revisiting the purple monkey

I had lunch today with Jennifer, an old colleague from the Island of the Purple Monkeys who, like me, survived its transition into the hands of the smurfs. It was her first time meeting Hobbes, which was the ostensible reason for our meet-up, but we spent much of the time talking about what was happening with the Island -- beg pardon, the smurfs -- which is par for the course for us. We've met up for lunch several times since leaving the Island. Both of us have moved on to jobs that are in every possible way better: in environment; in salary; in benefits; in ethics; in product. We remind each other of that every time -- how much better life is, how much happier we are -- and yet inevitably we turn back to conversation about them. The Island. The Smurfs.

It's all very well to say we've moved on when in reality, we haven't.

I think it's inevitable that we talk about our Dark Times when we get together. It is our common ground, the shared experience that holds us together, a romp through Gehenna that has miraculously found us mostly sane on the other side. The bitterness of our conversation has receded over the last year and a half and has taken on a tint of half-marveling nostalgia, a kind of "can you believe--?" that pities our younger selves' stupidity.

"Can you believe how many hours we worked?"

"Can you believe we took pay cuts?"

"Can you believe what so-and-so said to me about such-and-such?"

"Can you believe we're still talking about this?"

I run into coworkers from those days from time to time, at farmers' markets and the like. I work with one now, in fact; I exchange emails with others. Another just announced she had her second child two days ago: I sent her my congratulations. We are friends in the way that survivors of some great and traumatic experience are friends; we gather at intervals to talk in hushed voices about things that should never have come to pass.

I received an email a few days ago from one of the relics of the Island, who had just been laid off by the Smurfs this past Friday.

"They're still around?" a fellow survivor asked me, baffled, when I told him, followed by a still more baffled: "She was still working for them?"

"You just can't help some people," another said sadly, after having much the same reaction to the news.

In retrospect, there's something more than a little pathetic about our stints on the Island, like the willful blindness of an abused woman returning time and time again to her abuser. Even the sane can have their moments of insanity. Five years worth, in my case.

"Can you believe they had to lay us off for us to leave?"

Some experiences are worth having, if only so you can rehash them endlessly later.