Jaci Dawn

We meet once a month, usually. It began as a rebellious get together to honor the elderly among us who were unfairly canned, and to whom we looked up to and adored. We may have even been a bit clandestine – in the beginning. We got bolder as the lay-offs continued and our tight-knit little office group was whittled down. Those of us that remained forged other work-place friendships, but we still longed for the camaraderie of the original accounting and administrative staff.

We have all moved on now. Still, we meet. Same place, same time. almost every month. We talk about hospital visits and near-death experiences, the aches and pains of growing older, and how many grandchildren (or great grandchildren) are there now? Sometimes, the grandchildren come to dinner with us.

I have toyed with writing a story about us. We’re a murder-mystery group, the dissatisfied ex-employees who get together for wine and pasta every third Thursday of the month, and we somehow become embroiled in some murder mystery that we solve as a collective. The murders would, of course, be somehow related to the big corporation that gave us all our pink slips (or, for some of us, we gave them notice before the pink slip could be written).

There’s the elderly head accounting woman leaning on her hand-crafted cane, her thin, white hair delicately coifed to cover her balding skull. The boisterous and enthusiastic accounting assistant who was laid off first, and everyone lost touch with, but she’s recently joined the group. The laconic administrative woman who comes when she feels like it, which isn’t all the time. The sisters, laid off ages ago, who still carry a grudge, and who make it a point to come every other month. The world-traveler, who used to be the head of HR and was quite the naive older woman who kept getting into bad relationships, but who is now happily married to a traveling entrepreneur. The mild-mannered former CFO who scared us all when he had heart problems shortly after being laid off, and who rides a Harley-Davidson motorcycle when the weather is nice. The grumpy, stubborn, former corporate receptionist and all-around OCD office manager who is a secret gamer. There’s me.

I have other characters I’d love to add to the pile: the former payroll director who seems mild mannered and shy, but who can send a stink-eye to an entire school board and shut down the place. The art director who once was subjected to the gaudiest purchase-by-mail faux office art imaginable hanging over her cubicle (because the new CEO had terrible taste in art – or maybe a secret vendetta). The sometimes nutty, but always endearing, Administrative Coordinator who believes she is a reincarnation of Mary, Queen of Scots, has strange food fetishes, and is a crazy cat lady on the side.

The problem with my idea is this: “characters are fictitious and do not resemble anyone living or dead” – or however that disclaimer is worded. Because these characters do, indeed, represent people I know.

I wonder how they would describe me? Maybe I don’t want to ask.

And maybe I need to take a course in writing mysteries. 🙂