It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it!

Obsessed. 

One of the first VHS tapes I remember my family having was 9 to 5.  In 1985 we got a VCR for Christmas from my grandmother and after getting the treat of renting a movie on the weekend, somehow my mother found copies of Grease and 9 to 5.  I was only 6 years old but I remember after watching this movie maybe 3 or 4 times I had it memorized.  I was hypnotized by the characters and was of course too young to tell you why.  I remember my mother getting tickled at the scenes with Roz and having belly laughs at her being so nosey and also when Mr. Hart was finally released and came back to the office only to be whisked away again to an even worse fate than the three main characters had made for him.  

As I got older I understood more about the dynamics of the film and then after I'd had my first corporate job (maybe 26 years old) I watched this movie again with my mother and we had a talk afterwards what it meant to her.  Mom had worked in the healthcare field at two local hospitals for most of her young career life.  She told me that she had a boss much like Mr. Hart when she worked in the insurance and billing department at the Ouachita County Hospital in the late 60's after her first husband died.  Mom was a very smart and intuitive person; a person that would experiment while doing repetitive tasks different ways - same end result but a different road traveled to get there keeps the monotony out of your day.  Things like alternating stapling papers from the left to right hand, move the phone from one side of the desk to the other, add a column of numbers from bottom to top, type up an insurance claim from the last page to the first and vice versa.  In the end I think it also gave her a better understanding of all processes because she really could do them backwards and forwards.  

There was one dynamic in these early years that wasn't so pleasant.  Her boss didn't think woman should be more than just a secretary and they were definitely his toys to play with.  Such was common back then. Mom got the task of creating punch cards and feeding the computer when it was installed for insurance coding and billing.  Same pay but different tasks - she actually loved it.  Her mind was a computer.  After the first day of working in the back corner of what was a large storage room and the machines were in the back - far away from the entrance and the work piled up in front of her and the door - she noticed she was obscure from the rest of the office.  On the second day her boss came in to monitor her progress and to also "help" demonstrate how to feed the machine but his intent was to show mother where a penis was supposed to go.  Mom intuitively fed the machine more than it could process and it jammed thus creating a loud churning sound nobody could ignore.  Boss left - crisis averted.  The day wore on and mom pretended the repair guy was coming later in the afternoon but she never called him because she knew how to fix the issue.  Mom had a friend that worked in maintenance, Randi, a big stout woman who would have moved a Lincoln Continental if Mom asked her to.  After everyone had left for the day, mother and Randi went in the storage room and rearranged the layout.  Randi disconnected the electrical outlet where the machines were previously and moved them to the front with the entrance and files to the back in order of first in to the front and last in to the back.  No more dank corners to hide in.

The next day when mother continued her work with everything whirring like a Singer, her boss came in and questioned the rearrangement and was not all too happy.  Mother explained that when the repair guy came the outlet was faulty and now didn't work so they had to move the equipment to a live outlet - it was the only cost effective way to maintain work flow.  Boss man grabs an adding machine from a desk just outside the door and plugs it in the outlet in question and nothing happened in either plug as mom continues to feed the machine punchcards.  Boss leaves.  Problem solved.

I would sit and watch my mom when she didn't think I was looking and she looked like she was having a conversation in her head, lips slightly moving with expressive eyes.  I now know that she really was having a conversation or at least working something backwards and forwards.  

I miss her.  We were too much alike to be able to get along in a perfect relationship but we both understood one another and sometimes that's the most you can ask for and I think the least you should expect.