Becoming MJ

I've been wearing a wrist brace at work. When a fellow programmer sees it for the first time I simply say, "It's my mouse hand," and they understand. It's a repetitive stress injury, due to years of semi-bad posture at my desk job.

Non-programmers don't always understand right away. It can be a little embarrassing, too. "Repetitive Stress" sounds vaguely impressive, but when you get right down to it, it's just aggressive mousing. Nobody is much impressed when I confess to being injured by my mouse.

A few days ago, Lightyear saw me wearing the brace. Lightyear is an older fellow, and he has no volume control. He immediately pointed and shouted, "JEFF! What'd you do?!? Are you OK?!?"

I blushed. "Oh, I'm OK."

I started to explain, but Lightyear cut me off. "Hey, you're not uh... ", he started to snap the fingers on one hand, trying to think. "...you're not becoming... oh, what was that pop singer's name... MICHAEL JACKSON! Yeah, you're not becoming Michael Jackson, are you?"

I thought about Michael Jackson's path from 'black man' to 'white woman'. "I'm halfway there, *and* I've got a glove," I thought. I grinned. Out loud I said, "Not intentionally."

"Well," said Lightyear, "then there's hope for ya."

He never asked what actually happened to my wrist. I guess if I'm not changing race and gender, then it must not be too bad.

It did make me wonder, though... what *would* I look like, as Michael Jackson?... Hm...



Unbelievable. I'm not white enough. Who'd have thunk it?