Rita Ricardo (continued)

Well, now to the part about the toenails.

One day, I returned back to the desk I reluctantly shared with Rita and saw something in the floor. I asked her what she tracked inside. I asked the question thinking it was small strips of hay b/c of her resemblance to a barnyard creature. She said, "I didn't track anything in; that is my toenails." I immediately thought that, if anyone saw those cheese filled things on the carpet, they would think the boy clipped them, not the girl. So, I told her to clean them up. She said not to worry about it because the cleaning crew would get it when they cleaned the office at night. I said, "No, I am not working until you clean that nasty shit up." She picked up all of the large pieces but left the smaller clippings.

That wasn't the only thing she did annoying at the desk. She would brush her big horse mane while sitting next to me. The mane was so tough that it sounded like when I clean the charcoal grill with a steel brush. It made me feel sad that she wasn't around when Old Yeller needed stitched after being attacked by the hogs b/c her coarse hair would have been perfect for that. I think the hair shed from her mane really was used to garrote Luca Brasi in the Godfather.

One of my biggest peeves is someone eating something after I am completely full. Well, Rita had an affection for rice cakes. She would eat them about 1:30 or 2:00 after I got back from lunch. When I say that she ate rice cakes, I should clarify: she ate a whole damn roll of rice cakes every single day. It seemed like it would take her two hours to eat them. After about five minutes of hearing her chomp them down, I wanted to grab them and shove them down her ugly ass throat. It wasn't just that she ate them. It was the manner in which she ate them. Ms. Ricardo wasn't just a bad Spanish teacher; she also didn't teach her daughter to eat with her ugly mouth shut. The rice cake crumbs flew out of Rita's chapped lips like chips flying out of a wood grinder. One day she got exceptionally carried away, and the crumbs landed on me, big hunks of crumbs with slobber all over them. I knocked them off of my suit coat, but they left their residue behind. Nothing is quiet like working in a senator's office with rice cake skeet displaying prominently on your shoulder.

Rita loved Riverdance, so she bought two concert tickets to see them in D.C. However, her mom went back to our state after spending a week with Rita in the college dorm. So, Rita had no one to go with her to the concert. She guilt tripped our boss, who at this time had no clue as to Rita's shenanigans, into going with her. The boss said that she would. So, they made plans for the concert. Right after the plans were made Ms. Ricardo called Rita at our desk. She decided to make another 12 hour drive back to D.C. to attend Riverdance. I hope you think that the Riverdance part is as funny as I do. Anyway, Rita only had the two tickets, so she put the phone down and asked me what she should do. I said, "How far is your mom from her house?" She said, "She has only been driving for an hour." I said well tell her to turn around b/c you have given the ticket to your boss. Rita then said, "But, I miss my mom, and I want her to come back up here b/c I am lonely." So, Rita went and told the boss that her mom was taking the ticket. I didn't think it was a very good way to make a first impression.

Well, Rita's mom showed back up in D.C. in a big way. She stayed with Rita for the remainder of our 6 week clerkship. Did I mention that Rita was 25 years old? Anyway, Rita's mom started coming to work with her and spending hours up in our office. She wrote poems for everyone in the office and all of the senators. She stalked the senator's and ran them down to give them her poems. She gave me a poem that started, "Hickory dickory dock don't turn back on Cousin Eddie or he will fast forward your clock." The poem was about 75 lines long, but that is all I remember about it except that each line was equally corny. Ms. Ricardo had one of her poems published in the Washington Post that was about illegal immigration. The article was making fun of her in an underhanded way. I got to work, and my boss was reading the poem to the office and bragging about how proud of Rita she was. I was in disbelief. There I was busting my ass to make a favorable impression, and this monsterfaced idiot seemed to be winning over my boss. I was living in an alternate universe for shizzle.

My boss has us working on group projects. In order to dodge Rita as much as possible, I told Rita that instead of working together on projects that we should split them, edit each other's work, and cosign off on the projects. She agreed. Well, we worked for a very conservative senator, and in the middle of Rita's work, she would right some bs about how we should advocate something on the liberal agenda like gay rights or who knows what. She had no clue the difference in conservative or liberal and didn't know which one our senator was. I tried to pull as much work away from her as I could and do it myself.

Everyday after work, Rita and her mother went to the gallery above the senate floor and watched the senators debate. They got so fired up over an imigration speech that started cheering and clapping and were escorted out by the guards. I wish the guards would have tazed them. A couple of thousands volts to the face could have made a huge improvement to their masks.

Rita didn't even know the name of the committee office for which we were working. The committee had a sophisticated sounding name. We were supposed to say it when we answered the phone, but Rita would get it all bumbled up. She would say it wrong about five times, put the phone down, take a deep sigh, and ask me the committee's name. It was recockulous.

Rita's mom came into the office one day with a box of pizza for us. In my best Leave it to Beaver impersonation, I said, "O, this is real swell of you to bring us this pizza Ms. Ricardo." She said, "Well, I wasn't the only one being nice. Some man gave me that pizza out on the street." Dumfounded I asked, "Was he working for a pizza company?" She said, "No he was just some scruffy looking fella that was real nice." I opened up the box and slices were missing and all of the toppings were slid off the pizza. She took a box of pizza from a homeless man and wanted us to eat it. No shit!

Eventually, one of my friends in the office ran into my boss in a bar. She told my boss about all of the Rita stories. My boss was so busy that she had no clue about Rita. She felt really bad about the whole situation but got a kick out of all the stories. The next day my boss called me in and asked why I had not said anything about Rita. I said that I figured it would all come out without me having to point it out. She then told me to tell her all of the stories. Everyone besides Rita gathered up in the office and got a good laugh about it. My boss moved me into her office for the last week that I was there to relieve me from Rita. Rita could not understand the move, but I didn't worry about it too much b/c Rita didn't understand much of anything.

D.C. wasn't the last time I ran into to ole Rita. I was taking the bar exam and looked over and saw Rita and guess who, her mother waiting in the lobby of the testing area. Rita's mom was at the bar exam everyday of the test, waiting outside for Rita to finish. Somehow someway Rita ended passing that exam. That really diminished my accomplishment of passing. If you are lucky enough to have her as your attorney, no represenation is made that the quality of the legal services being performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by other lawyers.