Father's Cubicle

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My father worked in a bank when I was younger, before the market crashed, but I remember he would say this line when he felt irritated with his coworkers: “The only principle here is the kind that gets paid after interest.” There were a few moments, and a few places, in that bank that I can remember vividly. My father’s cubicle was quite plain: mostly grey and white. He had some kind of computer where he spent much of his time and life, as many did and do. Certain days he had to bring me in, or got to, and I can still remember how awfully quiet a place it could be. It was quiet enough, in between the occasional conversations happening over six foot walls, that you could hear the faint, but persistent, taps of the bank’s collected work force against the seemingly unquantifiable number of keyboards. The sound would seemingly become a part of your being, a framework for your thinking, the ringing of your ear in still air: typing unified as a single reticent voice. They’d fade into their setting, as with trees in a dense wood, until brought back into personhood with rare conversation. 

 

I remember my father’s cubicle, a vending machine, and an office. In the office there were at least two sofa chairs, near the back of the room, and there was a tall (I was small then) wooden desk near its center. The vending machine brought me a great deal of joy.