The Un-incredible and Slightly Boring Life of Cathy Jordan.

It is a fast paced world in which Cathy Jordan lives, and she lives for every new day. Thoughts are too slow to be useful, instinct is key. Dates pass and assignments are doled out and accomplished in record times. The world revolves around the work Cathy Jordan does. 

Every morning, Cathy Jordan wakes up to a very normal and well-known alarm clock beeping, puts on her pair of store-brand gray slippers with the hole in the left sole, and goes to the bathroom. On the way to the toilet, she passes a desk on which sits a clutter of papers and bills, but also a pen in a small cup that reminds her of her brother who had passed away four years ago. 

Cathy Jordan arrives at her workplace just before nine in the morning, nearly every morning, and she performs her duties adequately. Every morning, just as she comes to the coffee room, her coworkers fall into a scared and annoyed silence, and one person usually says, simply, "Hello, Cathy." And Cathy Jordan responds, "Hello, (coworkers name)," leaves after her morning cup of coffee is in hand, and begins to work. She types things on old computer screens and watches for memos about meetings and changes in the rules. 

If there is ever a problem in the office, she takes care of the trouble-maker before any higher power ever can, because she is efficient in the art of helping when it is not her place to help. She takes the person into a separate room, explains to them the problem with their particular behavior, and smiles at the office manager on her way back to her desk as she leaves the helpless trouble-maker behind. They stare at the window between the office and the separate room and wish they had never come to work with such an excruciatingly horrid person as Cathy Jordan. More often than not, the problem is fixed, though it is rarely because the particular trouble-maker quit, most did not have the opportunity to do so. 

Cathy Jordan never considers beginning to work at another job because she has a desk with a window near the water cooler and the restrooms. She also has all her pictures of family members she never speaks to and friends she never calls on her desk in strategic places so that she cannot really see them very well, but other people can and will maybe believe that she has many loved ones. Every time somebody passes her desk, she secretly hopes they will stop for just a moment and ask about the picture of the blond child or the brunette man and his happy wife. Nobody ever asks but Cathy never allows herself to be distracted enough by that fact that it affects her work-flow. She is a very focused woman. 

Every night, Cathy Jordan walks to her average, useful car in the company parking lot, her heels clicking on the painted concrete. She drives home and passes several bridges with homeless men living beneath them in impoverished, starving comfort, and she pretends not to notice them, nor the stop sign at a corner that nobody ever drives down but her. 

She drives home and fixes herself a dinner with cheaper, off-brand products and never eats fresh fruit, only canned, and she flips through channels on her average sized TV. She decides on the same show every single time, even though she misses the first ten minutes while she tries to pretend that she could decide on a different show if she wanted to. She likes to keep her options open. 

As she goes to bed, she passes by that same cluttered desk and stares for a moment at the pen in the cup and then she walks through the door. She arranges her gray slippers next to her bed, pulls back the covers, and spends the next half hour crying with a pain that cannot be helped by medication because she would never admit to anyone that she wants to die. In the morning, the tears will have dried and Cathy Jordan will begin again. 

JFYI- there will be more of these stories coming. I'm working on a one-page story book. Enjoy!