The Folders

Short Story Day 128 of 365

Out of all the things Barry Sampson had on his to-do list at lunch time, editing the 22-page report for his supervisor was priority. He had printed it and put it in the blue folder, as he put all his editing projects in that folder.

Blue helped him differentiate from red, green, and yellow folders.

Red was for taxes and finances.

Green was for his chorale music, and yellow was for miscellaneous papers and files.

Barry could’ve eliminated the green folder entirely had he put everything in a ring binder as his wife had suggested three months ago, but he didn’t.

Besides editing the report, he had to print out color photos at the office supply store, grab lunch, run to the hobby store to pick up wood glue for his wife, and drop into the grocery store for a few items before heading home.

First on the agenda was the printing. Barry didn’t have a color printer at home, and since he rarely printed in color, the office supply store was only 10 minutes away and produced great quality copies.

Just as he was getting out of the car, he grabbed the red folder from the seat and stopped in his tracks.

Red folder. Taxes and finances.

Earlier in the morning he had been working with it and laid it beside the blue folder when he was done. In his rush to leave, he picked up the wrong folder.

Sampson wanted and needed the blue folder with his editing project in it.

“What were you thinking?” he said under his breath. He threw his head back against the headrest and shook his head.

Now, the question was whether to go home now and do his errands later, or just run his errands, get back home, and then do quick edits. Neither option was ideal.

He opened the folder lying beside him. Barry had a hard time remembering what he was working on at home that dealt with finances since taxes were still three months away.

There in black and white was his supervisor’s paper he was planning on editing.

Pfft. How’d it get in this folder? Face it, Sampson, you’re getting old. Tie a string around your finger next time, your memory’s failing ya.