Name: Ookebray Okdykstay.
Location: The corn.
Occupation: Front Desk gangsta; also, Life in the Corn Ninja Number One.
Irrational Claim to Fame: Claims to have invented the word "sorostitute."
Setting: The Office of International Services, perched like a carrion-eating raptor-bird on the third floor of Franklin Hall. It's five minutes until close of business, and it's been a very, very special day in the neighborhood. Domonic and Ookebray are looking forward to the relative respite of an hour's worth of uninterrupted work. Just then, an international walks through the door, grinning like a recently-escaped lunatic. Ookebray heaves a sigh and goes to talk to him while I close the door behind him.
Ookebray: Hey! What can I do for you today?
Bamboo-Peace Water: I want to work.
Ookebray: OK. What's your status?
BPW: {statusstatusstatus}
Ookebray: Well, what you could do is apply for Curricular Practical Training, which would allow you to work off-campus like you seem to want to do.
BPW: How do I do that?
Ookebray, with her legendary poise, grace, and excellent grasp of international student-type regulations, explains the process of applying for, and successfully receiving, the work authorization.
BPW: OK.
Ookebray: Do you understand what you need to do now?
BPW: I don't wanna do that.
Ookebray: Guh?
BPW: That sounds complicated, I don't want to do that.
Ookebray: Look: that's your only option for the kind of employment you want to do.
BPW: But I don't want to do that. Is there some easier way?
At this point, Ookebray senses, ninja-like, that this is not only a battle she must win for herself and the office but one that will mean the difference between whether this bucko lived to see another day. Did I mention that all of this took place after hours? Indeedy.
BPW: What if I don't do that?
Ookebray: For an international student to accept work off-campus without proper authorization is for him or her to immediately jeopardize his or her non-immigrant status.
BPW: {mumbles under breath}
Ookebray: {reaches for letter-opener}
BPW: So, what if I don't apply for this?
Ookebray: I've already told you. It's badbadbad.
This goes on for nearly a half hour. Bamboo-Peace just doesn't seem to get that, without the thing he needed to apply for, he could (potentially) fall out of status and have to take that long flight home to Happy Bay. In the meantime, Ookebray has gone completely scarlet with {righteous!} fury.
BPW: I just don't know.
Ookebray: I kill you now.
In the end, Ookebray sent Bamboo-Peace packin', and wrote up a long letter of explanation in his folder. By that time, she'd had to take off the over-sweater she was wearing because she was that pissed off. This is my favorite story about Ookebray because, the whole time this was transpiring, I was giggling like a schoolgirl at the image that was floating in my head. In it, Ookebray and Bamboo-Peace were swordfighting a la Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but instead of swords, they were fighting with broken beer bottles (Ookebray) and his ridiculous pencil-bag (Bamboo-Peace). OK, so maybe that's not amusing to you, but I guess you'd have to have been... me.
Ookebray is, without a doubt, the most faithful of my Life in the Corn minions. I reward her with buckets of fish and cookies. No, actually, she's one of my dearest, closest friends, and when she takes whatever fantastic job she'll inevitably be given at the end of this semester, I and Bloomington will be utterly bereft of one of my most favoritest people.
Well, when she's not punching me in the shoulder, giving me bruises the size of dinnerplates. That wench has a whallup in her swing, letmetellyou. And no, I don't mind telling the world that my female coworker wails on me, so shet the feck up.
Here's a shout out to my professional-actin', green-tea-from-hell drinkin', save-me-from-myself angel sent from heaven. Phi Digs fo-evah.
I remain, as ever,
Dom
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