08.22.11

Back in February, someone sent us a staple remover. Why? We can’t figure it out. Like a staple so firmly embedded in a stack of paper that no tool can remove it, so too are we unable to worry free the solution to this mystery.

The package it came in was postmarked February 14. Was it a token of love? Does someone want to remove the staples of fear and loneliness from our hearts and let the crisp pages of our love flutter forth in the wind?

Or is there a darker message here? Is it like the fish wrapped in newspaper in The Godfather? Does it mean Kelly Allen sleeps with the staples? No, Kelly is fine. But the staple remover was wrapped in a piece of white paper (a shroud?) with its mouth taped shut (yikes!). Is there some nefarious champion of ineffective corporate communications out there that wants us to stop being so good at what we do?

The return address on the package, in a mocking echo of the delivery address, was SullivanPerkins. An inside job? An ex-employee who had grown too used to a life of easy on-the-job staple removal to leave it all behind for a sad new world of broken nails and bent ballpoints?

The final clue: the package was postmarked from Richmond Hill, Georgia. If the state of Georgia were a piece of paper, Richmond Hill would sit like a misplaced staple in its lower right-hand corner. Sherman’s troops passed through in the Civil War. Henry Ford had a winter home here. According to Wikipedia, there’s timber, too. Timber means paper. Paper means staples…

Anyway, we give up trying to figure out exactly what the Staple Remover means. We are focused on the future and on sticking together, like a well-secured sheaf of important documents.

But if you’re out there, Staple Remover Sender, feel free to remove this mystery.