Brain Tumors

I worked my entire post-food service life in offices. My first such gig was working as a clerk in the registrar's office of a non-fictional New England college or university. There was a woman who worked there I found to be completely and utterly detestable.

There are many examples I could give to support my rather judgmental and not at all Christian assessment of a fellow human being but let me leave you with the mental image of a toddler in a playpen on the edge of an office-related party. The toddler's face is smeared with snot as he cries plaintively, barely heard in the din of adult, after work, Budweiser-fueled conversation, perhaps already knowing the childhood and adolescence ahead of him would someday be described as tragic. 

After some time in the office I learned my co-workers shared my antipathy. Her nickname, it turned out, was "Snake Lips." 

Yes, that was a rather cruel comment on her physical appearance but there are few places crueler than the office. It is the modern day equivalent of the primeval Serengeti, where the weakest in the herd is always one false step away from tooth and claw and unemployment benefits.

Snake Lips would regularly complain about headaches so severe she would contemplate the possibility of a brain tumor. "I've got such a headache; I think it might be a brain tumor." I believe that she meant this to be humorous. That ha, ha - yes; we've all been there kind of humor. 

Tumor humor. 

Let me tell you there's no way to feel good about yourself when you're rooting for a brain tumor but that's where I was.

I wanted to ask if she'd been to see a doctor but already knew better than to ask a question to which I didn't know the answer. (Though I had no pretensions to law school I knew that was just good advice. Don't believe me? Ask your significant other "Everything okay?" You will deserve everything you get for not trusting me on this one.) I found myself trying to see if her hair had an unusual part or if I could see suture scars in her scalp. Maybe she actually knew what she was talking about. 

"Have you gone to see a doctor about your brai, er, headaches?"

"Not this time. I count backwards from 100 every morning. So far, so good."

Ouch. 

Yeah, it's hard when bad things happen, even when they happen to bad people, which Snake Lips very much was (in case you've forgotten the snot-smeared face of that tragic toddler, which I assure you was offered only as Exhibit A). Still, I regularly imagined a morning where the non-fictional New England college or university's Registrar called us all together to let us know Snake Lips had died. From a brain tumor. Instead of flowers, we could donate to her favorite charity, the Research Fund for Toddlers who Suffer from Excessive Mucus. 

But, that never happened. 

I moved on to a life in IT and learned years later that Snake Lips had, in fact, ascended to the position of Registrar for that non-fictional New England college or university. 

I suppose that's as close to a happy ending as one can expect on the plains of the modern Serengeti.