SPRING... adapting to the changes (Part 80c)

At work, the new lady who Jay had brought in temporarily decided that the commute was too much for her so quit after only a month. Jay, upset, went to see the Deputy Civil Service Director to get some sort of direction as far as when a new test for Key Punch Operator was going to be offered. Mrs. K, the Deputy explained that it wasn’t that simple. Since Data processing was a new discipline for the County they needed to do a detailed audit of just what work the staff actually did so that job descriptions could be created and tests written. That didn’t satisfy Jay. He asked (pleaded) for help in that he needed an employee “yesterday”. Mrs. K brought out the fact that, as she understood it, the days of punch cards was pretty much over and asked Jay about the new tape drive. Then she said that after the audit the position of Key Punch Operator might very well be changed to “Data Entry Clerk”. Jay, always quick to seize on an opportunity, asked if someone who was presently a “Clerk Typist” couldn’t be put in the Key Punch Operator position on a temporary basis until such time as the new job description was created. She said that, in this situation, she would approve it.

I’ve consciously avoided saying much about Rena, the girl from the Purchasing Department who was seriously hurt in an auto accident on New Years Eve. In a very clandestine way I’d been keeping up with her progress in recovery and knew that she’d been released to go back to work. I also knew that she’d quickly used up her paid sick days and was on a LOA (leave of absence). Whenever a County employee went on a LOA for more than three months that person’s position could be filled on a permanent basis by the department. (Remember, this was 1963). The person on the LOA was guaranteed a position upon their return but it could be in any department with a vacancy for the job title that the LOA person held. I’d quietly been mentioning to Jay that Rena would be a good fit for the department ever since Linda had quit. He, more or less, agreed with me but seemed hung up on the vacancy being for Key Punch Operator and with Rena being a Clerk Typist. I’d never really “pushed” it, relying on dropping casual asides to him whenever the opportunity arose.

When Jay returned from his meeting with Mrs. K he called all of us into his office and asked if any of us saw a problem with bringing Rena in. Andre, because he’d briefly dated her, seemed to be the only one who even raised an eyebrow. With that general approval, Jay looked to me and asked if I could get in touch with her. That was not what I wanted! I’d deliberately played down my relationship with Rena and that didn’t help. I said that I would go across the hall to the Purchasing Department and ask Corrine, the busty blond secretary, if she could give her a message. That was as involved as I wanted to be.

This period of time is kind of a blur as to what happened first, second, third, etc. It was sometime after Easter that both my kids ended up with bad colds. Up to then Elle and I had been incredibly fortunate in that our kids had avoided any major illnesses. I got home from work on this one night and Elle was concerned that Anne, our youngest, had a high fever that she couldn't get to go down. We called the Doctor (you still could do that back in those times) and he told us to bring her on down after 7pm. (If you’ve read this epistle from the beginning, the Doctor was the Uncle of one of my first panty peek friends, Mary Jane) The office was in his house and his wife greeted us. We had to wait for a while and when the door to his office opened Elle recognized the man leaving as being one of her High School classmates, Ricky. I did know him but not that well as he came to Elle’s school for his junior and senior years while I was away at boarding school. They started chatting and then a tall woman followed him out of the office. There was something familiar about her but I couldn’t quite place it. It was something about the shape of her mouth. Ricky introduced her to Elle as his wife, Joan. That name rang a bell in my head. It suddenly came to me that she might be the girl who had lived next door to my grandparents during WWII and who I’d watched wet her panties a few times. I couldn’t believe it. She was almost as tall as I was and was half a head higher than her husband.

The doctor was waiting for Elle and Anne so while they went into his office I stayed with my older daughter and chatted with them. Right after WWII Joan’s family had moved closer to the city for work. Since her parents were both local, they continued to return to their “roots” during the Summer. Ricky met Joan one Summer and, eventually, they married. Ricky them went to work for Joan’s father but had decide to go off on his own and had returned just a few months ago. They had no children but were “trying” and that was why they were at the doctor's office. When Ricky mentioned that I could see Joan cringe. Looking at her I could definitely see her father’s features, especially her height. She wasn’t particularly pretty but there was a touch of cuteness when she smiled. I remembered from when we played together that she wasn’t very “sharp” and nothing she said while we talked made me change my mind on that.

We were still talking when Elle and Anne exited the Doctor’s office. Elle had been given instructions as what to do to lower the fever but the most important thing was that there didn’t appear to be anything wrong with her that time wouldn’t heal. As we all left we exchanged telephone numbers. I wasn’t sure why but we did.

To be continued...