Breakout!

Is there any greater feeling than getting out of work early? Just running errands, watching TV or whatever, you can catch a little wisp of a feeling, like a spring breeze that whispers, “Hey, you could be at work right now.” From that first step out of the door, where it feels like you’ve pulled off a successful jewel heist, to the little flashbacks during the day where you’re wondering what the poor saps at work are doing at the moment, man, there’s nothing like not being at work.

Calling in sick is a whole other beast. If you made up your illness, which you probably did, there’s always an element of paranoia if you leave the house. “Is someone from work going to see me somehow? What if someone takes a picture of me on this waterslide and posts it to Facebook?” Plus, you have to cover up your original lie the next day you come in to work.

“Oh yeah, it was just a touch of food poisoning, I guess. I was fine after that first night.”

By the way, food poisoning has been proven scientifically to be the laziest, yet most effective excuse to use when calling in to work.

By the time we’re in our late twenties, most of us have sensibly given up on our dreams. We realize we’re not going to be elected president or have a TV show or cure cancer. The best we can hope for is to grab whatever little bunches of happiness we can find here and there along the way. And when I was walking out of work at 3:00 yesterday afternoon, I felt like Jessie James, Dolemite and Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name all rolled into one*.


*I would like to stress that I was legally entitled to my early day, which did nothing to make me feel like less of a badass. I had worked overtime on a program last week, and …hey, what do you care? What are you, my boss all of a sudden?