"Printshop Pattie"
By Christine Stoddard
Pattie cuts, trims, and laminates beneath the florescent lights, promising never to fall from the heights of customer dreams.
Sometimes it seems she's photocopied A Tale of Two Cities' first page so often the machine fulminates in her imagination.
It was never 'the best of times' or 'the worst of times' but the most ironic of times--why does the digital age use so much paper?
Yet, despite all the hours those pamphlets and business cards sucked from her youth, Pattie never called the printshop her cage.
It was no prison, no hell, but, rather a refuge, one of those ivory towers that soars over the half-truths plaguing the common earth.
Pattie could scurry away to the paper closet, admiring pastel and neon hues, or mirthfully rub her fingers over embossed letters.
She could isolate herself from everything but the scent of whiteout, the texture of vellum, or the fingerprints of previous setters.
Sometimes, all she wanted to know was the stab of a ballpoint pen against her pinkie, or the taste of an old-fashioned wood ruler.
Sometimes, Pattie only cared about single words, like "inches," "resolution," "border"--words that constituted her own unique Zen.
She lived in a realm of bond paper, inkjet paper, leather paper, sandpaper, wax paper, photo paper, wove paper, and laid paper.
She chose not to understand controversy, anthropology, politics, costume design, sociology, auto repair, feminism or engineering.
For Pattie, what went on paper meant nothing compared to the type, weight, and thickness of the paper involved in the endeavor.
