A working stiff's diary

Monday, January 6th: I wore my new coat to work today. I didn’t get any specific compliments, but Lloyd invited me to go bowling on Tuesday which he’d never done before, so I attributed that to the new coat. I was pretty sure the coat looked good, but late in the afternoon I started to panic thinking that everyone was making fun of it behind my back and I had become the secret laughing stock of the office. I decided to ask Laurie if she thought my coat looked okay and she said it was fine. Laurie’s the best.

Tuesday, January 7th: Work was fine; Laurie dyed her hair a weird shade of red, but not so weird as to be unprofessional, I guess. I had a hard time focusing on work knowing that I’d be bowling with Lloyd later. I spent the better part of the afternoon thinking of different ways I could say “Spare me!” for comic effect. I was super amped. What if I bowled a perfect game? Lloyd would probably talk about that at work on Wednesday and everyone would be crazy impressed.

I rode with Lloyd from work to the bowling alley. He had a Maroon 5 cd in his car. I hadn’t really thought about what kind of music Lloyd would be into, but I was pleasantly surprised by the Maroon 5. I wore my ‘The Pin is NOT Mightier’ bowling shirt. Lloyd seemed surprised when I told him I’d never bowled before.

I was a little disappointed when we got there and discovered that Lloyd and I were the only two people bowling. Apparently Tuesday’s a slow night at the 10 Pins None the Richer bowling alley. We’d just started when Lloyd began talking about some problems he was having with his wife and how she was being really unreasonable about him exchanging flirty messages with women on Facebook. Eventually it started to seem like Lloyd was more interested in talking about his wife than bowling, which was okay with me because those bowling balls were way heavier than I thought they’d be and my wrist was really bothering me.

After he’d had a few beers, Lloyd told me that he had a plan to kill his wife and he needed my help. That made me pretty uncomfortable, but I didn’t want to seem rude since he was my ride. He had a whole plan mapped out where he went to a public place while I burned down his house with his wife inside. I told him the plan sounded good, but I didn’t really like the sound of it very much at all. Eventually he took me back to my car and I drove home.

Wednesday, January 8th: Work was okay. They served us hot dogs for lunch. They were kind of plain, but I relished them. Lloyd cornered me in the lunchroom and I asked him what he thought about the hot dogs because I was hoping we could talk about lunch and not about murdering his wife. He said the hot dogs were okay, which I agreed with. He told me he and his wife had a long talk when he got home from the bowling alley and they sort of patched things up, so the plan was off. I was pretty relieved. In the afternoon, Laurie emailed me some pictures of animals dressed up as Dilbert. She’s the best.