Finding Zone 57

Isn’t Murphy’s Law something along the lines of "whatever can go wrong will go wrong, and at the worst possible time, in the worst possible way."
Or whatever?
Well, tonight, Murphy had my number.

Disclaimer: For those who need their blog-reading to have plot and excitement, quit reading this one, NOW. I beg you.

If you go on, against my advice, all you are going to hear is Blog-Catharsis.

I just want to vent, as to why it took me so long to get home tonight, and how a simple problem ate itself into my Starbucks reading time.
And that last thing I mentioned [my reading time] is no small matter, because my Reading Partner© has already indicated that if I don’t get through Irving’s Owen Meany soon, she is going to trade me in on two twenty-somethings.
I cannot keep up to her, in our recent [and non-recent] reading ventures!

Then again, she is a high-school English teacher.
And so… she doesn’t really work, per se.
Even Owen Meany himself would agree with me here.
He says, to John Wheelwright, in Chapter 6 → “YOU DON’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON’T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY SPECIAL ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE – TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT’S SO EASY; I THINK THAT’S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS.”
But of course, I jest.
She is so brilliant, and industrious, and witty, and hard-working…… no, wait a minute, scrap that last part, but she is all the others. A savant. A genius.
And I love her and our life-long project of Reading All Of The Good Books In The World©.

But back to Murphy.
So, today I wanted to get out the door in a hurry. I was the last one there.
I was thinking only one thought → SOON READ BOOK!
I was setting the damn alarm.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh-uh-huh uh-huh….. → NOT FRIGGING WORKING!
The alarm is not setting.

Says there is a security breach in “Zone 57”.
Well… where the hell is Zone 57?

The warehouse in which I am now trapped is like [how to describe it]…. you could literally have several Boeing 747’s in there! All of them... LOST!
And doors? There’s got to be 800 doors in the place!
Where would I START, to check!
Forget What Would Jesus Do... a rubber bracelet is not going to help you tonight.
What would MacGuyver do, is more like it!

So, I had to call my Supervisor on the radio. He’s never even heard of Zone 57.
I feared that very response.
And in one section of the place, we have had contractors working for weeks and weeks. So, how am I to know if they have left a door ajar in one of their work areas? As I waited for my Supervisor to arrive [from home] I walked the perimeter of the buildings, in the drizzling rain, checking all of the miserable doors in the place. All looked good to me.
I went back to the Alarm Panel.
And started just pressing every button on the thing.

All of a sudden, the fire alarm went off in the facility. Whoa, that’s damn loud! How do I stop that?
[Pushed way more buttons....]
When in severe doubt, always press something that says “CLEAR”.
I did. That stopped the bells.
However, in my wild…. pressing of buttons, I had forcibly called Police, Ambulance, and Firetrucks to the building.
My Supervisor, en route, called my two-way radio and asked me what the hell I was doing?
I said…. “Umm. Pushing all kinds of buttons.”
He said, “Don’t do that. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING! I just got a call on my phone to verify whether or not we want every emergency team in the city at our building.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “OK, I’ll just wait…”

When he arrived, we did a thorough search of the interior of the place.
About an hour into it, as we were walking through one sector for the second time, I noticed a ladder leaning on a wall that had a sort of double trap-door affair at the top of it…. and I asked God if this was Zone 57. This was where the contractors had been working.
As usual, God said nothing, but from down below I could see that there were those white plastic Security contact things. I climbed up and shut the doors and we went back to the Alarm Panel. Sure enough, now we had the all-clear.
Set alarm. Get in car. Drive like hell.
But it’s no use. I did not finish the book.

Now I am in Jeopardy. And I don’t mean the game show.
She may trade me in on those two other guys. She is all hot and heavy to begin reading the next book, and I have not even finished this one yet!
I’ve gotta “get in the Zone” as it were.
Maybe if I get a better job? Like one where I am not even required to set Security Alarms at the end of an already-too-long day?
Maybe if I…. become an English teacher?
Oh! Was that "Meany" of me?

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