My dad and us three girls were out on a drive in the desert one time when I was about six years old. We stopped for a moment by a big hill and got out of our Jeep Cherokee to survey the area.
We were only there for a minute or so when my dad suggested that Corinne and I climb up the big hill. We had climbed up only a few yards when I heard the Jeep's engine start. My dad and Annie had climbed back into the Jeep and were now starting to drive away. Corinne and I looked at each other for a moment and then I freaked out.
I was screaming and bawling, running towards the ever distance Jeep as fast as I could go... "Don't leave me!" I yelled through my panicked tears. I was sure my dad was keeping the cutest kid and leaving Corinne and I in the desert to die. I had no idea where we were, no food, no water.
Corinne had been running too, although not quite so panicked as I was. Just as she caught up to me my dad stopped, backed up the Jeep, got out and started laughing hysterically... "You guys thought I'd really leave you here?!" he exclaimed, slapping his knee. "We didn't know" we mumbled through embarrassed/frightened voices. "You crazy kids. Get in let's go."
It took a little while for me to calm down, but I was finally able to laugh at the situation. My mom had always threatened to take us down and sell us on the corner for two cents, so I just figured they'd decided to save the trouble of actually finding a buyer. I'm sure they weren't the only parents who'd thought of that. I foiled their plans by pushing the sympathy button in my dad that day by crying, otherwise, Corinne and I probably would have been goners. I pretty much saved our lives.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Forget Trying to Sell Them...
It's a Hard Knock Life
My sisters and I would periodically go to work with my mom or dad. If we went with Mom, it was only for a short period of time, an hour or so at most, and involved no actual work. Going with Dad meant you were there all day for hard labor.
My mom worked in a doctor's office until I was about 13. We usually just went with her to the office on the rare occasion that she had to stop in to get something or take care of an extra task on her day off.
First we'd occupy ourselves by typing on the typewriter and rummaging through the several desks in the office for highlighters and white-out which we then used on our newly written stories. Once we'd bored ourselves with that, we'd head into the waiting room and through the kid-sized door into the small playroom. The toys weren't that great, mainly for toddler aged kids, but they were enough to keep us busy for a good five minutes. How long can you really move the colored wood beads on the abacus-like toy along the metal tracks?
Most of the time we were there after hours so we had full run of the place. We'd get one of the doctor's rolling stools and take off running down the hall, jump onto the stool stomach first, and glide across the floor Superman style. After tiring from all the physical activity we would make a trip to the breakroom to get a drink from the water cooler. Back then they had the cone-shaped paper cups for the water and I thought they were cool. I actually really liked the papery taste they gave the water. Now the cups on water coolers have a waxy coating so you don't get the extra flavor. I kind of miss it.
My mom was also responsible for making the daily money drop at the bank. Most the time it was after hours, so she'd just put it in the night drop. But, on the days when the bank was open, we'd go through the drive-through where we always got Tootsie Rolls or Dum Dum suckers. We loved going to the bank.
It was usually only once a year during the summer that my sisters and I would go to work with my dad. At the time he was the manager of a heating/air conditioning wholesale store down in Orem. We must have gone there on days when they were closed because there usually wasn't anybody else there. Our purpose was to make some money and helping Dad at work paid pretty well.
We would get to the store early in the morning and start right away on weeding the strip of Fitzer bushes in the front of the building before it got too hot outside. I hated this job. The strip seemed like it was a mile long and it was full of trash and spiders and covered with morning glories. Morning glories were hard enough to pull out anyway, let alone when they were in rock solid clay soil. After a couple of hours Corinne and I would be too hot to carry on and Annie would be throwing a hissy fit... that's when we'd move on to cleaning the inside of the building.
Our main jobs were to dust, sweep and mop the floors, and clean the restrooms. Sweeping and mopping weren't too bad and neither was cleaning the women's restroom. I think there was only one woman who worked there... part time. But, the men's restroom was horrible... Several men who work in a warehouse + one year of no cleaning = Nasty. It was beyond disgusting. The sink literally had a black coating on it and took a good half hour of scrubbing to get it clean. The toilet and urinal were even more atrocious. You can't even dream of the vomit inducing site under that toilet seat. I couldn't believe anyone would actually use a bathroom that gross. I always wondered if the restrooms would ever have been cleaned had we not done it once a year.
The last job we had was to sweep the warehouse. It was a pretty big place, but it was our favorite job. First, we'd sprinkle some sawdust type stuff all over the floor (who knows what it was for) and then we'd sweep around the perimeter of the floor with a small broom and get into all the little nooks and crannies. This was followed by a pass with the large push broom.
Though most of the day was filled with work, we did get to have a little fun. Dad would always buy us a can of soda out of the pop machine and he always took us out to lunch. The year I turned 16 he took me over to the DMV to get my drivers license. At the end of the day when the work was done, we'd play and hide-and-go-seek in the warehouse. You could search for hours in there and never find a soul. My dad also gave us rides on the hand truck. It was always scary, but very exciting. I'd have a white-knuckle grip on the sides of the dolly while he ran around the warehouse doing crazy figure eights at 50 mph. I was sure at any moment I was going to launch off the front of that thing into a bin full of duct elbows.
My dad really instilled a good work ethic in us. He would never let us waste time lounging around and he wouldn't tolerate us continually asking what to do next. He was like any real employer who expects you to know what your job is and to do it well. I remember him teaching us how to clean the bathroom and telling us to do it "systematically" so that we didn't miss any spots. I still think of that whenever I clean a mirror or vacuum the carpet.
On one occasion back at home my dad asked us to come outside to help weed the yard. Annie asked why we had to help and my dad's answer was so that we "could learn how to work." Annie replied that she "already knew how" and I agreed. It was a dumb notion to us that somebody wouldn't know how to work. Pulling weeds and doing housework was easy. It was common knowledge as far as we were concerned. It wasn't until I got out into the real world that I realized that the majority of people don't know how to work. They don't know how to do simple everyday tasks and they don't care if they do a good job or not. I appreciate my parents making us work and making us learn how to do things for ourselves. Even Annie, who fought tooth and nail the whole way and who I was sure would become a bag lady living in a trash can, ended up ok. I hope I can be just as mean to my kids someday.
The Wheels on the Bus
My mom worked up in the Holladay area of Salt Lake and we thought it'd be fun to ride the bus up and have lunch with her one day. Corinne and I were going to go, along with her friend, Allison, because her mom worked with our mom at the same place. So it was me, Corinne and Allison together on the bus. We had to take two buses in order to get up to Holladay: the 43 Bluffdale bus from Riverton and then another bus that we switched to in Taylorsville that dropped us off across the street from the building where our moms worked. We made it up to Holladay that day on time and had a nice lunch.
When it was time to go, we said "goodbye" to our moms and walked across the street to the bus stop. A few moments later a bus pulled up and Corinne and Allison started to get on. "I don't think this is the right bus," I said, "it has the wrong name on the front." "Just get on it's the right one," they said. I argued for a moment and then realizing they were going to leave me there, I reluctantly got on.
Immediately the bus made a right hand turn and started heading north, the opposite direction of where we needed to go. "You guys we're going the wrong way..." I argued. "Stop your whining, it's probably going to turn again soon," they snapped, and continued with their giggling and chatter. I watched the city fly by as we got further and further away from home. It was a good 15 to 20 minutes before Corinne and Allison admitted I was right. We pulled the cord and got off the bus at a gas station in Sugarhouse. Neither of them had brought any extra money so we didn't have enough to go back the way we came and make it home. We were forced to use my money on the pay phone to call our moms to come get us.
Let this be a lesson to any of you who may ever question me. I am always right. Just remember that....
Thursday, June 26, 2008
What would you do for a Klondike bar?
We were always up for going out to get icecream. It could have been the fancy icecream parlor a few cities away or a soft serve cone from the McDonalds down the street... we weren't picky.
One evening my dad was filling us in on the protocol in case of a fire. He asked if we thought we could get him out of the house if he was unconscious. We thought for sure we'd be able to do it and Dad made us a bet, just to make things interesting. He laid down at the bottom of the stairs in the family room and said that if we could drag him up the stairs, he'd take us out to get icecream. I would guess that Corinne was 12, I was 10 and Annie was 8 at the time. Annie and I each took a leg and Corinne grabbed my dad's arms. We pushed and pulled Dad's 215 pounds of dead weight with all our might and he just laid there limp as a rag doll. He didn't move an inch. "Come on you big bunch of wusses!" he'd say and we'd tell him that "unconscious people don't talk!" We tried and tried, probably for a good 15 minutes or more. Nothing. We finally came to terms that we wouldn't be getting any icecream that night. Dad came to terms that if he were to become unconscious in a house fire, he'd be toast.
What are you... a pack of wild animals?
At home during dinner we'd take turns spelling things like "ketchup" or "casserole." At restaurants we didn't need to bother with things like that, we had more interesting things to keep our attention. Restaurants always have extra things on their tables that aren't normally on the table at home... like straws. The straw papers always had to be blown at someone. Even now it's almost painful for me to just pull off the paper and set it nicely on the table like a civilized person. One time we were at Sizzler and I tried to blow a straw at my dad. It completely missed him and flew over his shoulder to the booth behind him. Luckily the couple who were sitting there happened to be busy over at the salad bar, so we were spared the humiliation of getting caught.
Restaurants also often have small baskets of crackers on the table. We were at a Chinese place on one occasion and Corinne thought it'd be funny to try and eat all the crackers before our waitress came back. She had a couple packets worth of crackers shoved in her mouth before my mom quickly shut down the operation... she "wasn't paying for a nice dinner so we could get filled up on crackers!"
Another common addition to the restaurant table is a carafe of water. Once we were at Village Inn and Corinne made a bet that she could drink the whole carafe herself in less than two minutes. She drank glass after glass or water, slugging it down in a nail biting race against time. She actually won that bet but didn't feel too good afterwards. I think she only won $2 so I'm not sure it was worth the pain.
For some reason my parents never took leftovers home from restaurants. For years, whenever I was unable to finish all of my delicious meal, I was saddened by the fact that the extras wouldn't be coming home with me. I knew that other people took theirs home, but my parents didn't, so we didn't either. I thought maybe it was a tacky thing to do. I never actually asked if I could take my leftovers home, I guess I just assumed the worst. I have since realized the beauty of the "doggie bag" and am a dedicated fan.
Monday, June 16, 2008
My List of Things That Must Go
Ok so for all of you who listen to Radio from Hell on X96 you'll recognize this as a segment that they do on a weekly basis. I have submitted a couple small lists of things that bug me, but they haven't read them yet and I'm not sure if they ever will so I'm just going to air my frustrations here...
1. Dancing sign holders: There are two cell phone companies here in Layton who employ teenagers to hold signs out on the sidewalk to draw attention to their businesses. While I'm not opposed to this, I am opposed to their crazy antics. There used to be just one sign holder that I see when I come home from work in the evening. He wears this big black afro wig and used to wear the scary face mask from the movie "Scream"-- don't ask me why. Not only does he wear this stupid getup, he also hops/dances around. I daydream about egging him as I drive by. Then, a second one showed up less than a mile down the street. Believe it or not, the second one was worse. It took me several days to figure out what his sign even said because he would wiggle the sign and shimmy his hips from side to side at an alarming rate. I'm surprised his limbs haven't flown off. He keeps this up for hours at a time with no sign of slowing. It's incredible. He's got to be on meth or something. So, I thought that was as bad as it could get.... wrong. There is a third sign holder that has joined the club. Also within the same mile as the other two. He chooses to hold his sign on the corner of the intersection so I have to sit there and see him and his dumb sign for the duration of the stop light. I still haven't been able to make out what the third guy's sign says. He must have rotating handles on his because he spins it around and does 360 jumps in the air and plays his like a guitar. I think he was a fire baton twirler in a previous life. It's ridiculous. One of these days I'm going to snap and jump out of my car, grab him by his shirt and shake him back and forth and say "JUST HOLD THE DAMN SIGN!"
2. Using the word "bunching" when referring to heavy traffic. It sounds like a maxi pad commercial. It grosses me out.
3. Spiders in the bathroom. Why do they always have to be there when I'm just waking up in the morning? I can't handle a battle with a big ugly spider when I'm naked and barefoot getting into the shower. I don't like to do battle when I'm fully armed with shoes and clear vision! It's not fair to pick on me when the only defense I have is morning breath. How do those things get in there anyway? Are they climbing up the drain?
4. Low Rise Jeans: Is it too much to ask for a pair of jeans that doesn't show my butt crack when I bend over? I'm not asking for tapered mommy jeans that go up to my arm pits, just something reasonable!
5. Hocking a loogey. I know that everybody has times where they need to get rid of all that phlegm in their throats, but do you really need to do it in public? To me the sound is worse than that of someone vomiting. Please go somewhere where I can't see or hear you!
7th Grade (aka Hell)
I was scared to death of going to middle school. Everything seemed so big... the kids, the building, my schedule. My locker was a huge phobia. All those teen movies show the nerdy kids getting shoved into them. I was sure that was going to happen to me. I was afraid somebody would grease my locker and I wouldn't be able to open it. I was afraid I'd forget my combination or keep going past the number I needed and be standing there in the hallway for hours trying to open it... in fact I had actual recurring nightmares for years about that one.
My middle school was so crowded that I could barely move going down the halls. I wasn't very tall at the time and had trouble seeing where I was going, let alone the room numbers, with all the throngs of students that surrounded me.
The first day of school I was nervous, REALLY nervous- the kind of nervous where you can't eat anything because you're sure you'll puke if you do. Corinne was in 9th grade and luckily she was nice enough to find someone to show me where homeroom was the first day. She had no idea how grateful I was. The rest of the day went pretty smoothly as I recall. I was happy to find that our lockers were only about three feet high, making it impossible for me to be shoved into one. I also had a different kind of latch on mine that made it ungreasable. I still had the lingering fear of forgetting my combination, but that never actually happened.
The second day of school didn't go so well. Even though the first day had gone OK, I was still extremely nervous. I had almost made it to my homeroom that morning when they called my name over the intercom to come to the front office. When I finally got there after fighting my way through the crowds, the office lady handed me a finished homework assignment that I had apparently dropped in the hall somewhere. Shortly after leaving the office the tardy bell rang... and the panic set in. I pulled out my map of the school and tried to find my way to homeroom again. I got to the spot where the room was supposed to be according to the map but to my horror, it wasn't there. I began pacing up and down the hall, sweat beading on my forehead, stomach turning. Where was it?! It had to be there somewhere! Finally I got up my nerve and asked a couple girls who were still out in the hall (probably some hooligans who were sure to beat me up) if they knew where the room was. Luckily they took pity on me and didn't point me in the wrong direction. The classroom was right where it was supposed to be, but the door was in the other hallway around the corner. I felt like an idiot. I hurried into class and sat there the entire time dreading the next bell. As the minutes ticked by I felt sicker and sicker. When the bell finally rang I just couldn't take it anymore and went to the office. I told them I didn't feel good and called my mom to come get me.
For the next two days I stayed home sick. I was terrified. I spent two days working myself up even more, sure that terrible things would happen to me if I went to school. I don't know exactly what I was afraid of. I was always the good kid and didn't want to let on that I was anything less than perfect I guess. I was scared of being tardy, I was scared of getting in trouble, I was scared I wouldn't fit in, I was scared of change.
On the third day my mom finally forced me to go back to school. Everything went fine from that day on and I was just the typical nerdy 7th grader. There was something good that came from all that drama. I have never since been nervous or scared about starting a new school or a new job. I know that my worst fears are never rational depictions of what will actually happen. I realized I'm a smart, capable person and that I can do anything just as good or better than the next guy. Worrying about things doesn't help at all and most of the time it is destructive. I can roll with the punches and take things as they come. Change is exciting and I love the mystery it brings.
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