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My Dead Aunt

By Mark Grueter

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So I couldn’t make it to work. I was in Annapolis and I was supposed to be in New York, preparing for a relatively important meeting. Nobody really cared about the meeting except one man, my boss; no serious people took it seriously. But there I was, mindful of the conditional significance of maintaining gainful employment. My boss was relying on me to be there on Monday to prepare for the all-important sales pitch on Tuesday.

No other day was more important than Monday, except perhaps Tuesday. But there was no way I could make it back to New York in time for work on Monday morning. And calling in sick would not suffice; my boss would have told me to come in anyhow because he isn’t worried about catching a virus. I needed something much more grave and innovative. How could I climb out of this snare while maintaining my boss’s affections? I telephoned around in search of ideas, alibis.

As it turned out I needed no external inspiration because my aunt had just died - a terrible loss for sure, but might it prove useful? Actually, my aunt had done nothing of the sort, but I like the substance as well as the euphony; it has verisimilitude, doesn’t it? I mean, what kind of degenerate would lie about something as awful as that?

My friend in Annapolis begged me, with tears in his eyes, not to do anything so rash. But I could think of no intelligent reason to abandon the use of this excuse and no better excuse to explain my absence. And I still can’t.

I have six aunts - my father has six sisters - and none of them have handed in their dinner pails, but that is incidental. I needed a dead aunt and it didn’t matter if one had actually died or not. So I had a few bracers, called my boss, and informed him of the tragedy; I was in New Hampshire, grieving with my relatives – my voice trembling. I was one of the pall-bearers; we’re all in a state of mourning and, by the way, I won’t be returning to New York until Monday night.

The damn fool was positively groveling with condolences. Oscar caliber performances by both of us allowed the scheme to work better than I anticipated - his reaction was adorable; I was wishing I had it on tape, with a hey-nonny-nonny and hot-cha-cha. My friend just shook his head, disgusted although undoubtedly impressed by my performance. He argued that it’s wrong to do what I did. First off, it’s a lie. Secondly, the morbidity of the lie reveals a monstrous insensitivity toward human life. Thirdly, it impugns my aunt. Others suggest that it’s bad luck.

What rot. Everybody tells harmless lies. Who hasn’t "called in sick" while not sick? None of my aunts are aware of any of this and because I didn’t use any one of them in particular, their feedback is irrelevant (although I doubt any of them would care anyway). As for bad luck, well that’s just absolutely laughable. I pity any adult who still actually believes in jinxes and curses or any such stuff.

I want to announce right now that anybody who knows me is free to say that I have just died as an excuse to get off work. In fact, I encourage you to do so. And I challenge anyone to explain to me what is wrong with what I’ve done.

Oh yeah, the presentation was a ludicrous failure, as I knew it would be. This had nothing to do with my unavailability on the preceding day, and everything to do with my boss’s ineptitude; but he’s so oblivious he thought the thing went well. Poor sap. We were trying to convince this company to lay off in-country workers and exploit Indian laborers instead, because it will cut costs. We even had a demonstration of how it worked, but the demonstration didn’t work; my boss made a complete ass of himself by pretending that all was well. My aunt would have been proud.

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Mark Grueter lives in New York City, where he is pursuing his master's in Liberal Studies at the New School University's Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science.  He can be contacted at grueter@methree.net.

© 2003 Me Three