The Mono Tones

Every once in awhile, I have one of those mornings where everything seems to be flowing downstream.

On these mornings, things will just start off fantastically.

Somehow, I’ll manage to wake up with my alarm - no need to hit the snooze button my typical three angry times, wishing time would stop lying to me about having to be up 27-minutes ago in order to have a productive day.

These mornings, I pop out of bed as though I was a little kid, and it was pancake breakfast day.

I get out of bed, shave, and brush my teeth with a float in my step. Things are going to be good today.

I head to the gym and have an amazing workout. I love doing cardio on mornings like this. I can jump rope a little longer, go quicker on the stairmaster or treadmill. I’ll even look at the row machine and skip passed it with a little less hatred than usual.

My music seems to be in a good mood on these mornings. The playlist is set to random, but it is picking all the best songs, letting me get a solid stream of daydreaming in while I blow through an hour of cardio like it was 15-minutes.

A good workout always leads to a good shower. The water pressure seems better and the temperature is perfect.

After victoriously emerging from the shower and dressing for the day, I look in the mirror at my typical uniform of three-button collared shirt and pants. Somehow, I even feel like I look better. Same clothes, new man.

Maybe there is something to this “good night’s sleep” thing.

Even better, waking up on time means I have time to make coffee AND eat breakfast. It’s not a choice of one or the other.

I don’t have to eat dry cereal or a sad granola bar in my car while I drive, trying to drink my coffee when it hits the perfect temperature of not scolding hot but not grossly down to room temperature.

After I eat my breakfast, care-free and knowing this is going to be an awesome day, I take my coffee to-go and head for the car. Pep in my step the whole way there.

The hits keep coming on the drive to my first appointment. As I follow the directions from my GPS, I realize I’ll be heading opposite rush hour traffic: Bonus.

Thirty minutes later, I arrive 5-minutes early for my first sales call of the day. I gather my thoughts, my things, and know I am going to rock this sales call. I walk up to the door, knock, smile, and wait to greet my first client of the day.

When they open the door and we exchange greetings, I don’t even notice it. I am still too high on my awesome morning. I am firing on all cylinders as we head to the kitchen to chat about the job.

I start asking questions about their wants and needs, smiling and being an attentive listener when it hits me. Actually, it starts to slowly roll over me.

It is like the slowest moving snowball coming right at your face. My brain sees it coming but is paralyzed to move out of the way. I’m the girl in the horror movie who has forgotten how to run from the slowest monster ever. I just keep tripping and falling down. This is going to overtake me like The Blob.

I am speaking to the most boring people in the world. My energy was fighting it off at first, but they penetrated my forcefield.

Their monotonous voices and low volume responses are drilling me down like my high school history teacher reading from the textbook.

I struggle to understand the phenomenon of both people in this marriage speaking in the exact same manner. Their voices have become one after years of togetherness.

It is almost like their singular tone hypnotized me, or more likely, put me in a functional coma.

The more we talked, the more their spell wore on me. I was stun-gunned, walking and talking through a haze of intense boredom.

The sales call seemed to warp time and move in dream sequence.

I recall an elderly woman coming into the room. She just sat down in an armchair in silence.

The Mono-Tones called her Mom. Then, they disappeared upstairs for while, leaving Mom and I in silence while I plugged their data into the system.

They reappeared in silence, working together seamlessly to make Mom toast with jelly and coffee...in complete silence.

They disappeared again. I had to call out to them to lure them back into the kitchen.

I spoke as they sat with faces as bland as their voices.

I asked for the sale. They looked blankly at each other. They looked blankly at me. I waited in silence.

After painstaking silence one of them spoke (I couldn’t tell you who. The voice carried no gender from whichever bland face broke the silence). There would be no sale, as promised earlier. I must have missed this in my hypnotized state.

I gathered my things and headed to my car, feeling like I was shaking-off the cobwebs of sleep or as though I had suddenly boarded a boat and needed to get my sea legs.

It was about 42 degrees as I drove-off, driver-side window all the way down, trying to break the spell of exhaustion the Mono-Tones placed on me, simultaneously plotting a course to a much needed second cup of coffee.