Biff Rambles On … About His Beginnings as a Rambler

 

 

If today is Tuesday, that must mean it is time for another ramble.  Those of you who know me know that I am forever rambling on about something.  Or, more accurately, I am always just rambling away and need to be found and brought back home.

I should have known way back in my youth that I was going to have a problem with rambling.  My English teachers were forever telling my parents at parent/teacher meetings, “Biff is a fine student, but he does tend to ramble on something awful when he writes.”

And that was in the second grade, mind you!

While other’s kids’ essays on “What I Did Over Summer Vacation” consisted of uninspired writing like:

“I went swimming. I saw a boat.  A dog bit my sister.  I had ice cream.”

Second grade Biff was already a seasoned rambler.  My essay consisted of something along the lines of:

“Summer may be a time of footloose frivolity for most people, but I found it to be business as usual at the Biff household.  I fashioned a cubicle in the living room out of an old refrigerator box, and used a small rocking chair and my sister’s toy ironing board as a desk.  Every morning at precisely 8 AM, just after the conclusion of Captain Kangaroo, I repaired thither to sit and compose business letters using my state of the art Speak and Spell™.  Though the user interface can only be described as primitive, it is entirely adequate for most office purposes, though the lack of a spreadsheet function is, I feel, a fatal flaw in an otherwise fine office machine.

“In late June, I requested for Mother to please put all of her communiques in the form of interoffice mail and to distribute them to me in the appropriate envelopes, rather than as scrawled notes in my lunch bag, as the sweat from the refrigerated grapes made them hard to read.  However, her attention to detail is somewhat lackadaisical, perhaps due to her being overly concerned with what is going on on “The Guiding Light”, and so far my mentoring of her has been ineffective.  I may have to resort to having a meeting with her concerning her work habits.

“My sister’s attitude can only be described as recalcitrant and I queried her yesterday if she would perhaps be better suited for a career in, say, Big Wheels or perhaps Hopscotch.  She was most unprofessional and put gum in my hair.  I made a note of her uncooperative attitude and said that I would be putting the matter in front of the CEO when he got home from work later.  She responded by sticking her tongue out at me.  I made a note of same in her employee profile.”

Some men are born to greatness.  I was born to sit in a cubicle and write memos.