The Sweet Release of Death

I Fear For The Life of Betty White

02/15/2011 11:28 AM Filed in:Cubicle: The Musical

I don’t know when it began, but I do remember the day I was to awaken to its evil presence. Unfortunately by the time of my awakening, 3 of 4 cherished American icons were already dead and buried. The question that stood before me like Mt. Everest was whether I would be able to save the remaining 4th icon: Betty White. You see, the day after Rue McClanahan had passed, I noticed something in one of my co-workers that chilled me to the core; it was a number of things actually and when added up, equaled the fright that must have run through the veins of Milli Vanilli when that shitty MTV tape player locked up on “girl you know it…girl you know it… girl you know it.” Fucking MTV. Anyway, I had heard of dear old Rue passing away the night before and thought “and yet another Golden Girl has passed.” The following morning as I was parking in the far end of the Corporate Land lot, I noticed my co-worker Samantha walking towards the front entrance. What really struck me was how she was walking: rather slowly and each step filled with caution and anxiety as if a broken hip were to result in the slightest of missteps. This would not be such a revelation if I were to be cruising through the parking lot of Shady Pines Retirement Home and Bingo Academy. But as it were, this was Corporate Land and Samantha is only 24.

It was at that precise moment of witnessing her slow, lumbering pace coupled with the morning newscaster waxing poetic on Rue’s life that I wondered aloud to myself “Samantha is moving like a Golden Girl…” It’s funny how we get so wrapped up in the everyday minutiae that we miss little things that slip by … until they snowball into a giant iron fist and bitch slap us like Charlie Sheen in a coke-fueled rage. So as I watched Samantha’s painfully slow entrance into the Corporate Land foyer, It gave me pause and I reflected back on what in the past, I thought were Samantha’s little quirks in appearance and action: the rather elderly looking cardigan sweaters, the button up shirts with rather large lapels and equally large floral prints, the constant complaining of a mysterious cold draft that was “chilling me to the bone.” But of all the premature elderly kit that Samantha carried about herself, two things now stuck out in my reflection about Samantha that just didn’t seem right; kind of like the idea of finding talent on American Idol and, Lindsay Lohan actually giving a shit.

The two things that now appeared odd, upon my reflection as I locked up the TSROD Mobile, was the framed, autographed 8x10 glossy group shot of The Golden Girls that hung on Samantha’s cubicle wall and, the overly secured dorm fridge that was nestled under Samantha’s desk; complete with two padlocks, a “property of Samantha DO NOT OPEN!” warning sticker along with a “Honk if you love Matlock!” magnet slightly askew on the front door of the fridge. I murmured under my breath “what the heel is that all about?” as I made my way to the foyer. Samantha was still not completely inside the foyer, as she had paused to catch her breath and was leaning on the front door as if contemplating her next move. “Good morning Sam!” I said as I approached her. “Need any help?” I offered as the look she was sending was of complete helplessness. “Oh yes indeed! Thank you! What a nice young man!” I was taken aback by her response, as I am nearly twice Samantha’s age.

As I helped Samantha inside, she palmed a dollar bill into my hand and creaked out “Thank you. Now go get yourself something special from the vending machine!” My dearly departed grandmother has been for a decade now yet, there before me, she stood albeit encased in the body of a twenty-four-year old. Before I made my way to my Cubicle of Artistic Despair, I hung around the front desk area and chatted up The Fist and That Girl all the while sneaking a glimpse here and there over at Samantha. The Fist made some low murmured comments to me under her breath about the rather peculiar actions of Samantha growing more and more peculiar as time went on. I shook my head in agreement, all the while keeping an eye on Samantha to see that she did not overhear our note comparisons of her escalating strange behavior.

To break ourselves out of the not-so-secret chitchat, I offered up to The Fist the morning news headline: “Did you hear? Rue McClanahan passed away last night.” The Fist, not one for knowing of television comedians before 1995, gave a rather robust “who” in reply. “Rue McClanahan” I retorted. “Golden Girls? Maude? She was a real firecracker.” I mused. “ Ah…Yeah, the group of old ladies living together. Yeah…” The Fist replied. Then something really strange caught my eye. Samantha, sitting at her cubicle, raised her shoulders up from her self-imposed osteoporosis hunch, and said in a low whisper to no one in particular “ Rue McClanahan…truly magic.” It was then that I noticed that Samantha had a rather large thermos in her lap that was adorned with a small sticker of Rue herself, stuck to the side. My Creep Meter started to go off like a slot machine jackpot at the Bellagio. Now I was truly curious as to what the hell was going on with the world’s oldest twenty-four -year-old.

I rolled my eyes to The Fist in a “ That was really creepy!” fashion and decided I needed a better vantage point to see what was really going on in Samantha’s cubicle. I circled around the backside of the cubicle cluster and slid into the alcove where all the Post-It Notes and pads of paper are stored, giving me a direct line-of-site into Sam’s Cubicle of Mystery. The timing in my position shift paid off in spades as at that precise moment, Samantha had ever so carefully rolled her chair to the other side of her desk to the dorm fridge that sat right at her knees. From my new position, Samantha’s back was to me and she did not see that I was hunkered down in the supply nook in mock search for fresh desk supplies. Samantha, lost in thought now, reached out over her desk and slowly dragged her index finger down the 8 x 10 glossy hanging on her cubicle wall, right over Rue’s image and what I could gather from my earshot, Samantha murmured “ I become one with you now.” She then set about looking over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching before she commenced her next move. I quickly ducked down below the counter as to not get caught and ever so quietly, peeped around the corner to catch her next move: Unlocking that mysterious fridge of hers.

One by one, she removed the locks swung open its door and before any contents of the fridge came into view, a vast amount of deep freeze fog from the dry ice had to disperse before revealing its secret booty. Once the ice veil had cleared, I caught a glimpse of Samantha’s secret: two other thermos like containers lay within, one marked “Estelle” and another marked “Bea” Samantha now was sliding Rue right in next to them… and really creeping me the fuck out now for sure. I waited for her to lock down her Fridge of Elderly Souls before I could make my escape unnoticed, fully realizing that I was going to have to commando-crawl out of the supply nook or risk being caught by a soul stealing customer service rep. “Fucking hell!” I thought as I silently crawled from the supply nook. “She’s killing off the Golden Girls one by one and stealing their souls!”

To be continued…

Tags: Betty white, The Golden Girls, Milli Vanilli,