Cast
Oscar: high blood pressure.​​​​​​​

Scene
Hi. My name is Oscar. It’s nothing personal, but I hate you.

How can me hating you not be personal, you wonder? It’s easy – I hate pretty much everyone and by its very definition you can’t take a generalisation personally.

I wish I wasn’t like this but my life these days is like that telemarketer who calls at six thirty when you’re trying to make dinner. My shrink says I should try to adopt an optimist… sorry, boss is coming.

“Good morning sir. How are you today?”

“Oscar. Where’s the report I asked you for?”

I’m fine thanks, David. “Which report, sir?”

“The Finch report. Jesus Oscar, I don’t need a PA who needs to be told everything twice.”

“I don’t remember the request, sir. Did you email it?”

“Yes!”

“To Oscar Johnson or Oscar Wilson?”

You’d think a top corporate lawyer would remember which of the two Oscars working for his company had been his PA for three years. But wait, here comes the apology.

“Just bring me the damned Finch report.”

Oh, that’s okay sir. An easy mistake. “Aye aye.”

I log on to the network and copy the file from his personal drive onto his desktop. Sometimes I wonder how this guy wipes his butt without someone to point out the toilet paper. At lunch time I head out to pick up my blood pressure medication. I’m in a rush so of course everyone gets in my way. Have you ever noticed that the general public’s tendency to walk slowly and take up a far greater percentage of the pavement than necessary is directly proportionate to how urgently you need to get by?

Inside the chemist now. I say, “Hello sir. I’d really like to get high…” wait for it “…blood pressure medication.”

Apparently that wasn’t very funny. Apparently the chemist thinks he’s airport security where they “take all jokes about safety seriously.”  I leave before the police come but now I’m out of time and return to work without my meds.

Ah, here comes Jane. “Oscar, can you print the quarterly report for me?” Jane is the partner’s PA so she thinks she’s the other PAs’ boss. Jane and I do not get along. “I’m flat out all week Jane but anything for you.” Too sarcastic?

Train trip home. My carriage has three snifflers and a cougher, three loud-headphones-dickheads and someone laughing at YouTube videos. At my stop, ten people form a scrum as they vie to be first off, then walk at the speed of a crippled pensioner when the doors open.

At home I take out the book my shrink gave me: the Little Book of Calm. “Rest in a tub”, it says, so I run a bath. I lean back and take a deep, soothing breath. Picture a vast green ocean. Sigh contentedly. Forget all my troubles.

The bubble is burst as my phone rings. Pop! It’s out of reach in my pants pocket so I ignore it, but they keep calling and calling and I’ll never relax unless I switch it off. I have to climb out of the bath to answer and it’s my mother.

“Oscar, I can’t find your father’s shoes. How can we go out without his shoes?”

A ripple appears in the vast green ocean. “A better question might be how can you go out without his heart beating. Mum, dad has been dead for eight years”...
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