The TIB File

A reflection at the Austin Java City Hall Cafe. Enhanced with software.

Since we are deep in the downsizing here, touching everything and deciding its fate, it was natural for me to think of the family TIB file and how you keep some things because otherwise you fear there will not be evidence of how crazy things actually were.

The TIB file (not to be confused with the tub file or the round file, a euphemism for tossing something) is a file of truly incredible, um, brochures, briefings, bric-a-brac, banterings, um, well, actually the B, well it stands for something else here but you've probably already guessed it. No matter. Really, in our house, one of the shortcuts of language of our three decades plus relationship is 'TIB file.' It means a place for something that is (pick one) too hilarious/unbelievable/insulting/misogynistic/perfect for that book I'm writing on corporate stupidity to throw away but I have no idea where to file it.

Looking through one such file (it's possible there are more around here) resulted in some laughs and a pile of stuff that I may scan before putting in recycling or even, hrumph, keeping. I found an article clipped from a 1987 New Yorker, too. Here is the abstract of it from their WEB site. I mention it because a phrase in that article also entered the vernacular of our marriage but we had forgotten enough details about the piece (a send up of a legal ruling) to keep us from finding it on our "The Complete New Yorker" DVDs. That phrase was "absent his testimony." It is funny and much funnier when you realize that it was in reference to a dog. We have found in the last twenty years ample use for this phrase, oddly enough. Hilarity guaranteed. Good relationships are like that. Trigger words and secret language.

So the TIB file (or this one anyway) has been sorted. That must be significant somehow. Perhaps now I will make it through folders with such labels as 'Trigger' or 'Odd Facts and Input.'

Like secret languages, this entry is boring. Are you still reading? Then, as long as I indulged in another reflection picture and one digitally enhanced at that, I might as well mention for new readers nonplussed by all the reflections of various ilks that I once made a self-indulgent artist's statement for my body of work of digital photos of refections. Ha. I make myself laugh today. (Maybe my cedar fever is reducing its hold on my brain's humor center.) Hey, and my friend's response to that old entry is funny, too.

With that, I leave you, dear readers. I'm going to try to get some exercise and, you know, clean out another file.