Furkins Loves Nuts
by Laura Hirneisen—Age 24—Reading, PA
The squirrel girl ruined it for me. For ten hours a day, I inhabited her cubicle while I invented copy that would hold an invisible gun to the head of unsuspecting living room shoppers and force them to add simulated diamond rings to their shopping carts. She’d been gone for months, leaving behind an homage to tree-loving rats with fluffy tails and her husband Joe.
My boss handed me a roll of paper towels and a bottle of Windex when I moved into Squirrel Girl’s abandoned space. Co-workers told me my predecessor had been out on medical leave for months. Brain surgery, a fellow drone in the Creative Department informed me, and we can only hope she gets, well, sane.
One wall featured scraps of her personal life: an engagement announcement, wedding pictures where Squirrel Girl beamed from Joe’s arm, phoney business certificates issued by our company to her maiden name. The rest of the walls were dedicated to squirrels. Gray squirrels on their hind legs, another on a tree branch, several images of one dubbed Furkins—complete with anecdotal quotes like “Furkins loves nuts.”
I saw these every time I glanced away from the computer screen. (The cut-out doll renditions of her husband stuck in the keyboard and scattered across the circa 1994 CPU also kept me company on many occasions while I paused to sift my brain for a synonym for ‘stylish.’)
I worked as a copywriter for a home shopping network, stringing together descriptions and calls to action for everything from cheesecakes to your Great Aunt Bertha’s orthopedic shoes and Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy.
At first, the job held a gritty appeal. It was me versus the masses, me fooling them into thinking that reproduction Jacqueline Kennedy collection earrings containing neither gold nor a precious stone should in fact be purchased at the affordable price of $69.95. Me, a writer, making a living as one even though many of the people I’d graduated college with still worked at grocery stores and restaurants. Me, making frowsy grandma pants and Bob Mackie shirts sound like edgy style.
Until I realized that if I stayed there, I would spend the rest of my life using a word bank and company-coined acronyms. I’d be another Squirrel Girl, another corporate robot who could only use words approved by Human Resources. There were two choices: become one of them, or run.
I ran.
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