Andrew’s lunch that day was a deli sliced turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread with a Gala apple and some pretzel sticks.
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He always brought his lunch and mostly ate alone.
Andrew was not unfriendly, just disinterested.
He did not care to try and keep alive small talk and could not concentrate long enough to even care about what most of his colleagues talked about on their lunches.
Andrew read.
He read all through lunch and anytime he thought he could get away with it back at his desk.
It was more than a habit, it was an obsession.
He only felt good when his mind was occupied and engaged in something interesting and meaningful to him personally.
Books also prevented him from rumination, loathing, and self-pity.
Reading also kept at bay the mental self-flagellation of reevaluating his own failures and shortcomings.
Beside being an escape, it was also his salve to prevent destructive thinking.
He knew about all this because he read and thought so much about mental health.
Usually, exercising had a similar effect as reading, but he had let himself find excuses for too long that it now it made him sore just to stretch every now and then, which was demotivating and another struggle to overcome.
A few years ago Andrew had been diagnosed as being clinically depressed.
At the time he tried a few different medications from his psychiatrist, but found them to only dull life more than ever.
In conjunction with the psychiatrist, Andrew had a few sessions with a psychologist.
The treatments never amounted to much and eventually he quit both and decided to take charge of his own life.
This idea got him feeling better for awhile until he became complacent and dropped back into depression.
He thought he had conquered the beast of darkness, but his attempt was not a death blow to the despair.
Andrew’s hang up with the medication was the lack of clearly defined changes in perception that would be the result of their use. He had not detected any reaction stimulated from them, other than the further dullness of life.
The medicine merry-go-round of sampling different kinds of pills on a trial and error basis seemed like shaky science.
It was more akin to a shotgun approach that hopes one of the medications would work.
As long as you keep your fingers crossed.
Andrew already had a background impression about medicine from over-the-counter tablets and from using illegal drugs in the past.
This biased him with expectations of the chemical interactions in the body that he did not sense when taking the prescriptions.
“Talk therapy” with the psychologist didn’t help too much either.
Andrew regarded the doctor, although he was professional, as a stranger who had only a monetary interest in seeing Andrew as a patient.
The doctor was not a friend.
He was not involved in Andrew’s life and offered no real feedback or input.
The official line was he “did not want to influence Andrew’s thoughts” in some way to create something that was not really a problem.
Whatever.
Andrew decided to never come back.
His life had become more depressing and bland the moment he had started treatment and medication and so quitting seemed the best way to fix the problem.
The way Andrew reasoned it was that the doctors were nothing more than a legalized drug ring with salesmen lobbying doctors to prescribe certain pills.
These pills were backed by heavily funded ad campaigns to stimulate the need by ordinary people who were scared into thinking they might have a problem that could be fixed with medicine.
It seemed that most everyone else in Andrew’s office was seeing a doctor for one reason or another and nearly the whole lot of them took some form of medicine they said they needed.
Andrew could not help but wonder if YOU NEED THIS had anything to do with it as he cleaned up his lunch debris.
After depositing his trash in the nearest bin, Andrew washed his hands in the break room sink and thought, “does anyone else wash up after lunch anymore?” and turned off the faucet.
On his way back to his desk he noticed that there was a police officer coming towards him down the aisle between the rows of cubicles.
Andrew politely said hello as he caught the officer’s eye and continued to his desk.
On top of his otherwise clean and organized workspace sat an envelope, curiously hand addressed to him with an official printed state seal of the Tulsa Police Department in the upper left hand corner.
An interesting thought crossed Andrew’s mind as he contemplated the possible contents of the package.
Nothing unusual had happened lately so he figured he had nothing to fear and to the best of his knowledge he hadn’t witnessed any crimes.
As he sat down, Andrew reached into the middle most drawer on his left side of his modular desk system and retrieved the small company issued letter opener.
With mundane ease and just as nonchalant he opened the envelope and pulled out the folded page inside.
It read:
Mr. Andrew Manning,
It has been brought to the attention of the Tulsa City Police Department that you have provided an outstanding public service in the community. It is with our distinguished pleasure that we extend to you the opportunity to be our esteemed Guest of Honor and Keynote Speaker at our Annual Police Academy Graduation Ball this March 3rd, 2017. Travel arrangements have been made on your behalf to provide a full police escort to accompany you to the Ball. Please bring a guest if you feel so inclined.
Honorably Thankful,
Chief of Police Luis Danzel
Andrew looked around in disbelief.
What outstanding public service could they mean?
He hardly went anywhere outside of work and at the few public places he did frequent he scarcely talked to anyone.
Before he could think any further, Juan, his co-equal and only close contact at work, popped his head into Andrew’s cubicle and asked jovially, “You comin’ to the meeting? I saw them bring in a cake.”
Although not an uncommon occurrence, a cake always meant someone was receiving recognition of some kind, but it seemed to happen so often that it did not even occur to Andrew that the cake might possible be for him.
“Yeah, is it time already?” inquired Andrew.
Juan just chuckled, “Yep and you better straighten your tie too, stud.”
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Andrew gave him a puzzled look and pondered that last word that Juan so purposefully tacked on to his sentence.
Not able to figure anything out, Andrew got up, straightened his tie and fell in beside Juan and another group of coworkers all heading towards the conference hall.
Not long after they had taken a seat about three rows from the back, the local division office head, Colin Strause, stepped up to the microphone on a small raised platform and gave an enthusiastic “Welcome!"
This was heartily returned by the duty-bound corporate audience.
“It is my distinct honor,” Mr. Strause continued, “to welcome the return of our most praiseworthy, always friendly, and hardworking CEO of YOU NEED THIS, a man who really needs no introduction, (Andrew mused at this irony), your loved leader and the man who signs your checks, put your hands together for Mr. David Dwight!”
As Colin finished the crowd erupted into a welcoming applause in delighted approval of the lauding welcome given Mr. Dwight.
At his cue David burst from the side door and gallantly strode towards the platform while waving and smiling the whole way.
“Thank you, thank you,” he opened, “but please, please this is not necessary.”
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