Suzi

A Homeless Person's Story

(A True tale)

(As told by Suzi Styrofoam & Miles "Ampersands-R-Us" O'Neal)

Miles: I had just started out for work on my Honda, when I saw her laying beside the road in the grass.

Suzi: I'm not really sure what happened. I just woke up really disoriented, with no idea how I got there or anything. Just totally weird.

Miles: I stopped to check on her. She was kind of battered. What kind of creep would do that to someone and then just discard her like some kind of rubbish? It made my blood boil.

Suzi: He was really nice. He checked me over, asked where I wanted to go. I said I really didn't know, I didn't have anywhere to go now.

Miles: So I took her on to work. She seemed really interested - she just sat there, didn't make a sound - so she watched me work on a nasty code bug all day.

Suzi: I always thought computers would be boring. But they were so awesome! Daddy was an Assistant Undersecretary of COBOL Programming to the US Soviet Attache, or something, and his job just seemed totally boring!

Miles: Later that day, She Who Must Be Obeyed (the only truly evil person I ever worked for) came around to annoy me about project status. I'd had about all I could stand off her, but I wasn't ready to chance getting fired. In a fit of inspiration, I discussed the status with Suzi.

Suzi: At first she just looked back and forth between us, kind of like she was lost. Then she interrupted, and demanded to know the technical details of why the project still wasn't done...

Miles: ...which she was totally incapable of understanding, but she wanted to needle me...

Suzi: ...so Miles just started discussing it with me again, occasionally telling her something...

Miles: ...her eyes got real big, and she backed away, and left, and never got very close to me again. I found another job a few weeks later, and hightailed it out of there. I was one of the few people who managed to leave without getting canned. I could never have done it without Suzi.

Suzi: So he let me be his admin, and I'm learning engineering and software from him, and I've just sort of been hanging around ever since.

Copyright 1995 Miles O'Neal, Austin, TX. All rights reserved.