Pink Box

Oy. I'm a dog. A slobbering dog. A slobbering dog who loves donuts. Somebody just walked by with a pink box, and I know there's donuts inside it. I don't even have to smell them, but I know they're there. There's probably a chocolate cake donut with chocolate frosting and peanuts sprinkled on top. I want it. Right now. Oy.

So I work in a place with cubicles. Most of us are engineers who spend far more time in meetings than we do actually doing engineering. Since we also work on a federal facility, people aren't allowed to bring donuts and coffee (which I don't drink) to meetings -- it's considered "bribery" and "unethical" (hey, I don't make the rules). But we're also human (mostly), and so occasionally somebody will bring a box of donuts to take the edge off an early morning meeting.

And here's where the pink box comes in. I'm obsessive about them -- or rather their contents. I don't know how or why most donut boxes came to be pink and so very common amongst the makers of donuts, but they seem to be a standard now. Whenever I see somebody carrying one in, I ask myself the following series of questions:

"Who is carrying the box?"
"Is it somebody I work with?"
"Where are they going?"
"Is it for a meeting to which I'm invited?"
"Can I get myself invited to the meeting?"
"Is it possible I could gently insert myself into the meeting, steal a donut, and then excuse myself?"
"Could I just sneak into the meeting room, steal a donut, then sneak back out without being noticed?"
"Should I follow the donut box carrier, then when they set the box down somewhere before the meeting, I could steal a donut and make a quick getaway?"
"Maybe I should just tackle them, take the box, and run away ..."

Well, that last one's not a question, but usually my train of thought goes in that direction. I try to fight these base tendencies. I know I don't really need the donut, as I do try very hard to watch my weight (with mixed success), but I most certainly do want the donut. I'm no better than Pavlov's dog, who slobbered whenever the bell was rung -- except for me, it's not a bell ringing, but rather the blissful vision of a beautiful pink box.