Accident-Prone And Testosterone-Deprived

Mr. Mipple is a man … wait, I stand corrected. He’s not really a man. He’s a person with male genitalia. Well, I assume he has male genitalia. Hey, I never considered the possibility that he lacks male genitalia. It would explain a lot if he weren’t packing. Anyway, he’s the guy everyone in the office has come to resent. I’ve known the guy for twenty-six years, and the older he gets, the more pathetic he becomes.

First of all, he has been divorced from his first wife for almost as long as I’ve known him, and he still wants revenge. According to him, she was a major psycho, and he was just too young to know any better than to marry her. My guess is she was the first person to give him the goodies and he fell for it like a dumb, rotten sack of potatoes. Besides that, she was the boss’s daughter. I’m sure he figured he could get the goodies and become CEO out of the deal. No such luck. Mr. Mipple turned civil servant when he realized that sugar-daddy-in-law wasn’t going to give him action the way his daughter did. Ugly divorce ensued after the damage of breeding occurred.

Fast forward to within the past five years. He fancies himself an athlete. Picture it, about 5’10”, 230 pounds. Athlete my ass.

He plays volleyball at the Y. He has a broken finger and nose to show for it, not to mention the many scars around his eyes where the ball hit him in the face causing his glasses to get rammed into his skin.

He also rides his bicycle. He used to ride his bike to work every day. I’ll never forget the time I walked into the storage room to get some envelopes and saw him changing clothes! Ew! I should have filed a sexual harassment suit right then and there. Instead I asked him why he didn’t use the bathroom for such a personal activity. He claimed it wasn’t comfortable for him to do that. Well, that all made sense. His comfort was certainly more important than that of those who worked with him and really didn’t want to see him naked.

He also takes walks on the taxpayers’ clock and graces us all with his smelly, sweat-soaked self. When he isn’t engaging in all of these athletic activities, he’s shoveling food into his face.

Now we come to the part where his body falls apart right before our very eyes. He decided to undergo lasic surgery to rid himself of those pesky glasses that always get in the way of his volleyball game. Instead of having one surgical procedure on each eye, he has undergone at least five. I’m almost positive he will be completely blind before his doctor is through with him. He also can’t hear. It’s no wonder he doesn’t know how to do his job, he’s never heard the instructions on how to do it. Also, when dealing with clients, their destiny is a big crap shoot. Did he hear them correctly? Does he report their statements accurately? One will never know for sure.

I can’t really fault him for physical maladies over which he has no control. However, I do fault him for the grandiose notion he has that he is a master handyman. Last year he bought a bobcat, thinking he would eventually supplement his retirement by doing whatever one does with a bobcat as a service to his “summer home” neighbors. He flipped that thing over backwards more than once. He also decided to make some furniture out of logs. Easy enough, for a master such as he. Except there was a slip of the chisel and he damn near cut his arm off. Off to surgery he goes again, for repair of the ligaments, muscles and other tissues he sliced wide open. Not only that, during the pre-op exam the doctor found that he had carpal tunnel syndrome in both of his wrists. He was out of the job for nearly three months undergoing various arm surgeries, while the rest of us scrambled to cover his caseload.

It was a rough year for Mr. Mipple, and I can’t say I’m not glad to see him prepare for retirement this fall. He has made more work for his coworkers than they could appreciate, and his incessant whining about his many owies was really wearing thin. Just when I thought he was getting his shit together, he came into work yesterday with a Band Aid on his head. A very sheer Band Aid. I could see the gash through the blood-soaked tiny piece of gauze. Smart girl that I am, I completely ignored the injury, frustrating his desires for attention. I asked my boss if she knew anything about Mr. Mipple’s head injury. Yes, he is re-siding his garage. I can just see it; Mr. Mipple pulling those nails out with all his might and slip of the hammer – the claw end recklessly flies into his head. I wonder if he cried. My boss assured me that she instructed him to stay away from any home improvement projects, at his city home and at his lake home, until October, when he is out of our hair forever. My prediction is after he retires he’ll disable his body so severely with all the athletics and carpentry that he’ll need to come back to work simply for the health insurance. He’ll be blind, deaf, armless, legless, and senseless.

But to me, he’ll always be the dinkless wonder – a warrior wielding no sword or stones – only a first aid fanny pack containing plenty of ace bandages, eye patches, iodine, and a do-it-yourself stitch kit.