This Wheel's On Fire

The Ghost of Christmas Future called me out a week or two ago on liking Mango, not that I admitted to liking him as anything more than a friend. Let's not forget that this dude has a girlfriend, which The Ghost of Christmas Future well knows because she has met the girlfriend. (Maybe she has also heard Mango's heartwarming and romantic tale of how he and his girlfriend ended up moving in together and concluded that Mango's girlfriend is a figurehead that could be easily cast aside in favor of, let's say, me. For the record, I maintain that Mango's relationship will eventually end but probably in a thermonuclear explosion of which I want no part.)

Hilariously, every time Mango comes over to my desk to talk to me, The Ghost of Christmas Future makes herself incredibly scarce. Literally, she will be there one minute and have vanished the next. I'm starting to think there is a trapdoor under her desk or a bookcase that spins around, like we are in Clue. On Friday, Mango entreated us to accompany him to a get-together at work in which we were all forced to eat cake together to honor a colleague leaving to take the bar exam. The Ghost of Christmas Future somehow disappeared from the very hallway we had to take to the conference room where the cake was served. How does she do this?

I assume that The Ghost of Christmas Future wants to avoid being a third wheel. Truly, there are few things more annoying when you are trying to advance your romantic agenda with someone. But I am not trying to set or advance a romantic agenda with Mango. In fact, quite the contrary. A third wheel might be a convenient chaperone to keep things at an appropriately friendly level. Oy.