A Spiteful Spoon of Sugar

By Liz Langley, AlterNet. Posted March 30, 2004.

Tax time is upon us, once again -- as obvious yet unexpected as a cannon ball -- and all annoyances from now until April 15 will magnified like the big E on the eye chart.

When I do taxes, I feel like Dr. Jekyll coming out of a Mr. Hyde binge without a clue what his other self has been up to. If you're a linear thinker, maybe tax time is like Christmas for you. For those of us who lean more toward the abstract, artistic and non-numeric it's a waking nightmare.

I'm a freelancer, which means that I can write off piles of expenses. Lucky me. It also means that I have to go through crates of receipts, which will turn me into a mental case. If organization came naturally to me it wouldn't be so bad, but my mind looks like the toy department of a thrift store after the Saturday rush. That's no place for tiny receipts. Have you seen the receipts from New York cabs? You couldn't wad up your gum in there and I have handfuls of them.

I have file boxes of teeny weenie papers with mysterious things like "DL" and "wind" scrawled on them. The Riddler gave better clues. Faced with divining all this, I've taken to the idea of watching bad movies while I slave to cheer up (I may be on the verge of madness but at least I didn't make "Gigli") and keeping a list of reasons to live posted on the wall. There will presumably be an April 16, after all.

In addition to disorganization, I have math anxiety -- for which there is no pill. I'd suffer through any number of disgusting side effects if I could stop working with numbers. I think of the calculations I will have to do on those receipts which, laid end to end, would reach Sedna, and have to lie down with a cool cloth on my head like a Tennessee Williams matron and wonder why no kind stranger takes me gingerly by the arm and leads me to a nice, quiet sanitarium.

It's not fair that once a year I am legally obliged to do what I am so very bad at. I don't begrudge paying my taxes, I just begrudge having to do them. The current system is a yearly national nightmare and really should be scrapped for something simpler; we'd save a fortune on anti-depressants. That will never happen -- it's too good an idea.

But there is one thing that would make me feel better, something I've come to think of as the Tax Time Talent Show. I figure if I've got to spend hours doing something I'm bad at, then those who make our lives hell once a year should have to do something they're bad at, too, as a consolation prize for the rest of us. If we right-brainers -- the writers, dancers, cartoonists, trainers, singers, etc. -- are forced into organized math, then everyone in the tax department should have to entertain us while we're doing it: Sing songs, make sculptures, write short stories, whatever they're horrid at.

Anything they can do well, say, any accountant who plays jazz at a local club on the side, would have to eschew that and do something at which they stink on ice. I want to hear renditions of "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" that make dogs bite their owners. I want to see ceramic cups that look as though they're depressed by their own ugliness and watch "The Nutcracker," with a fortyish collections official named Steve in the role of Clara.

Every night at 8:00 p.m. I want to watch this combination of American Idol and the Gong Show while I sort my receipts, listening to free verse poetry that ought to be in chains and halting three-chord folk-inspired guitar solos about being alone by the phone that will make acoustic celebrities consider suicide for having inspired such garbage. I want to see a performance of "Romeo and Juliet" that will be put to a halt by police, who suspect heroin abuse that turns out to be bad acting. And I want anyone leftover to have to participate in an a capella production of the final scene from "Hair." It's only fair.

This spiteful spoon of sugar would make the receipt pile go down in a most delightful way. Which reminds me I'd also like to see some portly accounts receivable supervisor hoisted up on squeaky wires while singing a version of "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" that will result in the only known case of a broken tongue, especially if they have a fear of heights. I would like to laugh all the way to the post office on April 15 -- and to be glad that tax season is over, for all our sakes.

Liz Langley is a freelance writer who lives in Florida.

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