In addition to the coffee addicted Lorna and the so-garish-my-corneas-ache Melina, there is another woman in the workplace that occupies far too much of my time throughout the day: Hannah.

To call Hannah a little repressed is like saying Joan Rivers has had a little work done. Hannah is a member of that seven day dress wearing religion whose name escapes me right now. She is married to a minister, has a braid past her ass, and has 4 sons: 2 of her own, 1 adopted, and 1 foster son she is hoping to adopt. She tells incredibly long and ultimately pointless stories that are neither funny or interesting, nor do they end with the parable and passing of a religious tract you would expect. They just hang in the air, verbal wet blankets that suck the life out of anyone unfortunate enough to be sitting close to her.

(But I am Dirk Mancuso, dammit, and for me the glass is almost usually in most cases always half full. Therefore, if there were a gun pointed at my head and I had to choose one good thing about Hannah, the copious amounts of apple spice cake she brings in every week would win hands down. It is the dessert equivalent of black tar heroin; that shit just gets in you and makes you feel good.)

Unsettling religious angle, wicked nasty braid, and coma inducing ramblings aside, there is one thing in particular thing about Hannah that sets my pearly whites on edge: her perpetual state of cluelessness. Now if it were just say random things, I might gasp and think “wow, that’s pretty fucked up she doesn’t know about Heather and Ritchie and Denise and Charlie…or The DaVinci Code…or bird flu…or the immigration controversy,” but it extends to every aspect of the world. About a month ago she told us about a great new tv show she had discovered and was now hooked on: AMERICAN IDOL.

“It is a big singing contest and people are eliminated until there is one singer left,” she told us on break.

“Sounds interesting,” I replied. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard of it….”

“I hadn’t either, but I was at a parishioner’s house and her children had it on. It was very good.”

Cue my eyes rolling into the back of my head at the mention of the word “parishioner.” (By the way, ever notice how parishioner sounds like a drunk talking to you when you are tied spread eagle to the bed? “Oh yesh, struggle, boi…you are my puh-rish-uh-ner of love…” But I digress.)

Let us jump to a conversation we were having over lunch yesterday that takes the proverbial cake (apple spice or otherwise):

Melina (flipping through the latest tabloid): I would totally fuck Scott Peterson. He’s so hot.

Lorna: I’d do him.

Dirk: You guys are messed up. The guy off-ed his wife and baby.

Melina: Still hot. Killers can be hot. I’d risk it. Besides he says he is didn’t do it.

Lorna: That’s not what Lacey’s mother says.

Melina: Of course her mother thinks he is guilty. She doesn’t like him.

All the time, Hannah was sitting there listening and eating a Nestle Crunch bar, her eyes going from face to face, taking it all in. And then finally she spoke:

“Did that girl used to work here?”

“What girl?” Melina asked, food and spittle flying everywhere.

“Lacey,” Hannah asked.

“Lacey Peterson?”

Hannah nodded.

Melina and Lorna burst out laughing, while I just sat there, staring.

“Hannah,” I said, looking for some sign of intelligence in her big watery cow eyes while fighting back the urge to smack her, “Lacey Peterson was the pregnant woman whose husband murdered her and her unborn child.”

“Oh. So you knew her?”

More laughter from the peanut gallery.

“Nooooooooooo.”

“Oh. I just thought maybe she had worked here because you were talking about her.”

“Hannah, it’s been on the news for the better part of two years. It was a huge story.”

She just shook her head. “I missed that.”

Yeah, you missed it, Hannah. You missed the fucking news, Larry King Live, People magazine, USA Today, the local paper, the radio, people on the fucking street. Good God almighty, maybe if you got your head out of your Bible, your sinfully delicious apple spice cake factory, and your ass you might know something about Simon Cowell and men who kill their wives thus insuring you could carry on something resembling a decent goddamn lunchtime conversation.

I swear my job must make potential employees take a standardized Fucktard Diagnostic Exam and then hire only the ones who flunk that.

Word.

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