Needed

There’s this old, pre-Uber joke where an executive type gets into a cab. The driver asks, “where to?”

“Anywhere,” says the executive type. “Everybody everywhere needs me.”

I’m like that executive type. I teach MWF from ten to 10:50. You’d think for those 50 minutes three times a week I could be left in peace. But no, people storm the classroom, everybody with an urgent need.

“Where’s the secretary? I need to see her!”

Well, she’s definitely not in my pocket, is she?

“I lost my key, I left my phone in the car and now the two-step verification doesn’t work, what do I put on line 5 of the activity report, where can I find the Italian tutor?”

I go to the bathroom and come back to a group of people searching my office because they don’t know where I am. I haven’t been of the size that would enable me to hide in this office since age 5. It’s not large. Why are you searching it and exchanging panicky whispers to the effect of “I don’t know what happened. She was here just a minute ago”?