The walls are not very tall at all, my friend

The walls are not very tall and I can hear you.

Yes, I can hear you, you little potty-mouthed rooster. Fuck-a-doodle-doing from your cubicle at six in the a.m., almost daily.

It's a bit early and somewhat inappropriate for your dive-bar type of language. Your "Fuck this bitch," desktop cocktail with a "Sonofabitch," chaser.

My office is a typical Corporate American office. Grey fabric walls snapped together like Lego’s, placing desks back-to-back and side-by-side. The walls are tall enough to make you feel like you're in your own office, until someone walks by. If you are one of the lucky ones, who's cubicle resides in an area where there is minimal traffic, you can almost forget that other people are here. My cube is situated in one of those areas. I can see two other co-workers from my cubicle, but I'd have to turn around to do that. The other two co-workers can only be seen if I stand up. I rarely ever turn around or stand up, so I forget that they are there. I forget, until they make noise.

It's six a.m. and our system goes down, followed by a deep, elongated sigh and then foul language from the man sitting behind me. Mind you, our system goes down daily, so I can feel his frustration. Usually, he takes the words right out of my head, but I had always thought it was in bad taste to use such language in the workplace.

"We can hear you," grumbles the girl directly behind me, sharing the wall next to his.

"I'm sure you can, but this fucking thing never works!" Was his reply.

"I know you're frustrated, but try using your big boy words." I add to the conversation. He brushes me off with a wave of his had, without ever turning around.

Don't get me wrong I'm not offended. I've been known to throw a few colorful four-letter words around, but I do it outside of the office. Mostly in my car.

So, when did it become acceptable for corporate America to use curse words? Now, I'm not talking about curse words being exchanged in conversation between friends on break-time and it's not just this guy that sits behind me, it's being used in general work conversations on the floor. Outside of this small area that I sit in, I've heard others drop an S-bomb here or there and someone referred to themselves as a bitch during a meeting.

Did I just happen to get the most relaxed office in the world or do other offices work this way? I mean, why bother having us dress up and look uncomfortably professional, if we're going to talk as if we're waiting for our rounds at the bar.

Speak first, no time for thinking

Happiness is a warm cup, read the words on my coffee cup sleeve.

"Happiness is a warm cup, indeed," I agreed, out-loud.

"Pardon?" A quiet voice questioned over the gray, fabric, cubicle wall. Sometimes I forget that my desk doesn't have real walls.

"Oh, sorry, I was talking to my coffee." I said before thinking about how it would sound.

I tend to do this a lot. Speak first, think later. No harm has come of it yet, just minor embarrassing moments. Like, answering yes to my waiter when he asks "Soup or Salad?" After some thought my face flushes red as I realize there is no Super Salad, just my vague answer to a either or question.

Then there are the random moments where I plan to say one simple sentence and somehow the words get fused together. "Hey, same here," fumbles out of my mouth as “Hey'smear." There's no smooth way to play off an incoherent word jumble of a sentence. You just back that jumble train up and say it again, clearly, then wait for your friends to stop laughing at you.

Let us not forget the best of all: this bad little habit I have of repeating what I though I heard someone say, no matter how much it doesn't make sense.

Case in point.

I arrived at my friends’ apartment and she was on the phone, in the middle of what seemed to be an intense conversation. She motioned for me to come in and suddenly directed me to a jar of candy that she had sitting on her kitchen counter. Then she left the room.

I'm a bit of a sugar-junkie and knowing this, my friend kept a jar of candy in her apartment that she'd often use to lure me over, or in this case, keep me entertained while she was busy. I grabbed the jar and created a carpet-picnic of Smarties and Gobstoppers on her living-room floor.

Let me tell you, this was no brief conversation. She eventually ended the phone call and walked into the living room to find me sitting Indian-style, jar of candy tucked up against my body and a flock of candy wrappers circling my body.

"Christ-Almighty!" She exclaimed. She underestimated what I can do with a jar of candy in a matter of an hour.

"Crystal Nightie?" It didn't make sense, but I asked for clarification anyways.

"Crystal Nightie? What does that even mean? I said Christ-Almighty, you dork!" She said with a laugh.

We moved on past the incident, but "Crystal Nightie," still gets used in jest from time to time. That and the slew of other phrases I've blurted out, without thinking about how it sounded first.

I was starting to feel alone in this, because I am that one friend you know that does this. However, I was listening to the comedian Brian Regan, who had much to say about similar moments and felt the need to share:

A Fraction of Myself: Beginning from an End

A Fraction of Myself:
I once heard someone ask that if we are reincarnate souls and we have 10x's the population we did centuries ago, where did all these souls come from? Had they just been waiting for their day or is it set up that every time we die only half of ourselves are able to come back, where the other half is recycled into a new human spirit? Am I only a fraction of the person I used to be eons ago... 1/16th of my spiritual possibility, having random encounters with pieces of myself through the eyes of my friends and family?

Beginning from an End:
We've got curves, we've got swerves in all different kinds of places
Like, the curves of our hips or the swerves shadowing our faces
Or how the spaces of my paces, one foot in front of the other
swerves my hips like a tree in the wind, from one side to another.

When . . .
my mother would cover my eyes she'd say,
"Our beauty mirrors the earth,"
from the smile in her sunrise, to the cries of each birth
and the worth of the world is weighed in each and every creation
to recycle life and add exuberance from her imagination

You see . . .
reincarnation, in my interpretation, is a Beginning from an End
and every time you come back your spirit will transcend,
descending history, bending centuries as our dreams links and traces
mind straining for higher gnosis to fill gaps and spaces
each face maps and places souls we've met and where we've been
from the familiar axis of each feature to the symmetry of each grin

Now . . .
within the final moments, as my eyes begin to close
the positions of my lifelines shift and juxtapose
the present day self transposes with the past
the day has seen the dawn of my lessons and I exhale at last.