Steven Ragsdale 🎙

A woman in Procurement ended an email to me with "Per my last email." I know a formal challenge when I see one. I replied: "Per your last email, which I have read four times and now keep beside my bed." She wrote back: "As previously stated." I answered: "As you previously stated, and as the moon stated to the tide." Forty minutes passed. Then: "Are you messing with me." I wrote: "I would never. I am matching your formality, as one knight matches another's armor before the dance." No reply for a day. I prepared my desk for departure. The next morning she appeared at my desk, looked down at me, and said: "The moon stated to the tide." She had quoted me. To my face. In this country, that is a marriage. Now our whole team writes like this. "Per the old ways." "As the tide remembers." The CFO joined in on Tuesday. Nobody knows why. The emails take longer and everyone is happier. I will never tell her that "per my last email" is, where I come from, a declaration of war. She thinks it is a game. It is a game now. She made it one. That is the entire history of our friendship, and I have said none of it out loud.

I needed to move a sofa. I mentioned this to an American. He said, "You know anybody with a truck?" I did not know anybody with a truck. He looked at me with real concern. Not pity. Concern. The way you look at a man who has told you he does not have a name. "You gotta know somebody with a truck." I asked how one acquires such a person. He said, "You just do." This is the third time I have received that answer in this country. It is the answer to everything here. You just do. There is no process. There is only the eventual fact of having. He said, "Ask Kevin." I do not know a Kevin. He said Kevin like I should. He said it the way you say a shared uncle. I met Kevin four days later. Kevin owns a truck. Kevin does not own a truck for himself. Nobody owns a truck for themselves. Kevin owns a truck for a fifteen mile radius. Inside I said: THIS MAN HAS TAKEN A VOW. HE DID NOT ANNOUNCE IT. HE SIMPLY PURCHASED A BED AND ACCEPTED THE CONSEQUENCES. Kevin arrived on Saturday. He brought the truck. He also brought a second man. I had not asked for a second man. The second man's name is Tony. Tony came because Kevin came. Tony did not know me. Tony did not ask what we were moving. Tony brought gloves. They moved the sofa in eleven minutes. I offered them money. Both of them laughed at the same time, which felt rehearsed and was not. I asked what I owed them. Kevin said, "Buy the pizza." That is the price. That is the entire economy. The truck costs one pizza and the pizza is not negotiable and the pizza is also not expensive and everyone knows what size. Inside I said: THE FEE IS FIXED ACROSS THE ENTIRE NATION AND WAS SET BY NO ONE. We ate on the floor because the sofa was against the wall and none of us wanted to be the first to sit on it. Tony told me his daughter plays soccer. I asked if she is good. He said, "She's aggressive." I still think about that. Three weeks later, Kevin texted me. "You free Sunday? Helping Tony move a fridge." He did not ask if I wanted to. He informed me of a fridge. Inside I said: I HAVE BEEN CALLED UP. I DID NOT ENLIST. THE PAPERS WERE FILED ON MY BEHALF. I went. I moved the fridge. I have no truck. I contributed only arms. Afterward, a man I had never met asked me if I knew anybody with a truck. I said, "Yeah, I got a guy." I have a guy. I am somebody's guy now, too. Tony has told two people about me. He describes me as "the guy who's strong for his size." I have never been prouder of a sentence in my life.