Everyone who met Cecil Sanderson had the same thought: “He reminds me of a squirrel.” Although they came to the same conclusion, no one could quite put a finger on the reason why he reminded them of the tree-dwelling rodent.
Some thought his bulging, glistening dark eyes were the culprit. Others pointed to his mousy brown hair, mottled with bits of grey and mimicking the dull taupe color of tree bark. Some even joked that the excessive nose hair protruding from his nostrils resembled the rodent’s fluffy tail.

However, all of these characteristics combined did not result in Cecil’s unfortunate comparison. In actuality, the thing that triggered the unconscious squirrel comparison was Cecil’s sudden, jerky movements and his furtive, nervous gestures. Indeed, his behavior had earned him the secret workplace nickname of Squirrelly Sanderson. Squirrelly was the subject of many water cooler conversations and the butt of many jokes. He made it easy for others to mock him; he provided acquaintances with so much material.

Whenever he met a coworker in the corridor, Cecil threw himself backwards against a wall so that the coworker might pass without the slightest chance of brushing against him. When others tried to have conversations, Squirrelly would scamper up behind them, stand uncomfortably close, and hover over the speaker’s shoulder to eavesdrop. If one spoke directly to Cecil, he only intermittently made eye contact. Generally, his gaze bounced around from the speaker’s eyes to any shiny or moving object in the vicinity. Each time the area supervisor made changes to the posted work schedule, Cecil compulsively corrected the personal copy he made for his own records. Coworkers also made fun of his walk. Squirrelly sped about using quick, fussy steps. He seemed to lean crookedly to one side with the shape of a road sign cautioning of a lane shift ahead.

One would think such a timid nature would invoke feels of sympathy and sorrow. Not the case for Squirrelly. Something about his timidness and his trembling nervousness actually angered those forced into daily contact with him. If only they understood the reasons for his behavior, perhaps they could forgive his freakish nature. Perhaps, they would be willing to overlook – or even to help him overcome – these annoying behaviors.

Many of Squirrelly’s worse points stemmed from a diagnosed case of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The rest were the result of being raised by an overbearing single mother.

As a child, Cecil was told repeatedly by his mother that he was an inconvenience and a nuisance. She sighed and huffed audibly as she stomped around the child and his toys, complaining, “You are always under foot!” His older sister was even less subtle, simply pushing him out of her path.
Cecil’s mother scolded him for eavesdropping on her conversations with friends. Yet, on other occasions, she quizzed him about the details of discussions he was not privy to and punish him for supplying the wrong answers.

He grew up feeling worthless and awkward. The curvature of his spine – from an early bout with scoliosis – certainly did not help his situation either. With his unusual posture, Cecil found it easier to take smaller strides as he walked. He learned to quicken his pace if he wanted to keep up with an impatient sister on the walks to school.

As his obsessive-compulsive disorder surfaced, Cecil began to keep track of things … almost everything. He feared being quizzed and giving the wrong answer. He went out of his way to avoid troubling or displeasing others by asking questions, bumping into them, or staring too long with – as his mother described them – black soulless eyes.

Coworker and acquaintances of Squirrelly knew nothing of young Cecil’s childhood. They knew only of his quirky, bothersome habits now.
And, of course, they knew of his mail-order bride. Rumors around the office proclaimed that his church arranged to have a foreign wife shipped over from Vietnam or Korea or “somewhere over there.” Folks figured that he couldn’t find anyone in the U.S. that would have anything to do with him, so his church must have bought him a wife. In exchange, she could become an American citizen. The gossip mill also claimed that Cecil, Jr. was an attempt to ensure the imported wife could stay in this country.

Truth be known, Cecil was always painfully shy and never dated. He met a nice young lady a church function for single congregants. She had arrived on these shores over a year before, brought here by missionaries from Cecil’s church. They taught her the ways of Christianity and saved her from an abusive home in a tiny village in Thailand. The young woman was in the process of obtaining her permanent resident status when she me Cecil. She found him to be the quietest, most tender and kindest man she had ever known. The two hit it off immediately and married quickly. Within the first year of marriage, the new bride discovered that she was expecting.

No, none who met Squirrelly could be bothered with these details anymore than they could bothered with him now.