LAM of God

Sometimes, I am certain the designer of the building I work in is my truly arch-nemesis, not my 3-year-old niece.

During the building of the complex, I can see the designer and a few others sitting around a smoke-filled back room, playing cards and asking one another, "How can we annoy Matt?"

I don't mean MC Escher stairways; that would be illegal. I am talking about counters that are just the wrong width, tables that are the wrong height, the well-detailed auditorium issues, the bathrooms and the like.

On Thursday, I brought a burrito to work for lunch, and this conspiracy theory again popped to the front of my brain. I am sure the cabal took measurements of my reach and then built the microwave shelf in every break room one-half inch less than my max. The result was on Thursday, as on every day I use the microwave, I stretched and contorted my arm to reach the buttons that would bring me steak-and-beany goodness.

How and when could they have gotten my measurements? Unless they drugged me ala some X-Files plot, the cabal might be bigger than just the builder.

Instead, maybe God gets together with the angels maybe or perhaps the other Trinity members and plays a favorite game: "Let's aggravate Matt," or LAM.

I could be a modern-day Job, and God said to the Devil: "Do what you will. Matt will never curse me."

Two problems: If Old Scratch were screwing me, I think the problems would greater than my dog scratching herself raw. Granted, the disability is a greater problem, but I keep telling myself that is genetics not anything else. The second issue, God saying I wouldn't curse him is just plain stupid. I mean I yelled at God when the stand for Moishe, a Wild Thing action figure, did not fit him correctly.

It is these aggravations that get me. Sure, facing a totally inaccessible b bathroom makes me cry, spit and curse immediately, but getting my wheelchair stuck in the mud one morning, followed by a ride to work where the driver ignores your directions, followed by a million other little things just take me out harder than tumbling down MC Eshcer stairs.