Character Sketch

                            April Foolish

                                By Doc Walton

It ain't easy being me, April thinks as she cranks the ignition key for the third time and gets nothing for the effort.  The battery is dead.  Again.  How many times have I done that, left a door ajar, the overhead glowing?  Three?  Four?  April slaps the steering wheel in exasperation.  She's feeling foolish and, unfortunately, the feeling is all too familiar.  She leans back in her seat and takes a deep breath.  She's trying to focus, get present, but her head is abuzz with thoughts, spinning them out one after another.  It's always something.  Some damned little thing going awry, screwing up my life.  It's the car, it's the stove left on, a bill unpaid, a door unlocked.  What the hell's wrong with me anyway?  Why do these things always happen to me?  Really, she muses.  I must have done something dreadful in my last life. 

April laughs at that thought, takes out her cell, calls in. “Going to be late.  Dead battery…again.” She wishes she didn’t have to add that “again.”   

She's not worried about losing her job, though, she's too good at it.  She writes copy for an ad agency, clever copy, copy that sells product.  She has the awards and plaques to prove it.  What’s bothering her now is the ribbing she’s going to take when she gets to the office.  No opportunity to needle ever passes in a place where being nimble with words is your stock in trade.  It's going to be a long day.

April follows her office call with one for a cab and then shoves her phone in a pocket. 

The ride to work takes ten minutes.  At the twenty minute mark she's back at her house, rescuing her purse, forgotten on the car seat.  What next, she thinks, what next? 

When she finally arrives at work April has to wind her way through  office cubicles to a chorus of comments. 

“Good afternoon April.”  “Nice vacation?”  “Hey, April’s here, must be lunch time.”  “Happy Hour run a little long?”  “Whaddya know, I don’t have to write your obituary after all.”  

April smiles, ignores the taunts, makes it to her desk.  The office has been designed to be open so the ad-people can interact freely and toss ideas around.

They are a good natured group, April thinks, but I’m getting a little tired of being the one most often catching the barbs.  

An hour later, seated at her desk, she’s still inside her head gnawing on her focus problem.  Or lack thereof, she thinks.  She knows it’s called ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder.  When she was a kid the shrinks even threw in an H to make it ADHD Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.  In those days she thinks, I couldn’t even say all that without my mind wandering.  She laughs aloud and continues the thought, Might as well be HDTV for all the good it does me.  

She’d been given the drugs.  Yeah, and they worked just dandy, she remembers, if you want your kid to be a zombie.  She had survived, though, made it through the accident prone years with no permanent damage.  Well, no physical damage anyway.  

In school she had both starred and flopped academically.  If the teacher was good and the subject interesting, there was no deficit of attention. She could focus for as long as necessary.  If those two conditions weren’t met, however, well then, what’s Billy scribbling over there, and what in the world possessed Carla to wear that hideous getup?  As an adult she tried Yoga, Tai Chi, Meditation and Breathing exercises to stay in the moment, and, wouldn’t you know, they all worked…while she was doing them.  Five minutes later, though, would find her pulling on mismatched socks with her mind a time zone ahead.

Ah well, April concludes,  I may have a too busy brain sometimes, but it serves me well at others.  I mean, doesn’t busy gray matter logically have to produce more than a plod along bunch?  

She turns to her computer and reads the projects listed there.  She is instantly at work, her mind jumping all over the place, crackling with ideas.  She is at once perfectly present and far far away.  How can that be? she thinks when the concept dawns on her.  How can I be here and there at the same time?

She pushes her wheeled desk chair back from the computer while still staring at the screen.  There are things written there she doesn’t quite remember writing.  She looks at her watch.  It’s been almost an hour since she began to work.  Words had seeped from her mind onto the screen during that time, but she had no sense of the hour passing.  Is that being present or gone, she wonders.  If I were present, I mean right here, why don’t I remember any of the sounds, the sights, the scents or anything that has gone on around me.  I can hear the clatter of keyboard keys, muffled talking, see people moving about, smell donuts and coffee quite clearly now, why not then?  If this makes me present where the hell was I when that screen was filling up? April ponders the mystery for a moment, but then something on the computer monitor flickers, catches her attention, her wandering, capricious attention, and she slips back to work.  Figuring out why she is so often foolish will just have to come later.  And that April concludes, is the story of my life.  I tell ya, It ain’t easy being me.