Long - But True - Story

Simone groaned tiredly. She leaned heavily against the recycling cart she was pushing down the long hall and drummed a beat on it with her palms. "Sometimes," she said, "I don't know why I ever took this job."

Jessica, who was walking beside her, attempted to respond but ended up yawning instead. She could barely make out the numbers on the clock at the far end of the hall. Six forty-five AM. Still almost an hour before they got off work.

It was better, though, since Glen had changed the system. Instead of having each member of the crew working alone on a single task, they worked mostly in partners now. Simone and Jessica were in charge of the south hall, which meant that for every room in every office of that hall they had to take out the trash, vacuum the carpets, dust all the surfaces, polish all the wood, clean all the whiteboards, replace all the broken lights, straighten all the furniture, and - naturally - do the recycling.

"It's not even just waking up early," Jessica said, continuing the complaint. "It's having to play Mother to a bunch of professors and their TAs. You'd think these people were old enough to clean up after themselves."

"Like Peanut-Man?" Simone asked, a grin slicing through her bad mood. They both laughed, thinking of the office in the Gerontology department where every morning they found masses of peanut shells littering the table, the chair, the floor. The crew liked to imagine the professor nittering away like a squirrell with big googly eyes and buck teeth. Their laughter was short-lived however, because - since they were the ones who had to clean up the peanut mess every day - it wasn't really that funny.

"I don't know," Jessica despaired as they finally reached the end of the hall and turned the corner. "Usually I'm fine with this job. Really, I like it a lot. But today it's just . . ." she sighed. "I feel like I need a break."

"Me too," Simone said emphatically. They parked the cart beside the recycling bins. In silence, they each lifted one and dumped its contents into its corresponding bag on the cart. Newspaper. White paper. Soda Cans. But when Jessica lifted the lid to the Colored Paper bin, she froze.

"Simone! Check this out!"

Paper airplanes. The bin was full of them. Made out of construction paper, all sizes, all designs, all colors. Jessica looked up at Simone with a sparkle in her eyes. Simone was smiling broadly. Without saying anything, they both reached into the bin.

"Whoosh!" They started throwing the airplanes with gusto, one at a time, laughing and making sound effects. Most of the airplanes didn't fly very well, nose-diving into the tile floor. But some of them soared, and they quickly figured which ones those were and threw them over and over again. After a few minutes, the entryway was littered with forty colored paper airplanes and the bin was empty. Simone and Jessica stood in the midst of the planes and looked at each other, both smiling, work forgotten.

"We need to do something with all of these," Jessica said. "A chance like this doesn't come every day."

Simone looked at their handiwork. "We should . . . throw them at someone."

Jessica smiled wickedly. "Glen." She picked up a few of the airplanes, then stopped. "We should go get everyone on the crew, and then we can ALL attack Glen. There's too many here for us to use by ourselves."

Simone nodded. They ran off down the hall, abandoning the cart. They found Charlie in the elevator; Jerica was in the northeast corner; and Brian, Rachel, and Becca were in the preschool. Every time they explained about the bin full of paper airplanes, the glazed-eyes of their coworkers would suddenly become vibrant and full of excitement. It took only a moment's encouragement to convince all of them to ditch their posts and help them with the airplane assault on their boss.

They were walking down the hall toward the entryway with the planes when someone said, "Lookout!" They turned around. Glen was down the hall, walking towards them. "Run!" someone else said. They ran. Quickly they assumed their positions, three or four airplanes apiece, poised to strike. A moment of silence as they waited for their prey. Then he came around the corner, looking confused.

"GET HIM!!!"

Glen yelled as seven paper airplanes flew directly at his face. He started flailing his arms in pseudo-kung-fu moves, and the empty halls were ringing with their laughter. He started throwing the planes back at them, and for a minute and a half they had themselves a little war. When it ended, they were all smiling.

"What we should do," Becca said, slyly, looking at Glen, "is throw these off of the fourth floor balcony."

The crew looked at Glen hopefully. He shook his head, still grinning. "I could not, no, I could not support that in any way," he chuckled, looking around for witnesses. Then he whispered conspiratorally, "But I could watch."

Minutes later, they were assembled on the balcony, leaning over the edge in the chill air. It was the near-dark of early morning, but they could just see Glen standing on the ground a hundred feet below. "Catch 'em, Glen!" they called, throwing half of the airplanes at once. They were uproarious now, their chuckles and giggles echoing across the courtyard. Glen scampered around below, trying to catch as many as he could. Even the planes with the poorest design flew when they had a hundred feet between them and the earth. When they had all thrown their planes, they were silent for a moment. Then Jessica said, "Now, throw them back, Glen!" A thunderclap of booming laughter.

They met Glen back in the entryway, where he attacked them again with the airplanes and they defended themselves as best they could. In a few moments though, they were sighing contentedly, surrounded by colored airplanes and beaming friends. The moment lingered . . . then was gone.

"I've got to get back to work," said Brian. "Yeah," Becca agreed, "I still have to mop the kindergarten and the preschool kitchen." One by one they left, going back to their jobs, back to the duties of real life. But everyone was still smiling. Glen was the last to leave, and before he went he turned to Jessica and Simone and said, "Good work, you two. Good work."

The two young women scooped up the paper airplanes and put them in the recycling cart, pushing the cart down the hall once more. They were both silent, but there was a new-found friendship between them. They were co-conspirators, and together they had managed their escape.

And as they walked, Jessica reached into the bag and pulled out a small yellow plane. Even though she knew that they had thoroughly wasted a good fifteen to twenty minutes of their shift, she couldn't help feeling that it had been the most productive twenty minutes of the day. She kept the plane to remember that morning, when they'd left the real world behind for a while, and flew.

She looked down at the tiny plane in her hand and realized that whoever had made it had written a slogan across the wings.

"Live Life"