Where in the world are little girl children granted free reign to do the following:

1) hitting up the vending machine in a communal cafeteria;

2) sneaking into the communal men’s bathroom;

3) tiptoeing through an  indoor atrium  garden;

4) photocopying various bodyparts, usually the face and hands?

No, not heaven.  Just an office park in Brookfield, WI where my mom would bring my sister and I (and sometimes a friend) to her business when there was no one to chaperone us elsewhere.  She told us we’d be “helping” with her work, which made me feel grown up and lucky.  But once we arrived, my adolescent work ethic shriveled–how could we be expected to work when we could  fill our pockets with stolen quarters and then watch half a dozen, square Kit Kats wrapped in shiny red,  fall from the top row of the vending machine?  I realize now, we were doing the only thing required of us: entertaining ourselves, staying out of trouble, and giving my mom some peace and quiet time to get work done.

Twenty years later, with my own business,  I still can’t resist the call of magnifying every pore on my face and printing it out for record.  I used my brand new scanner for the very first time today to send a W9 and Freelancer Contract (a very exciting publication is on the horizon), but then decided to get back to my creative roots by pressing my face against the glass plate and trying not to look directly into the light.  When I could no longer keep my eyelids from opening to the temptation, I saw thick bands of blue, red, and green light. Thank God for the sunglasses.

Today, I am grateful for technology and the delicate balance between its improvements in efficiency (sending paperless documents) and its equal and opposite distractions  (photocopying self is not a billable item to any client).