2001-10-15 - 4:26 p.m.

I need to stop reading the news so much. I'm getting scared to do my job.

See, a while back, though I don't remember when, I started noticing an odd powdery feeling to some of the checks we get at work from the tellers. At the time I wrote it off as paper dust from all of the checks the tellers get in their drawers every day. Actually, I still do… for the most part.

But today I started worrying. After laying in bed for forty-five minutes with achy muscles, a headache, and enflamed throat and sinuses, debating whether I should go in to work or not, knowing that it was probably going to get much worse (I get this kind of thing occasionally, and it always gets much worse before it gets better), I started thinking "Anthrax is supposed to have flu-like symptoms. What kind of flu-like symptoms? These are flu-like. Do I have anthrax? No, I can't have anthrax. It's not like I've handled any powdery papers or anything, and I don't work anywhere that would be at all important to the financial well-being of the country…

shit.

for once, yes I have, and yes I do."

I mean, sure, a small bank in Maine doesn't seem that important in the grand scheme of things right now. But while it's a small bank, compared to all of the other banks based in Maine, it's actually the biggest. Meaning if something were to cripple the bank, the whole state would be hurt. Now, again, the bank itself may not be important overall, but the idea would. Think about it. Right now, most of us can say "Oh, they're sending anthrax to NBC and a tabloid in Florida, and to Tom Daschle, I don't have to worry." But what happens when they send it to random Smalltown, USA? Suddenly everyone is at risk. Some may see attacking a bank like mine as pointless. I'd see it as ingenious.

So now I'm on my lunch break, laying in bed at my computer, feeling awful because I decided that eventually I had to eat, and when I did I was going to feel like crap, so I might as well get that part out of the way so at least I wouldn't still feel hungry, too. I feel terrible, but I can't stay home, I have to go back to work. I have to go, knowing that any one of those bundles of checks could be laced with anthrax, waiting to kill me. And even if it's not, being on my feet is going to make me wish something would come along and kill me so I didn't have to deal with it.

And as much as logic keeps telling me I don't have a damned thing to worry about, I'm a paranoid hypochondriac. I still hesitate every time I pick up a bundle of checks that could be, in any way, described as powdery.

I need to stop reading the news.