“Terry. You cannot scream in there. Our boss is very busy and doesn’t like yelling. She’ll be very mad if you yell.” She nodded as I spoke. We were on the same page. That is, if you counted The Exorcist as your book. Terry took off running the minute the door was opened. I looked left, right, up, down. She’d disappeared. I returned to my cubicle, hoping, praying that Terry was a homing pigeon who’d landed in my chair. No luck.

“You’re old!” Oh my God! I nearly got whiplash from turning left so quickly. There was Terry. Three feet tall, standing an inch in front of the judge, who, incidentally, didn’t look so much taller, pointing. “They said you were always mad!” That little Benedict Arnold!

“Get out! Get out!”

Terry was totally unfazed by the judge’s command. Somehow, I found a bit of courage in my internal safety deposit box and headed into the torture chamber. The judge’s eyes were burning. She’d been had by someone who hadn’t even graduated from the first grade, let alone a top-five law school.

“Sheila. Get. Her. Out. Of. Here. NOW! We will talk about this later!”

I was so close to peeing my pants I couldn’t even muster up the usual “Yes, Judge” and just nodded instead.

Mini Benedict had other plans. The moment she saw me, Terry ran and hid under the judge’s desk. She wouldn’t budge. It dawned on me that I must have been a serial killer in my previous life. Posthumous punishment was the only explanation.

“Terry. Please come out. Please, honey.” I wobbled to the front of the judge’s desk, got on my knees, and shoved my face underneath. Ugh! She had one of the judge’s tennis shoes in her hands and was playing with the orthotic insert. I had to have been worse than Ted Bundy. The judge was standing right above me, breathing like a bull. Bull was about to kick victim if Terry didn’t come out.

“What is wrong with her?!” The judge screamed, rage accumulating as evidenced by her break-dancing bun. She caught a glimpse of what the minityrant was doing. “My sneaks! My sneaks!”

Bun moonwalked.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. One. Two. Three. I shot up, maneuvered to the front of the desk, grabbed the delinquent, yanked the orthotic free of her sticky grasp, and pulled her out. In addition to being a huge brat, Terry was the biggest ingrate of all time. I’d just saved her from a fate worse than death and all she could do was scream, all the way out the door, which I shut behind us.