Coexist..

Good times.

For the past few years, Valentines day always causes fond memories to peculate up from the depths of my mind. No, not so much memories of love and romance. These trinkets of personal history are fond memories of when I had a 'real' job, before I was an artist.

I was not always an artist. No, I had a real job that came with a bi-weekly salary, an office, free internet at work, and a title. I was a Senior Field Engineer. That title may sound cool, but in reality a trained monkey with a closed head injury could have done my job. Good times though.

Of all the things I miss about my job was the friendships I made and the daily personal interactions I had with my co-workers and client. Being an artist, and not counting my wife, I have no one to talk to or interact with during the day. I miss the long breaks with the guys in the cafeteria talking about the local sports teams or the events of the past weekend. Yep, good times.

I loved the office pranks though. Yes we had real office hijinks. This one time we installed a macro in this guy Jimmy's computer. When he would type an email, it would replace certain words with the word PENIS. The day he was called onto the carpet to explain why he had sent an offensive email to a client was fucking EPIC. Then there was the time we switched the home page of every computer on the 5th floor to http://www.goatse.info/....and it was take your child to work day. Good times.

Pranks are cool. But, sometimes long and slow shenanigans are the best. You know, those pranks that evolve over months and months. They build and weave gentle tapestries of humorous plot twists, until they come to a head and explode like a big joke cigar. Yea, those are the best.

We had this one guy working for us. He was cool, but there was something about him that screamed "DOUCHE!". Alan was smart as a whip and did most of the project management for the IT department. He figured out who needed what and which drops needed to be activated. Then he would hand over the project to guys like me to be completed. Easy peasy.

Well, sometimes he would fuck up. Like, the time Alan ordered 250 laser printers for a new wing. It wasn't until after the client approved the quote, signed the contract AND accepted delivery of the printers that we found out that Alan ordered laser printers that were not net-workable. A simple solution would have been "Just order network cards for all the printers" but that would have been thousands and thousands of dollars above and beyond what the client had already contractually agreed to. Instead, Alan did some creative editing of the IT department budget and found a way to allow our clients to have brand new net-workable laser printers.

The Christmas bonus that year was that we were allowed to leave work an hour early. Good times.

Alan was different. He drove a silver Prius with a "Coexist" bumper sticker and liked to partake in amateur bike races on the week ends. Alan also had a habit, on Monday mornings, of sharing photos of himself and his teammates posing after a race wearing really tight black spandex bike shorts. Alan was married, at least he told us he was, but his office only had one tiny photo of his wife and about twenty photos of his racing teammates all wearing tight black spandex bike shorts. Alan also LOVED his Prius.

Right after Bush 2 went into Iraq, gas priced jumped and Alan began this habit of reminding all of us in the office that he was buying so little gas for his Prius. Funny man. See, I was driving a 1994 Buick Roadmaster with a 350 cubic inch engine. I loved that car but it was driving me to the poor house to keep it filled with gas every week and reminding me of the fact did not make me happy.

The last straw was when a few guys from the office were out at lunch and somehow the conversation turned towards politics and who we were voting for. Most of the guys were tiptoeing around the subject, but I proudly spouted "I'm voting for Bush". Instantly, Alan's usual light footed demeanor turned to something that resembled a stray cat being lit on fire.

Alan howled, "Why would ANYONE vote for BUSH? Only FUCKING RETARDS would vote for BUSH! All the REPUBLI-FUCKING-CANS SHOULD BE SHOT!".

As I flinched, I noticed that half of the entire restaurant had heard Alan's declaration and were now staring at our table. I silently counted to three, thinking that Alan would blurt out some playful trinket that would tip his hand that he was just joking or making light of serious political banter. But he offered nothing except a cool stare in my direction. Coexist my ass.

The remainder of our lunch was spent listening to Alan expound the liberal virtues of the Kerry- Lieberman ticket. Later, I played off Alan's sharp exclamation by jokingly stating that the only reason I'm voting for Bush is because Letterman would have a better monologue with Bush as President. I think he bought my excuse because he stopped staring at me.

Later back at work and in my office, I began to ponder how someone who proudly makes public his belief in peaceful coexistence could sound so cruel and, to top it off, I still could not figure out if Alan had called me a 'retard' for stating that I was a Bush man. I mean, I'm not a retard. I know I may not be the smartest man on the rock, but I am no retard. Not that there is anything wrong with being retarded. I just think it was rude for Alan to have insinuated that I was retarded. Besides, he was the retard who ordered 250 non-networkable laser printers. In fact, I was the one who noticed his stupid mistake.

I began to feel a prank brewing.

A few weeks later I found a novelty front licence plate at a pawn shop 'slash' head shop on Michigan Avenue in Inkster. In bold white capital letters "WHITE PRIDE" was printed on top of a red, white and blue rebel flag. What I was planning was well worth the $4.99 plus tax that I paid for it. I was giddy all weekend and almost couldn't wait to get to work Monday morning. I was so excited as I turned into the parking structure that morning. My plan was to locate Alan's car and then, during lunch, re-enter the parking structure, obtain the plate from my trunk, and install it on the front bumper of Alan's Prius. Step one was done as I saw that Alan had parked on the west wall of the third floor. I almost skipped the entire way to my office.

There was always a Monday morning meeting scheduled to touch base on new projects and compare notes on issues. Most of the meetings was usually spent yakking it up about our local sports teams with my fellow office mates. See, I have absolutely NO interest in professional sports, but on the way into work I make it a habit to listen to the all sports AM radio station. It always fills me in on what was happening on the court and-or field. It must have worked, because a couple guys wanted me to join their fantasy football league.

As always, Alan was managing to turn the Monday morning conversation towards his weekend bike race. He spent the entire weekend in Saugatuck with his team-mates. They came in second and partied it up at the motel Saturday night. Well good for him.

After the meeting, I answered emails in my inbox, transferred a few service tickets out of my que and then spent the next two hours reading the Detroit News in the cafeteria. After I finished the paper, I thought before lunch would be the best time to install my new prank. I would hate if Alan drove out for lunch in his sweet baby Prius. I moved like a cat making sure that no one was following me. I took the elevator up to the forth floor, then the stairs to the basement, exited out the shipping dock and then walked around the entire parking structure before entering it. I grabbed the plate from my trunk with the necessary hardware and located Alan's car. There was a red Ford truck parked next to his Prius that offered great cover as I installed his new 'WHITE PRIDE' vanity plate. The plate went on in a snap and I was soon back in my office dreaming of all the shenanigans that were going to happen soon.

It took a couple days, but the return on my investment was ten fold.

I put the plate on his car on Monday and on Wednesday morning he was driving into work on I-75. He got off on Martin Luther King drive and was stopped at a light when this hobo saw the plate on his front car and went nuts. Alan said the guy was crossing the street, came to a dead stop and started pointing at Alan's Prius. My guess is that he was pointing at the vanity plate. Well, the hobo was screaming some shit about 'the man' (Alan's words) when the light turned green and Alan tried to move forward. The hobo would not move, so Alan gave him a little toot of the horn. Well, the hobo went completely bat-shit at the sound of the horn and started beating the Prius windshield with his cane. The hobo did quite a number on Alan's Prius, he fucked it up real good. But, the real funny part came when the Detroit Police showed up to Alan's 911 call for assistance and took a gander at Alan's vanity plate. Alan still had no clue what was on the front bumper of his little pussy car when the cops gave Alan a $25 ticket for blocking the crosswalk and allowed the hobo to walk. It wasn't until Alan was in the parking structure and observing all the damage that he saw the vanity plate. He came storming into work with the bent up vanity plate screaming about "Who FUCKING DID THIS?", like who ever did it would fess up. Man, he was pissed. Good times...