I'm not sure what he meant, really. Was I Big Money? Did he think I was rich? Or was he bragging about how rich he was supposed to be? Maybe he had a gambling problem. Or maybe he thought I did.

 

It seems kind of cruel to call someone "Big Money" if you think they have a gambling addiction, and it seems awfully counter-productive to go around saying it to other people if you are recovering from a gambling addiction of your own. So maybe I can discount that possibility.

 

In any case, it's what he did. Every time I saw him. And since he worked in one of the labs right below me, this turned out to be sometimes four or five times a day.

 

 

I heard it over and over, so often that at night it would bounce and echo in my brain, over and over like that episode of The Brady Bunch where Marsha gets hit with the football and her nose swells up and she dreams it over and over, *oof* my nose! *oof* my nose! *oof* my nose!...until something that was meant to be dramatizing a teenage heartbreak becomes almost funny. Except for the "almost" part. O, and the part where I mention "drama" as it pertains to The Brady Bunch.

 

 

And so, hopefully, to alleviate some of the stress this caused me, I decided to try to demonstrate to him just how annoying he was. So if I saw him, I would wink, click my tongue real fast, and point my finger like a gun, saying "Big Money!"

 

We faced each other in these kind of annoying-man duels, in slow motion, passing each other in the hallways, steely-eyed, fingers at the ready,

 

 

Unfortunately, this didn't work, either. It didn't work because it's the exact opposite of what I should have done, which is to shake my head sadly like I felt sorry for him (which I didn't) because he sincerely was the biggest doofwad I'd ever seen (which he was, at least, in the top three).

 

Say you tell someone a joke. Say it's a funny joke, and the punchline is "Batman and a duck". It's hard to imagine what the front part of the joke might be, but try if you can to imagine that there is a genuinely amusing story that goes along with it. And you tell it, and everyone laughs.

 

And let's say you tell it to a group of people and among this group of people is a kid who no one really likes. And this kid laughs just a little bit too loud. And continues to laugh, long after everyone else has stopped laughing. Imagine that is so desperately, emotionally needy and so lacking in any personality of his own, that every time you see him for six months after that, he laughs out loud and says "Batman and a duck! HAHAHA!" or he throws his arm around your shoulders and goes, "I saw Michael Keaton in a movie the other day, and you know he played Batman once, right? And all I kept thinking was 'I wonder where his duck is!' Isn't that hilarious? Get it? Batman and a duck? That totally cracks me up! HAHAHA!" or he come up to you every single time he sees you engaged in a conversation with anyone else and loudly intrudes, saying "Hey, tell them the one about Batman, you know, and a certain 'water fowl,' if you get my drift? It's great, you gotta hear this!"

 

And so here it is exactly six months later and everyone in your school or office has not only heard this joke a bajillion times before, but was sick to death of it already precisely five months, three weeks, six days and 18 hours ago.

 

Now, to this annoying, emotionally needy kid, he's not only become your best friend, but also kind of your promoter. Because he's told everyone he's encountered for six months that it's your joke, and you first told it, and you tell it best.

 

And so now there are a hundred people who go home every night and hear it echoing over and over "Batman and a duck...Batman and a duck...Batman and a duck..." and even though it's the annoying kid's voice they hear saying it, it's your name that they've come to associate with it.

 

So you see, really, when it comes to being annoying, you will never outdo these folks. They want the attention, they crave it, they need it; they even misinterpret it to be acceptance. I was so young and inexperienced in how to deal with them (that's right, I said "them"....those people, because they are not like us) that I thought I could outdo him.

 

But, you see, now I was "in on it" with him. I was a part of it, a willing participant, and it was now a joke between us. And now, everyone in his department started saying it to me, and to him, just all the time. Then other people in other departments, and it grew, and it became a chant, a mantra, and the very foundations of our corporate structure rattled and swayed with the pounding, pounding.....