Andrew J. Lederer

about a BIG project that could make a BIG difference in my life and the lives of others. It was requested that I dress appropriately.

BUT --

If I spent the money I needed to on dry cleaning and shoes, I'd have been completely broke.

SO --

I didn't pick up my dry cleaning and bought the cheapest pair of sneakers I could find, their only advantage being that they were not falling apart like the previous (otherwise identical) ones. I found a crumpled sports jacket in my dirty laundry and draped it over my arm so that it looked like I had been wearing a nice jacket but for some reason had taken it off.

My shirt was unironed but freshly laundered and, fortunately, stretched out by my fat. I put those white, plastic things in my collar and wore jeans in respectable black.

Since I don't have an overcoat, I wore t-shirts under my fat-stretched shirt to keep myself warm. One of them was a pocket-t.

Just before the meeting, I noticed a lump on the left side of my chest -- a ball in the pocket of the t which had once been bread but which had been turned into dough by the washing machine.

I guess some days before I had wanted to throw the bread away but was not near a garbage can, so I shoved it into my shirt pocket 'til I found one. Now, I was beside an important associate with a ball of dough in my hand and -- still -- no place to throw it out. (I'm still not sure how I got rid of it.)

My posture was off, my shirt was too tight, my jeans were too low, I felt freakishly fat and unattractive and I was crammed, one of four, into a tiny, ancient elevator.

I think the meeting went well.