Sorry, Rita

Rita is our department secretary. She is a classic beauty with her dark eyes, flawless creamy skin and a serene face played up by almost black naturally curly hair. And to go along with the good looks is her remarkable efficiency, astonishing sense of detail and a calm, soothing manner. Another notable quality is her ability to be professionally responsible for all the really interesting and intriguing people who pass in and out of her office and the no doubt often juicy drama that inevitably takes place when several English teachers work together. She has provided me with much needed help for the many years that I have been an adjunct member of the department. Going beyond the call of duty hardly describes her effort to help all of us run our teaching lives smoothly and successfully. I have the highest degree of respect for her.

So the guilt I feel for upsetting her during a department meeting last week is still rattling around in the front of my brain. Here's what happened: I took the opportunity to sneak into the work room during a small break to "run off a few copies." We are not supposed to run more than ten copies at a time. A hundred and ten copies isn't even close but I figured I could just bang them out and no one would be the wiser. Unfortunately, I jammed the machine after only three copies hence my need to summon Rita from the meeting. She was not happy and drew my attention to the notice that reads "one sided copies only" which is why my project jammed up the works. She then spent some precious minutes unjamming everything and making sure the machine was back to normal while I prayed hard that she wouldn't have to call the repairman in. When the machine was healthy again and I was trying to shower her with gratitude, she quietly mentioned that it wasn't the machine repair that was troublesome, it was the fact that she was not in the meeting to cover her secretarial duties as she should have been.

I felt pit in the stomach bad for selfishly causing her this interruption and inconvenience especially since she has always been so prompt and good about taking care of my needs over the years. I was tempted to publicly apologize to her after I slinked back into the meeting but couldn't bring myself to do so because then I'd have to publicly confess that not only was I cheating about the number of copies I was making, but I also didn't read the notice about "one-sided copies only."

She said she forgave me and I hope she did but I still feel so bad. I am so sorry, Rita. You are too good in so many ways to be treated in any way but respectfully and honestly.