So I took a job with the Census Bureau. They wanted me to count all the leaves on the trees in the city. When they first gave me the job description, I wasn't sure about it.
"Is this a made up job or something?" I asked my boss, a young woman with deep brown eyes, shiny black hair, and a nose ring. "Some kind of sinecure cuz I'm related to some big shot or my demographics or what?"
"We need to know how many leaves, on average, our trees are producing" she replied crisply. "It's all about climate change and global warming -- we'll compare your count with the next count in ten years to see if the leaves have increased or decreased, and that information will help us formulate new environmental policy at the federal level."
You can't argue with young people -- they think the world makes sense. So I gave her a massive shrug, which almost made my ratty old sweater slide off my slopping shoulders, and took the census forms over to the park. At least it was outdoor work, and the weather was pretty decent so far. The first tree I looked at was a red maple. There were a couple of squirrels in it.
"Now that would make more sense" I said to myself; "a squirrel count might mean something -- and there's a heckuva lot less of 'em to count!"
It took me all afternoon, but eventually I got the tally -- that red maple had 3,335 leaves on it -- give or take a few that blew off while I was adding 'em up. I took the little copper hatchet my boss had given me and made a hack mark on the tree trunk -- so they'd know that tree had been done.
Then I went home to continue my experiments with kombucha-flavored potato chips.
The next day I went back to the park and started in on a pine tree -- but before I was halfway through I thought I'd better check in with my boss, just in case pine needles didn't count as leaves. I'd left my Tracfone at home, so I just walked over to the little makeshift office the Census Bureau had set up in an old abandoned cider press. It was actually on the National Register of Historic Places.
My boss gave me a great big smile when she saw me. Gosh, young people sure have pretty smiles nowadays! It made me wish I had smiled more when I was young, instead of always pulling at my lower lip when I greeted people.
She now had a bright red dot right between her eyebrows. I couldn't tell if it was a bindi or a pimple, so pretended not to notice it.
"Hey boss" I said. "Should I be counting pine needles, too?"
"Sit down a minute, will you?" she said to me. I sat, and she went and got me a cup of very hot ginger tea. I hate ginger tea, but if the boss gives you a cobra to put down your pants leg you'd better do it and say 'thanks.' That's what my old man always said, the unlettered buffoon.
I set the tea cup down on her desk and tried smiling back at her. That's when I noticed how badly my lips were chapped.
"You remind me so much of my grandfather" she told me. "He had a white moustache just like yours, and he pulled on his lower lip just the way you're doing right now!"
"Whoops!" I said. "Sorry."
"No, don't be sorry" she said sadly. "I miss my grandfather so much -- he would tell me funny made up stories in the afternoons, when the sun was too hot to go outside."
She took out her smartphone and turned it off. Then put it in a drawer of her desk.
"Please" she entreated me. "Tell my some grandfather stories . . . "
"Welp . . . "I began, "I'm gonna invent the first kombucha-flavored potato chips here pretty soon. Should make a killing with 'em . . . "
We spent the rest of the day together. I told her about how babies were found under cabbage leaves and that the moon was made out of green cheese. She sent out for lunch for the two of us..
In Thailand, I told her, the people think the moon is a giant rabbit. And down in Mexico they have a peanut flavored ice cream that is incredibly bad -- mothers make their children eat it for punishment. Out in Utah, I told her, all the Mormons are born with horns on their heads -- but they get 'em filed down before the age of eight. If you swallow chewing gum it stays in your gut until the day you die. Out in Africa more people are killed by exploding elephants than by lions, y'see, cuz when an elephant dies its body swells up in the intense heat so fast that if they don't let the gas out quick it expands to twice its size and then ker-blooey! The carcass explodes like a stinky land mine. That's a well known fact.
When she locked up the office late that afternoon her mascara was running a little, and I felt that being a foolish old windbag wasn't such a bad thing after all. I knew she wanted to hug me before I left, but I kept my distance and ignored her body language. Young people should hug young people, and old people should just hug themselves.
The next day I went back in early, to see if she wanted some more grandpa stories. But at her desk was a burly bald white guy; Ed Asner's doppelganger.
"What the hell do you want?" he growled at me.
"Uh, I'm the leaf counter" I began.
"What!" he barked at me. "Not another one . . . you're the third one today to hand me that line. Now get this -- I don't know what the previous tenant of this desk told you, but the Census Bureau don't count leaves -- we only count people! Now get out of here."
And that night I finally perfected my formula for kombucha-flavored potato chips. And I used some of the money I made to track down that brown-eyed, black-haired young women with the ring in her nose, and adopted her as my legal grand daughter so I could tell her more stories , , ,
Like how when I was a kid the summers were so hot that the street asphalt would liquefy and I once saw a whole city bus sink right into the asphalt and people were jumping out the windows while yelling to beat the band . . .
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