Marcy

Granny comes to the receptionist-desk Uzi blazing. (Photoshop.)

—“Grady, where do you get all this insane and outrageous stuff to write up?”
“Marcy, it’s everywhere!” I’d shout.
During my final years of employ at the Daily-Messenger newspaper in Canandaigua, the guy in the cubicle next to mine quit, and a new employee named “Marcy” moved in.
I called her “the new girl” at first, but stopped when I found she didn’t like it.
We were all in the Messenger’s gigantic newsroom — I guess we “produced” the newspaper.
Marcy was sort of an artist; and I was sort of an editorial-assistant. Marcy used her artistic and computer skills to generate pages for the newspaper, whereas I generated copy for those pages. Plus I even wrote a little, although it wasn’t reportage.
Marcy and I don’t have much in common. She’s more outgoing, and I keep to myself.
But apparently we both have the jaundiced-eye. or at least I do, and she likes it.
How we both got this way I have no idea, although in my case I know it’s a product of my childhood with hyper-religious parents.
Marcy is from the rural outback of western NY, whereas I am from the world’s arm-pit: south Jersey.
She is from Canisteo, (NY), and I know there is no cell-phone service in the Canisteo river valley.
I am from a sleepy south Jersey suburb, where the principal scenic attractions were gravel pits and oil refineries. (One could say my view of the world was determined by my south Jersey childhood.)
One day Marcy was in her cubicle on the phone telling her caller she worked under the “plaque-wall.” (The back wall of the newsroom was where the newspaper hung its many plaques.)
“Did I hear the word ‘plaque’?” I shouted. “Somebody say the word ‘plaque’?”
“There is no plaque in the Dental Hall of Fame!”
Marcy blew her coffee all over the floor!
In other words, she got it, and to her it was hilarious.
So began our relationship of continuous laughing. With 99% of the people I meet, I hafta explain what I just said. With Marcy, and my wife, I never had to explain anything = they always got it.
At the Mighty Mezz our coffee machines were in a lunchroom upstairs. About 9 AM I would leave my cubicle to go upstairs to get coffee.
“Ahl be bahk!” I’d say to Marcy, with my best Arnold Schwarzenegger imitation.
With anyone else I couldn’t do it, but with Marcy I could, because she would get it.
During my final years I was doing the newspaper’s website. I doubt hardly anyone looked at it, but I was obsessed with trying to put as much “art” on it as possible (photography, etc.).
I’d get in trouble for throwing too many pictures on it, but each picture was 10 to 15 minutes for me, so they weren’t time-consuming.
One picture we always did was the daily weather-drawing, submitted by a child for publication on the weather-page. Usually the child’s parents or grandparents submitted that drawing.
One time I was going on vacation the next week, so the question was who would do the website, since it was me doing it.
A management minion came over to harass Marcy, so I mentioned I was going on vacation, and wondered who would do the website.
“Dave knows how to do it,” minion said.
“But Dave doesn’t know how to do the weather-drawing, and you know what happens if we don’t publish that weather-drawing. Granny comes in to the receptionist-desk with Uzis blazing!”
“Ya lost me Bob,” minion said.
“I GOT IT!” Marcy yelled.
Come Christmas Marcy would decorate her cubicle with Christmas lights. I’d get there maybe a half-hour before her, so when she came in she would plug in all her Christmas lights.
“OOOO” and “Ahhh,” I’d say.
LAUGH ALERT!
We were always striking sparks like that = laughing.
When I first met Marcy I was doing writing like this for my family’s website, which was like Facebook became = exchange of family information, except Facebook was also identifying potential buyers. In my case acres and acres of deep female cleavage, I suppose because of my age.
I’d write stuff for my family’s website, then e-mail it to her also — I thought she’d like it.
Years ago I e-mailed her a report about my wife and I marching our Irish-Setter in Rochester’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. I reported members of the Brighton Volunteer Fire-Department were openly urinating on the manicured lawns of Rochester’s mega-rich.
“Grady, you should be blogging this stuff,” she’d say.
So here I am, over 14 years with BlogSpot; still crankin’ the same jaundiced-eye maunderings I long-ago wrote for my college newspaper.
Like retirement of “Sam-the-Soda-Machine,” an “institution” in front of our college’s tiny radio station, 12 watts.
And also the fact a secretary “liked” the tangle of varicolored wires emanating through holes in the wallboard as her office was remodeled.
“Marcy, it’s everywhere!” I’d shout.
Finally I gave her a very important pearl-of-wisdom: “Marcy, yer gonna get married someday. Whatever ya do, marry somebody who can make ya laugh. Do that and yer in it for the long-haul..”
I told her that because my wife always told me the reason we lasted 44&1/2 years was because I could make her laugh.
I’ve told that to many pretty young girls since: “Now listen to him,” an older lady-friend would say. “This is extremely important. Don’t let us down; don’t make a mistake!”
And I think Marcy married a guy who could make her laugh. Jealousy, exasperation, anger, who knows what. But if the dude can make ya laugh you’ll get over it.
Marcy and I are worlds apart, but I’m thrilled we still strike sparks.
And Marcy is out in Californy = I may never see her again.

• Marcy, and everyone else at the Mighty Mezz, called me “Grady.” See blurb at right.