Paperclip

Paperclip
by R. Eric Swanepoel

(First published in New Writing from the North, Issue 2, CAC
Publications, 19 Berryden Road, Aberdeen, Scotland)

Monica stared at the paperclip on the other side of the glass, and,
like a driver who sees his car sliding in slow motion towards an
accident, felt her world collapse. This was her rite of passage. No
going back.

Monica had always been a methodical girl. Her room had long been held
out as an example to her more blas? siblings, and their resentment had,
if anything, further intensified her organisational zeal.
It had started years ago and harmlessly enough when her mother had
expressed approval of the neat row she had made of her dolls, and had
passed through several distinct phases to reach its current level of
almost supernatural rigour and compass.

From lining up the dolls in order of size, then hair colour, then
constituent material, it had progressed to the storage of all her toys
in nested and labelled boxes. (Her father wasn't particularly
successful at his job as a sweet company representative and couldn't
provide his children with brand new bicycles, computers and designer
trainers, but before he was made redundant there had been boxes in
abundance, and Monica was always popular amongst her schoolmates when a
Blue Peter project required such items.)
The next stage had been the indexing and ordering of her books and
comics. But Monica was no mere worker ant, and being an intelligent and
creative girl, hadn't restricted her hierarchical talents to the
ordering of objects. Ideas were also collected and sorted. 'I want a
horse!' had been the first one she had written on a piece of cardboard
cut from a cereal packet. Her mother had experienced several months of
puzzlement at Monica's strong preferences in the cereal line. There
seemed to be no correlation between current advertisements and Monica's
favourites, nor was there apparently any consistent flavour or brand
preference.
It was only by accident that her mother had come across the box under
Monica's bed, full of cards arranged according to the dominant colour
of the cereal packets from which the little rectangles had been
fastidiously snipped.

Each colour had a meaning. Red was for "sensible desires" - things
Monica wanted, and thought she could get. Green was for "unrealistic
ambitions", and betrayed a slightly discomfiting realism in one so
young. Pink was for "possibles"- her craving for a horse ambitiously
found itself on such a card.

There were further categories, containing information on her friends,
family, teachers, financial situation... Her mother had kept quiet
about the discovery, but on Monica's thirteenth birthday one of her
presents had been a card index box and two packets of blank
cards!

Monica had at first been over the moon about this gift, but in the
afternoon when she was at last alone in her room a horrible realisation
hit her - what about the colours? The new cards were all the same! She
had been using colours so long now that her thoughts were
kaleidoscopic. She could, she supposed, buy some coloured markers with
the money Auntie Jean had given her&;#8230;

As she reached out to the birthday card with the five pound note
paperclipped to it, she had what her science teacher would have called
a Eureka experience: coloured paperclips! Not only would they serve to
mark individual cards, but they could also be used to link cards. Their
position on cards might also be assigned significance, and if she
situated them such that they projected she could push a knitting needle
through the pack of cards at various points and haul out
categories!

She hurtled downstairs, whizzed past her astounded parents and was back
in her room within fifteen minutes, having bought five packets of
paperclips, each of a different colour.

Years passed and the system grew. Card index boxes were too small. She
fitted partitions into the drawers of the big cabinet in her bedroom,
and filled these. Popstars and boys came and went as fast-growing
categories. The beauty of colour-coding by paperclips was that it could
be used just as well on index cards, newspaper clippings, pages of A4
from her computing science lecture notes, or correspondence whether it
be "friends", "family" or "business". Indeed, by the time she was a
qualified computer programmer, correspondence was the only
super-category which she had not transferred to a computer database.
Not only was this impractical, but even if it had been she retained a
strong emotional attachment to the old coloured paperclip system; even,
ludicrously, to the individual paperclips. Years of use had bent them
into unique shapes, and each triggered a cascade of colourful memories
and associations.

On the top of the blue paperclip pile today (for "immediate action")
was a letter from her bank confirming her appointment with the manager
at three o'clock. She picked it up and put it in her bag.

"I have an appointment with Mr. Frederick," she said, placing the
letter in the recess below the glass partition separating her from the
teller. The time had come to make a clean break. She had hung around
home for nine months now, dutifully filling out job application forms,
and receiving (if she was lucky) rejection slips. She had never had a
decent holiday on her own. She needed a break to think about things.
The family of a friend of hers owned a small holiday house in Portugal
- she could stay there for virtually nothing provided she could get
there. Two hundred pounds would easily see her there and back, and
probably let her stay for some months. Her father would give her the
money, she knew, but he had already given her so much... her pride
wouldn't let her ask. So, she had come to ask for a bank loan on the
security of her degree.

She rehearsed her speech: she was sure the recession was coming to an
end and in another six months they'd be screaming for programmers - she
neeeded a break - her C.V. showed that she was reliable - it was only
two hundred pounds...

Sickened, she realised too late that the teller had taken the letter
from her with the paperclip still attached. There it was on the other
side of the glass! Her first instinct was to ask for it back, but she
was almost simultaneously aware of the impression this would give: so
poor she wanted a paperclip back - a good risk for a loan? Or
completely cranky? Light-headed with its loss, stomach churning with
the emotions and memories attached to that little bit of bent wire, she
was ushered in to the manager's office. This was it. A break from the
past. No more sterile categorisation.

"Yes, Miss Sanderson, that'll be fine!"

She staggered into the sunlight. For once the colours of her feelings
were not restricted to those of the paperclips.