SCRINCHING

SCRINCHING

CARICATURE #030

Drawn 1998-04-01-253

            I had gone to High School with Linda. We hardly knew each other, barely spoke. After High School however, we both went to work at Big Yank, Incorporated. It employed about 600 people, most of whom were women. The women sewed the material together to make blue jeans. It was my job to see to it they had thread, material, and anything else they might need in the production of pants. I was the “Bundle Boy.”

            There were two main lines: the “Blue Jean line”, and the “Dress Line”. Charles Chaddick, my best friend at the time, worked the Dress Line, and I worked the other. I took care of about three hundred and fifty women and Charles took care of about two hundred and fifty. Nita, my floor manager, placed Linda under my care.

            On her very first day I told Linda, if she needed anything at all to just scream. About thirty minutes later, I was startled to hear a blood curdling cry.

“LAAA.........RREEEY.”

            I thought someone had died a horrible death. I came running, breathlessly “What’s the matter?”

            “Nothing. I just need some thread.” She laughed as she scrinched her nose at me.

            “Why did you scream like that?”

            “You told me to.”

            We became fast friends after that. We began scrinching our noses at each other. It was something I’ve never done with anyone before or since. She said the same. We came to be special friends, with a special way of greeting each other. I found she was a happily married woman with a baby girl. But our scrinching was harmless. We kept saying we were going to run away with each other. We told each other the secrets no one else knew. We were friends.

            One day, I had about a thousand pair of pants stacked up almost to the ceiling. As I put the last stack of five dozen on the pile, the entire stack came sliding down to the floor. I was upset. I’d worked on it for hours. Now it had to be done over. It would take the rest of the day to put back.

            “LAAA.........RREEEY.”  Linda needed something. I ran to see what she needed.

            “What do you need?” I asked.

            She answered slowly and deliberately, “You dropped something,” and grinned broadly and scrinched.

            I wanted to kill her. But it was funny.

            We agreed that we probably would have had a good time dating in High School, if we had discovered each other sooner. We probably would not have married each other, but we would have had a good time.

            I really looked forward to going to work each day. She was always a bright spot in my day. One day she wasn’t there. Word spread that she had run off with one of the sewing machine mechanics.

            I was devastated. She had left her husband and her baby. It bothered me that even in jest I had talked to her about running away together. It was harmless, wasn’t it?

            She had never spoken to me about being unhappy at home. I became jealous in a way.

            My friend I loved so dearly had apparently been scrinching someone else.

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the wordmaster says:

ŸShe really was a sweet person. I had been scrinched for sure. 

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