Time for an anecdote:

- Our heroine, Nora, arrived at the office one winter morning a little tardier than usual. While starting up her computer she could be heard pounding on the keyboard a little harder than usual. And her feet pounded the floor a little louder than usual during her trip to and from the coffee machine.
"Sara, what's the matter with you today?" asked Marco. "What crawled up your ass this morning?"
"Oh, nothing. No, nothing. Nothing." she replied. She was in the midst of checking her voice mail. A minute passed, and then we heard the sharp plasticky crack of the receiver slamming down on the phone. There was another pause, and then she appeared between our cubes.
"Okay, I locked my keys in my car. I don't know what to do. I'm soooooo upset."
We considered her dilemma.
"You could call triple A," I offered.
"Don't have a membership."
"You could try breaking into it," Marco suggested.
"But I would need a coat hanger." Nora countered. "A metal one. All I have is a stupid plastic one." She waved it at us for emphasis.
Marco pointed at the far wall of his cube. Inexplicably, a metal hanger hung there. It appeared to balance on a tack. I wondered if it could possibly support more than an ounce or two.
"Take it," he told her. "Do you know how to use it?"
"Sure," she said, brightening up considerably. "I've done it a hundred times." She grabbed the hanger from her hand and nearly skipped away in excitement, swinging by her cube to pick up her leather coat on her way to the elevators.
"I've got to see this," I said to Marco.
Fortunately for us, Nora parked her apple-red '87 LeBaron convertible on our side of the building, so it was easy to watch her work. It wasn't much of a show, actually. We saw her bound out of the building and run over to her car. The hanger was already straightened out, one end curled up into a small hook. Upon reaching the driver's side door, she took just a moment to collect herself, and then smoothly slid the hanger into the door, hook end first. In a flash the door was open.
"God damn, I'm impressed," Marco muttered.
"That moron can't work the fax machine, but she can break into a car in three seconds flat?" I couldn't believe it.
"I guess she's got to be good at something," Marco said. "I mean, she would have to be, right?"
We went back to work now that the show was over. I returned a couple of phone calls and checked on my fantasy football team. The season was drawing to a close, and the Gang Green squad badly needed a win to stay in playoff contention. I scoured the free agent pool in hopes of finding a tight end who might have a little more success than the piece of crap I'd been starting the last five weeks.
I heard Marco's chair roll backwards, which invariably meant he had something to say to me. I leaned back.
"She's still out there."
I turned around and looked out the window. Indeed, there she was, leaning into the trunk. A pile of detritus lay on the ground next to the still-open door, and I could make out some magazines, what looked like a piece of Tupperware, and a couple of towels. A beach chair rested against the rear bumper next to her, and by the motions of her torso you could tell she was desperately digging through piles of God-knows-what that had collected in the trunk over the years. It looked a little like she was doing a sloppy breaststroke. I half expected her to surface from the depths of her car, dripping wet, gripping a tire iron in one hand and a large-mouthed bass in the other.
"How do you lose your keys in the trunk?" I asked. "Describe the series of events which leads to this." I motioned wildly at the window. "Please. I beg you."
"I can't. I don't even want to try."
I decided I couldn't watch any longer, and went back to work. No acceptable free agent tight ends were available, so I began to consider a few trade scenarios. I had the backup San Diego RB on my bench; perhaps the manager of the injury-depleted Grid Iron Chefs would be willing to part with one of his TEs...
Before long Nora appeared between our cubes again. She was a mess - more so than usual. A berette rested haphazardly atop her head, and I fully believed she inadvertently picked it up during her trunk swim. She also looked confused, dejected, and on the verge of tears.
I asked the obvious question. "Where are your keys?"
"I don't know. They're not in the car."
I asked her what seemed to be the next obvious question. "Why did you think you locked them in the car to begin with?"
She pointed at her left coat pocket. "Well, because they weren't in here. They're always in here. So I must have locked them in the car."
"Right, except they're not in the car," Marco said.
After a pause, I posed a third question, which had been brewing for a moment or two. I was hoping there would be no need to ask it.
"Have you checked any of your other pockets?"
"No..."
"Do you think you might want to give that a shot?"
Nora shook her head and grumbled to herself but followed my suggestion anyway. It didn't take long for her to locate the missing keys in her right coat pocket. Her problem now solved, a smile came back to her face, and she let out her characteristic giggle.
"Hey, how did I do that? That's so weird! They're always in the other pocket! Soooo weird!" She returned to her cube giggling to herself, crisis averted.
"It's really not that weird," Marco said quietly. "Not when you're borderline retarded."
"No, you're right," I replied. "I'm amazed, but I shouldn't be. I should know better by now."
We returned to our diversions, Marco to an e-mail and I to my football. A few more giggles punctuated the omnipresent office drone.

Excellent. Now for a proverb:

- You can lead a dog to water, but you can't teach an old man new tricks.

I've heard this one, or some variation thereof, for as long as I can remember. It is pure truth, distilled to its very core. Time and time again I've found myself on a desolate rocky outcropping high in the Andes, reflecting on the nature of man, or perhaps the nature of dog, and this maxim has leapt into my mind. Forced to my knees by the brutal power of the dictum, blinded by its breadth of relevance, deafened by the reach of its repercussions, I BECOME the rock. I revert to the Earth from whence I came.

Testing, testing, one, two, three...
And four, five, six, just to be safe...
I'll give it a whack, Bob's your uncle, and the first post is done!