Maybe Barb Knocked 'Em Off

I walked into the (empty!) bathroom at work a few minutes ago. I scouted out all the stalls to see which one was least offensive. In the very last stall - the handicapped one - I saw a strange sight.

A pair of black socks on the floor.

They weren't balled up, or in a heap as if they had fallen out of someone's bag - they looked like they were laid neatly on the ground. It just makes me wonder who on my floor is walking around sockless. And why.

But it's not the first time I've seen really odd things in the bathroom. I worked in an office in Georgetown back in the late 90s. A woman named Barb worked there too. She was really sweet, really obese and really really strange. She was a genius with numbers, though, so no matter what kind of shenanigans she would pull - you could often find Barb snoring in her cube - the powers that be let her keep her job.

It is worth noting, at least to me, that as weird as Barb was, she had a husband and a daughter, whose name is May. That made me feel better and less sorry for her. I was glad she wasn't lonely. Although said husband and daughter would wait for Barb half the day in their beat-up brown Chevy Whatever parked in front of the building. I often wondered why little May wasn't in school. She used to wander into the office and ask my coworkers for food. It broke my heart a little, but she was a sweet girl. My point is, Barb had a family, a strange family that fit her quite well.

Back to Barb and the bathroom. My first Barb/bathroom experience happened when I walked in one day to find Barb in her bra and panties, and nothing else. She was standing by the sink washing her dress. She sort of yelled and covered herself with the dress when I walked in. "Don't look at me, Heather!" she said. I didn't think to point out the fact that she was standing in the communal bathroom - it wasn't like I walked into her private bathroom where she could walk around freely with no worry of anyone catching her in undies. Instead, I think I turned on my heels and walked right back out. When I walked back into the office, my friend told me I looked like I had seen a ghost. After explaining what I had just seen, she understood why I looked the way I did.

Another time I walked into the bathroom and there was Barb, again at the sink, only this time she was washing a rather long, rectangular table with its legs folded under itself. Where she got the table, I have no idea. And why the bathroom sink, I can't even begin to guess. In fact, I don't want to know. But obviously, all these years later, I still think about it.

Finally, I was walking to the bathroom one day (wow, it seems like all I did was go to the bathroom!), and to do that you had to walk past the kitchen. Barb popped out of the kitchen, crunching away on an apple. "Hello, Heather!" she trilled in a fake British accent. She followed me straight to the bathroom, where she proceeded to take a dump while still chowing down. I told a coworker what I had just witnessed, and she just remarked how good Barb was at multitasking.

It was all so exciting with Barb around. And her exploits really make for good stories to tell, even now, even to tell to people who don't know her. I really wonder what happened to her, but I hope she's working somewhere her numbers skills are appreciated and her bathroom eccentricities are overlooked.

In the meantime, I have no more good coworker/bathroom stories to tell, so I have to resort to talking about black socks in the handicapped stall.