The female Larry
My sadness at leaving Larry behind–or rather, approximately ten yards down the hall and in another office–has been somewhat mitigated as I have gotten to know one of my new colleagues, a perpetually flannel-clad woman with a shape and gait somehow similar to both Jerri Blank and a bowlegged construction worker. This character, who we’ll call Deedee, barely reaches the height of my chin, has an iron-gray ponytail that she pokes through the opening in the back of her ball caps which usually advertise mechanics or tourist destinations in upstate Michigan, and owns enough mood rings and turquoise finery to bedeck each and every finger. Her cubicle is tucked into a sunny corner, and though our positions require extensive outreach and field work, as far as I can tell Deedee never leaves the office. I was struck by Deedee when, as I was being introduced around by my supervisor on my first day, I noticed that she has somehow affixed a very thick braided rope (perhaps the kind you use to tie canoes to docks, I’m not sure) between the two partitions that form the ‘doorway’ of her cubicle, so that you either have to step over it or duck under it to get inside. Deedee gave me a perfunctory and firm shake of the hand and remarked loudly, “Wooooo, the ice queen.” She could see that I was obviously taken aback, and hastened to say, with a hint of either shyness or slyness, “Your hand. It’s really cold. Icy.”
I asked my supervisor later why Deedee has a rope barricading her cubicle entryway, and he merely chuckled and said, “Oh, that’s just Deedee.”
Since I’ve started working and am rarely in the office, I have not had the opportunity to interact with Deedee as much as I would like and have only been able to observe her in quick snatches, as when she hauls herself over the rope to grab something off the printer or trudges off to the restroom with a newspaper tucked under her arm. (No kidding.) I’ve learned that she calls her Jeep “Lady Liberty”, spells women with a ‘y’ and either studies or considers herself a witch. On the few occasions I’ve had to enter her cubicle, which is apparently a grand honor (she has pinned a colorful sign to the outside partition wall reading, “Now entering the Taj Mahal. Please remove your shoes and shut the hell up”), I’ve been nearly overcome with the enormous array of knickknacks (rocks, crystals, stuffed animals shaped like various viruses–including syphilis and crabs), posters and calendars announcing the solstice or farmer’s almanac, and photographs of her children and grandchildren, that I’ve had trouble concentrating on what she has to say. I’m like a crow, and easily distracted by shiny or colorful things.
Regardless, yesterday I was directed to Deedee after multiple questions to my supervisor about a snarled coding procedure involving Medicaid-billable services which he could not answer. Apparently, although Deedee rarely leaves the office and appears to be doing actual work on rarer occasions still, she is quite the brain when it comes to all matters Medicaid. I pulled up a chair as she described to me the intricacies of the enormous mess I’ve inherited from the guy who formerly held my position. As she talked, she bustled around without actually leaving her chair–opening drawers, taking out files and pointing to things on the wall. I had to move my chair as she opened one cabinet full of hanging file folders looking for a particular form I needed…and noticed that she had withdrawn the paper from a folder clearly labeled, in bright red ink, “SEX.” Before I caught myself, I let out a half-giggle, half-snort.
“Yes, yes,” said Deedee, not missing a beat. “When we started this billing procedure I hated it so much and always dreaded the end of the month because that meant we had to get all these forms in. So, to trick myself I labeled the folder where I keep the forms with that” (gesturing toward SEX) “and that way I would always think, ‘Ooooo! OK, not so bad. Let’s see what we got in here.’”
The rest of the tutorial was lost on me as I was compiling a mental list of all the raunchy labels I could give my files.
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