Guh.

I wish I had time to update at work lately. As it is, I am working on a project that typifies, in the most basic sense, the essence, the PURPOSE, of all corporate activity: I am taking pieces of paper from one place, organizing them, and giving them to someone else so they can put them some other place.

I want to die.

Anyway, I should finish with that project soon, and move on to my next task which will be putting self-adhesive stamps onto 1000 envelopes. The school at which I work is only accessible by a time portal that brings you back to the year 1913, before the advent of the postage machine.

My only solace is that the envelopes are already sealed.

If we may discuss these envelopes a moment more: Why, oh, why, did they feel the need to hand write the addresses on the envelopes for the people in the rejection pile? I mean, we're already telling them that their eighth grader can't come to this high school, so it's not like we have to start being nice now. None of the parents is going to say "Look, Suzie! They've crushed your hopes and given you one of the first big rejections of your life, but check out the flourish on that 'E'!"

I complained to my mom about the lack of a postage machine, and she said that public schools are a bureaucracy, and that the function of this bureaucracy (as opposed to a corporation) is not to do things in the most efficient manner possible, but instead to employ people in political districts in order to win votes.

That woman still has the capacity to surprise me.

In other school news, check out what happened yesterday:

It's the end of the day, I've already checked out and I'm walking from the main office to the exit. The halls are swarming with kids, going to and from their last few classes. Things are loud, things are crazy.

Down the corridor maybe twenty feet in fromt of me, I see about a half dozen kids watching an argument between a guy and a girl. The girl is animatedly yelling at the guy, who is just leaning against the wall, unresponsive, absorbing her screaming.

The girl was a very specific high school type. Did you have a girl in your school who always dressed up? I'd seen this girl before. She was very pretty, and always wore clothes that could only be described as business casual. I say she's a 'type' because we had at least one of those girls in my high school too.

The guy she was arguing with wasn't nearly as distinctive. He was taller than her. Macho. Thuggish. We've got a lot of those at this school.

I realized that I had noticed that the girl in this fight here, the one who was doing the screaming, had the largest collection of balloons on Valentine's Day.

She didn't seem too happy today, though. Not satisfied with just yelling, she took it to the next level. She punched the guy right in the mouth.

I had been walking towards the two during the argument. When I saw the punch, I stopped in my tracks. My eyebrows raised in surprise. I believe I said "Oh." The guy took the punch the same way he took the yelling. No flinching, no attempt to block it. He just took it.

I knew a security guard was right behind me. I turned around, and he didn't really seem as if he was aware of the fight. I said to him "You've got a fistfight up here." I turned back to the fight in time to see the girl storm off around a corner. The guy was rubbing his jaw.

"Where's the fight?" says the security guard. There really wasn't any fight, not anymore. He noticed the guy walking towards us, still rubbing his mouth. The security guard pointed a finger at him, and looked at me as if to say "Him?" I nodded. When I looked back at the kid, he was walking by me.

He spit into a metal garbage can as he passed me. I heard the telling 'plink.' The girl had knocked one of his teeth out.

That was the amazing thing about the fight: The punch. One minute, the girl was yelling at the guy, screaming at him. The next minute, her fist flew into his mouth. No hook punch, no wind up, no warning. Fist. Forward. Face.

If it had been the other way around, with him punching her, I would have flown down the hall towards that fight, I guarantee it. I know that's easy to say, but, as sure as I'm writing this, I would have been between the girl and the guy. The way it was, though, if there's a girl who's under five feet tall willing to punch a guy who's over six feet tall, I'm willing to bet that the guy probably deserved it.

Unless she's just nuts. In which case, I'm wrong.

Coming up later this week: FUNNY!