Barely Legal

I scored a major triumph today - I managed to find hanging file folders that fit a rolling file cabinet a friend gave me.

Pretty sad, right? Other people are out solving crimes, curing diseases, creating beauty, while I search for office supplies.

I took this cabinet on good faith, "I could sure use something like that!" What with my seemingly unending IRS battle, the paperwork has been piling up all over the place.

Who knew that "legal size" is unheard of outside of the U.S.A.? And I thought I was something of an office supply and filing expert. How many ridiculous tests have I taken at temp agencies to prove my ability to put the letter D after C? Hell, I wrote a song called "File Clerk Blues" way back when! Sad to think I wouldn't even be qualified to do my first day job any more...

Because in all of the office supply stores in France, there is no "legal size". But before I could determine that, I had to learn what you call a hanging folder. Dossier suspendu! I love the French language.

After exhausting the French possibilities, I ended up on a UK website looking for the right size dossier suspendu or whatever they're called by the British. Again, no "legal size" - just a system of A4, A3 etc that confounds me. I kept running across this type of folder called "foolscap" and I imagined some character out of Dickens blowing dust off odd parchment folders made of the bone from a sheeps skull.

I finally did a search on the internet for the meaning of "foolscap" and whether "legal size" translates into any other kind of folder in any land. I would love the job, if there was one, of the person who reads the Google queries, those desperate pleas for some kind of understanding of the most basic elements of human life. I know from being able to see my website statistics that more than one person out there comes to my site by searching "how to have sex in the ass" - and that query's probably on the sophisticated side, in the grand scheme of Google quests.

It turned out that "foolscap" was supposedly the same size as the US legal size so I took the plunge and ordered.

The order arrived today and I was skeptical, but they are exactly the right size. Foolscap, dossier suspendu, suspended files. They are glorious! Now I can get back to doing what I do best: putting P after O...