Stuff on My Desk: Pill-shaped Stress Ball

Just like everyone else in the world, I have stress.

It just so happens that I like to take mine out on this small, hand-sized stress ball in the shape of a Dexatrim pill.

(Seriously: Anytime I see pills that break apart in the middle and have different stuff on each end, I think of those old Dexatrim commercials from the 1980s. Remember those? Take one and your appetite is just gone! Little did we know they'd either make us crazy or anorexic or crazy-anorexic. We were so innocent.)

(Disclaimer: I have no idea if Dexatrim actually made people crazy or anorexic. I'm just assuming based on my deep, inner hatred of diet pills. Please don't be offended if you or your loved one had a wonderful (or horrible) experience with them. I'm just talking out of my butt here.)

ANYWAY.

I got this little guy at a trade show for pharmacists, which my brother and I used to attend with our dad when we were growing up. Trade shows are like crack dens for kids -- you get tons of free stuff, and you're a kid, so no one expects you to sit through a boring speech about the merits of their REVOLUTIONARY hemorrhoid medication in exchange for the tchotchkes they just handed you. You just take it and run to the next booth, where they're giving away candy and free book lights.

And now, as a 32-year-old adult, when my cubicle neighbor makes that snorting noise for the 50th time, and the people in the kitchenette across from me bang on the vending machine WITH THEIR FISTS and the guy from down the hall stands next to my cube, cursing loudly at the printer, somehow missing the fact that I AM WORKING three feet to his left?

I don't have to get up and kick them all in the shins, or scream at the top of my lungs that I HAVE HAD IT with Corporate America and am leaving to take a job in a research library where it's just me and a bunch of books and no one around to be loud and throw away my coffee cup and make the whole office smell like a combination of popcorn and dead, rotting foot skin.

I have an outlet.

Thank you, pill-shaped stress ball.