Fulfilled with EVIL. And I'm not sure that counts the same way.

I signed up to take this tax preparation course with H&R Block.

(I just typed that sentence and then I stood up, shaking, set the laptop down, and slammed another shot straight from the bottle. Of poison.)

The course is work related, obviously, and when I lie awake at night sweating, waiting for the 1040A demons to skulk into my room on their creepy pencil hooves (accompanied more often than not by their vicious—yet admittedly shorter and more efficient—1040EZ brethren), I remind myself that the tax glass is actually half-full of puppy blood because I’m thirty years old and I still have to bluff my way through the “here, quick fill out these simple tax forms” part of any first day on the job. After fifteen years of working I still have no fucking idea what I’m supposed to do; at my last job I misread “dependents” as “dependencies” and my federal withholdings ended up being like 34. I was making extra lines on the page with a ruler so I could keep entering “1”s. A course in basic taxes will not be a completely misspent ten weeks.

(I typed “ten weeks” and then Randy had to run out into the backyard and catch me after I flung my limp, desperate body off the roof of the house. He spilled his drink in the process, and we were already out of ice. I’m now officially on very shaky ground with the melodramatic suicide parole board.)

So the specific class I signed up for meets on Mondays and Thursdays at a location that is so near to my residence that if I listen closely I’ll actually be able to hear the taxes being taxingly taxed from my fetal position under the comforter. Only when I showed up for class on the first day (still wrapped in the comforter; it’s a neutral, forgiving fabric pattern), the note on the door told me that my class had been combined with another at a second location and that I should call a number for more details. The voice mailbox at said number? It was full. Tax enthusiasts all over my square quarter-mile were freaking out in their respective comforters, I’m sure, redialing like only the tax obsessed can. I actually fell asleep in the parking lot while I was walking back to my car, and I only missed being run over by a Quizno’s patron thanks to a helpful hint of burgundy in my Calvin Klein sheet set.

Luckily I received a hastily scrawled letter in the mail the next day detailing the situation. Apparently the H&R Block people aren’t exactly at the top of their organizational game in September. I’m pretty sure they hibernate in clandestine underground bunkers through most of the summer and into the fall, or at least I’m hoping they do, because so far that’s the only aspect of the job that I can even remotely identify with.

(I typed that sentence before I realized that my new boss reads this website. And to that end I’d just like to clarify here that I am every bit as passionate about tax preparation as I am about getting to the office before 9:45am and not wearing the same pants every single day for five weeks.)

So the following Thursday I donned The Pants, kissed the comforter adieu, and drove like eight miles to my new class location. I knew I was in the right place because the sky was filled with the kind of greasy, choking smoke most commonly associated with multiple depreciation calculations. Plus there were people inside. Dead people.

INSTRUCTOR: “...”

ME: “Hi.”

INSTRUCTOR: “...”

ME: “My original class was cancelled, and it looks like I’ve been added to this class.”

INSTRUCTOR: “...”

ME: “A class that meets pretty much across town from the original location. Which is convenient.”

INSTRUCTOR: [pets a serpent]

ME: “And I couldn’t get anybody at your office on the phone, either, so I didn’t know that I was supposed to come here until I got this letter yesterday.”

INSTRUCTOR: [scratches said serpent. Serpent coos.]

ME: “You know. And... that’s pretty professional.”

INSTRUCTOR: “...”

ME: “So...”

INSTRUCTOR: [kicks serpent in the neck. Serpent screams. Serpent attempts to flee but quickly finds that its body is hopelessly entangled in a mass of Child Tax Credit forms. Serpent loses its will to live. Again.]

ME: “Uh, so... I guess I’m sorry?”

INSTRUCTOR: “You can sit over there. Between Maria’s oozing torso and the severed head of Tim.”

ME: “Okay.”

INSTRUCTOR: “That’s not Maria.”

ME: “Wow. Okay.”

So other than having to a) get up and bid a bittersweet farewell to my comforter in the wee hours of the morning, b) drive just past Wrath (if you get to Avarice you’ve gone too far!) on the Divine Comedy morning route, and c) trick my brain into thinking it’s eating Nerds ropes and watching porn when in actuality it’s doing the precise polar opposite, well, I think it's safe to say that I've never felt more fulfilled.

 
¶ posted by Erin on Monday, September 25, 2006