Sometimes You Break Their Hearts, Sometimes They Break Yours

Marie-Helene Bertino wrote an essay in the persona of an alien, sent from a planet with an untranslatable name, to study humans and send back reports via fax. Musings on human beings and their strange ways from an alien point of view is nothing new, but this is funny.  

Five days ago, the bathroom key went missing. Landry Business Solutions has a PA and I made an announcement over it. Why we have a PA is beyond me since only twelve people work here and they sit in one room. I could have easily walked into that room and made a medium-volumed inquiry but I don’t like to leave my desk. My announcement over the PA was: WILL WHOEVER HAS THE BATHROOM KEY PLEASE RETURN IT! Three hours later Delilah slammed the key on my desk. The door had gotten stuck, and she had been trapped in the bathroom for hours. No one heard her yelling. She missed a meeting, and still no one thought to look for her. She heard my announcement in the bathroom where she sat, hating me. Someone from another office finally heard her and climbed through a heating duct to free her. Delilah, disoriented, left early. It’s a bad day when you realize how unimportant you are.

Of course, the above observation could have been written by any earthling. How about this:

I am bad at asking for help. When you ask a human being for help, there is a chance they will say later: remember when you asked for help, can I have five dollars? That goes for medicine, too. I don’t like asking help from pills in a bottle. I don’t want to be woken up at night by a tab of aspirin asking to borrow five dollars.

Read other disjointed observations of life on Earth at Indiana Review.