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Chat room Just a Friendly Little ConfabBy Rick Horowitz
It seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time, which is how Fred Smed found himself down at the all-night Kinko's three nights in a row, tending to details. There were all those banners to produce -- an eruption of red-white-and-blue with catchy sayings. And of course, there was the main sign, the one that would hang right behind Fred Smed's chair in the multi-purpose room at the Quivering Pines condo community. "FRED'S ECONOMIC FORUM." For a while there, Fred Smed had thought he'd just copy the original sign straight from the newspaper -- copy it, blow it up, and then paint over the "P" so it would read "THE RESIDENT'S ECONOMIC FORUM." But then he thought better of it. First of all, he'd have to do something about that apostrophe -- cross it out or slide it over or something. Whatever he did, it would look messy. Messy wasn't the look he was after. Attentive was the look he was after. Very attentive. And the other problem? It wasn't really a forum for "THE RESIDENT S." Not all of them, anyway. "You're not inviting the Flabbershams?" This would be the lovely and talented Ginger Smed, who, truth be told, had been more than a little skeptical about this whole forum thing in the first place, and that was even before her husband started working himself into a frazzle over it. Now, just hours before the big event was scheduled to begin, she'd gotten her first look at the guest list. She tried again. "But the Flabbershams have lived here as long as we have! How can you not -- " "Too negative," said Fred. "And the Whoopersmiths?" "Too negative -- they wouldn't be any fun. Do we know any welders?" Fred Smed was determined to do it right, which meant doing it exactly the way the president had done it, or as close an approximation as he could manage in a multi-purpose room of a condo community. If the president thought it was a good idea to have a welder at his forum, then so did Fred. And if the president thought it was a good idea to keep the negative comments to a minimum, then so did Fred. Not that everything had been rosy lately at Quivering Pines; Fred would be the first to admit that. (Actually, he'd been about the 31st to admit that, but he more than made up for it with how earnestly he'd done it when he finally got around to it.) But to spend the whole morning slamming the way he ran the condo board -- what would that accomplish? Besides, as he'd said so often, when it comes to the Quivering Pines economy, a condo board can only do so much. And anyway, value is not just in numbers, but in character, and there were plenty of characters at Quivering Pines. On the other hand -- and there were so many "other hands" lately that Fred had started feeling like an octopus -- he certainly didn't want to come across as insensitive to people's concerns, or out of touch. That could be dangerous. "Message: I hear." He tried it out at a whisper, then at full volume, then stressing one particular word or another. When he was satisfied with his delivery, he slipped the card back into his pocket and made some final adjustments to the seating chart. But there'd be so many good friends, so carefully selected, all around the table, it almost didn't matter who'd be sitting where. It would be a perfect opportunity to accentuate the positive. To reassure everyone that the fundamentals were sound, that he was working hard to make them even better, that Fred Smed was right on top of things. How was he supposed to know that the aerobics club had the other half of the multi-purpose room? Posted 8/13/02. Keep
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Rick Horowitz
