The Peanut Gallery because we have an opinion on almost everything and we call things as we see it. My excuse is that I'm a Sagittarious and Karen's is that she's a native New Yorker. For this reason, various co-workers are always coming by asking our opinions on this or that: anything from ideas on color choices for bridesmaid dresses, suggestions on what to eat for lunch, how to how to handle certain delicate work relationships, good places to take their out-of-town guests, etc. Another thing that Karen and I share is a work history that goes back about 6 years. She and I worked for those crazy investment bankers together and we often rehash stories of those crazy days, especially since we work in the same building as those guys and see them in passing now and then.

Aside from The Peanut Gallery, we've named the far corner of the room The Bad News Bears (or The BNB) because there is an woman who works within our earshot and seems to be connected to major life crisis on a daily basis. Every day there is something tragic going on that she's grumbling about aloud. So-and-so is sick and in the hospital, so-and-so was in a car accident, mom fell down the stairs and hurt her hip, a friend got a serious infection after cataract surgery, so- and-so's brother-in-law was found murdered, so-and-so was diagnosed with cancer, she's limping today 'cause she broke her toe, etc. We've decided that she must be the caretaker of several older relatives and the entire family is having an exceptionally rough go of life all the time. The problem is that it has become comical to us that, without fail, there is a different tragic incident to discuss in detail every day. Woody Allen's formula of Tragedy + Time = Comedy should be amended to read: 236 Tragedies/365 Days= Comedy. (236 being the number of working days in a year minus vacation and holiday). I never imagined I'd be laughing at people's misfortunes like this, but myself and several others in the vicinity can't keep from snickering at the mention of the day's tragedy from The BNB. It's terrible! Today she has been on the phone giving a dramatic account of the gory details involving someone's bleeding throat tumor and I am trying so hard not to laugh that I am biting my tongue and typing with tears streaming down my face. I can't even look at Karen, but I hear her stifling a chuckle. I swear, I'm usually a pretty sensitive person when it comes to people's hardships, but the writer in me cannot resist imagining the SNL sketch one could script from the comic gold that could be mined from this corner vortex of dire misfortune. I keep joking about coming in super early one day to burn sage in The BNB corner of the building to chase away the evil spirits.

I am reminded to appreciate that I am healthy and people I love are doing well.