Where to begin? There are many. I will begin with Joke Man. For as long as I have been at MML there had always been Joke Man, an appropriate sobriquet. Joke Man visits were regular like the sun rising every morning, but not nearly as pleasant. Every morning, just around 9:00 Joke Man would make his rounds of the desks on the second floor. He drove my colleagues mad with frustration. He was dreaded and loathed and avoided whenever possible.

I did not deal with Joke Man much; our meetings were intermittent because I began work at 10:00. By the time I came in bright and bubbly, ready to face the world, Joke Man was exiting. It was mainly his backside I saw as he left through the door. As I scanned the room, the look on my co-workers faces said it all. They had suffered keenly through interminably insipid jokes and they did it with a begrudging smile on their face.

His jokes always started out with “Did you hear the one about…..” And then one after another they come at you like bullets, each worse than the one before. It was like being in a car and knowing you’re headed for disaster and all you can do is brace yourself for the worst. With great joy, you knew the end was near when Joke Man would ask for a biography of some screen siren back from the 40’s. Alas, that is Joke Man.

I sensed something different the other day: I sat quietly for a moment at the reference desk before I suddenly realized what was different. Somehow the many days without Joke Man unconsciously registered within me. I brought the absence of Joke Man up with a couple of co-workers on the floor and I was met with “Oh yeah, wow…I wonder where he is?” I speculated mostly in my head about what might have happened to him.

You wonder about some of our patrons, some whose need to interact is such that they will do it in a manner that ultimately sabotages the interaction they so desperately want. I had the impression Joke Man was alone; I knew he lived in Brooklyn and that was it. Mid-Manhattan was on his daily routine. God only knows where else he sought community. I feel that the five minutes I spent thinking about Joke Man makes the presence of him validated: for Joke Man as human being and for me as a human being.