So do you remember that I wrote about the fact that the handle of my
suitcase tore off of it last week? Yeah, well those suitcases are well over
$100 so I decided to try a little redneck engineering on it! Having grown tired
of paying for new ones once or twice a year, I kept the remains of my last dead
suitcase just in case the parts might come in handy. It’s no longer as pretty
or “lady like” as it was but hey, at least it’s unique! What do ya’ think?
Friday afternoon rolled around and it was off at its usual pace. I fully
expected to spend the morning stuck in end-of-the-week meetings, then do a
little paper work, and then probably head for the ranch at about three PM. My
job works like that – I work long hours when needed and when on the road, but
on the rare days when I am actually in the office, I have a lot of flexibility
with my hours. Well that fine plan vanished at about 830AM when I received a
call from a large customer of ours in the Philadelphia area whose entire production
was shut down because our instrument had failed. He was in a world of trouble
and didn’t care what it cost, but he
needed someone there to fix it, and it needed to be done over the weekend. So
instead of sitting around sucking up coffee and converting Oxygen into less
desirable gasses at a leisurely rate, I found myself working at a frantic pace
to get a quote out, make sure we had the parts that the customer needed, arrange
for getting a purchase order, and then set up the trip. In my haste to do so
many things at once, I came real close to accidently setting up the flight to
fly into a city six hours away from my customer, but more or less by accident I
caught my mistake at the last second. I’d like to say that my mistake surprised
me, but the truth is that in my case “multitasking” means screwing up multiple
things at once. If you want a job done correctly and very thoroughly, give it
to me. If you want things screwed up royally, go ahead and give me multiple things
to do at once and then stand back and watch the chaos unfold.
That night I went home and made my apologies to my family that I wasn’t
going to be there over the weekend after all. My wife just nodded, because she
and I have the same outlook on employment – you do whatever it takes to stay employed, because with no income, life
would be a lot harder on all of us.
My daughter however decided to give me little hell.
“So we aren’t going for a bike ride this weekend then?” she asked. Last
weekend was her 11th birthday and we had gotten her her first “grown-up”
bike, because she had been asking me for months if she could ride with me when
I am trying to get some exercise, but her itty bitty children’s bike just wasn’t
up to the task.
“No sweetheart, I’ve gotta get on an airplane.”
“How come it can’t wait for Monday?”
“Because they can’t do their job if our instrument doesn’t work, and
the man is desperate to have it fixed in a hurry. I’m sorry little one, but I
don’t have any choice.” I told her while I hugged her. “If I want to feed us, I
have to go where they need me, when they need me.”
“Well why don’t you get another job then?” she asked. At this point I
realized that the conversation had just left the “casual” and moved into the “serious”,
so I stopped packing and sat down to talk to her.
“You wanna know the truth?”
“Yeah . . . ,“ she answered kind of hesitantly.
“I can’t get another job, at
least not one that will pay anywhere near
what I earn with this one. If I had to get a job somewhere else, it would
probably pay a quarter to a third of what I earn now, and we would lose our
house and our cars. I might be able to still feed you, but we would lose
everything.”
Of course as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized that I had
screwed up. You don’t tell a child something like that. You don’t put fear into
the little ones that trust you to protect them and think that you are
invincible. A good parent should shield their children and make them feel safe
and secure, and I had just put a crack in that shield. I realized this too late
though, as I had already done the damage. I’ve always been too honest with her
though, and probably haven’t done her any favors with it. She pinned me to the
wall when she was six years old over the women’s clothes that I was always
packing, and after about the tenth trip that she had demanded answers on, I
finally told her the truth because I couldn’t stand the thought of lying to
her. I have regretted that several times
through the years since though, because I really don’t think that I had any
business putting that kind of secret and burden on a six year old. I should
have either lied or just told her that it was none of her business, but hindsight
is 20-20, isn’t it?
“Why can’t you get another job that pays as well but you where you wont
have to travel all of the time?” She asked me, bringing me back out of my wool
gathering.
“Because your daddy was too stupid and poor to get a college degree
little one, and very few companies these days will take you without one.”
“But you got this job!”
“I did, but that was many years ago, and my company was much smaller
and willing to take the risk at the time. If I came looking for a job with them
today, they wouldn’t even bother talking to me because I haven’t got a college
degree. That’s why I tell you over
and over to do well in school – so that you
won’t end up trapped like I am.”
“Why didn’t you go to college then?”
“Because we were very poor and pretty much the only option that I had
was to join the Army.”
“Don’t they have, like loans and school . . . scholar . . . “
“You mean ‘scholarships’?” I asked her with a grin.
“Yeah! That’s it! Didn’t they have scholarships back then?”
“I suppose they did, but I didn’t know anything about them, and as far
as I know, no one in my family had ever even gone to college and knew enough to
even advise me on it.”
I had put enough on her for the day, and I wasn’t about to tell her why
her father had joined the army at 17 years old rather than wait to graduate from high
school, or tell her that no one was going to give a scholarship to a high
school dropout with a GED. I also wasn’t going to try and tell her about alcoholic
fathers that abused their children and their wives. I wasn’t going to tell her
about mothers that took so many pain medications that they were numb and
essentially absent. I wasn’t going to explain to her how someone 17 years old
can be so horribly desperate and in such despair that they absolutely have to
get away right this very moment, with no thought to high school, no thought to
college, and no thought to the future. My daughter has lived her entire life
with parents that adore her and love her and provide for her, and she just doesn’t
need those concepts in her head . . .
“Why don’t you get a degree now?” She asked after a moment. To this, I
just laughed.
“Sweetheart, when the heck would I have time to go to school? I’m never
here. Worse yet, I don’t even know what days I will or wont be here, so there
is no possible way to schedule classes.”
“What about online?”
“I might be able to take some
classes online, but I doubt very much that I can get an entire degree that way.
Even if I could, it would take so long that I’d probably get my four year
degree about the same time that you do.” We both got a laugh at that one,
though she might have laughed harder than I did since it kind of smarted for me.
“I tell you what, you just make sure that you do well in school, and that you
get a degree for both of us OK? That will make me very happy.” I told her. Then
I gave her another hug, and returned to packing my things as she sat there.
“I want to get a degree in art, OK?” she asked. My first thought was
less than kind, and not something that you would say to an eleven year old, but
I bit my tongue.
“Sure – why not?!” I told her with a smile, the whole time thinking
that I hope like hell she gets interested in something a lot more likely to
provide a pay check before she gets to be college age.
That night my five year old was sick and hacking up a lung, so I
brought him into our bed when I was ready to call it a night. This delighted him of course, but it wasn’t terribly
conducive to a good night’s sleep for meas he tossed, turned, and coughed all night long. Eventually I gave up at four
AM and headed downstairs where I made a pot of coffee and then got about 45
minutes of sleep on the couch before heading for the airport as an exhausted
and depressed old man with no college degree, one sick child, and one child who
is sick of having a daddy who is always gone.
A couple of my favorite people live in Philly, and I let them know that
I was going to be there, and so it was that
Sophie and
Linda agreed to meet me
for dinner. (Apparently they have low standards and will associate with just
about anyone, but they’re my friends so what can you do?)
I made about a half
hour drive from the airport to my hotel, where I jumped into the shower and
started trying to remove all of the hair that the male body insists on
providing in great quantities, much to my great irritation. Well, apparently I
got into a bit too much of a hurry as
I just about slit my own wrist with the razor. It’s surprising just how bad a
cut a modern razor can inflict when you get careless with it, and I wasn’t at all amused as I stood there watching the
blood dripping off of my wrist, falling to mix with the torrent of water at the
bottom of the tub, and then making its way to the drain.
My first thought was ‘Gee, at least that blood clotting problem of mine
should come in handy now!’
My second thought was ‘Damn, that hurts quite a bit.’
My third thought was “Holy shit – you have bled long enough, freaking
stop now!’
I kept waiting for it to stop, and waiting, and waiting . . .
After about five minutes, I said 'screw it' and just kept shaving, and it did eventually decide to stop.
I had brought several outfits with me, and decided that I would step
out of my comfort zone and try two new things – pants and pumps. I had bought
these jeans about half a decade ago but never worn them out. I’d bought the
blouse at about the same time, but since I’d never found a skirt that I thought
it went well with, it had also never been worn, so here was my big change to do
both. Just to top it off, I had a cute pair of pumps that I had bought a while
back but also never worn out. I don’t wear pumps because the heels of my feet
tend to lift out of them, leaving me stumbling around on a shoe that is no
longer entirely on my foot, and this problem is compounded when I wear nylons. Well,
since I was wearing pants, I didn’t
have
to wear nylons and so I thought that I might be able to get away with wearing
the pumps – I was wrong.
Walking through
the hotel lobby to my rental car, the heel of my foot lifted out of the shoe,
came down on the
side instead if
inside it, and I damn near fell on my
face. Then, when I got to the King of Prussia mall and made the walk from the
parking lot to the restaurant, the same thing happened again, and
again I almost fell on my face. Yep –
the ultimate in beauty and grace – that’s me buddy, and don’t you forgit it!!
Once inside of the “Rock Bottom” where we had agreed to meet, I looked
around for just a moment before spotting Linda Lewis politely waving at me from
the other side of the bar, and so I picked my way slowly through the crowd to
her. I walked slow and carefully, taking small steps that were not likely to
end up in disaster. My other shoe mishaps had been in front of people that I
didn’t know and didn’t care about, and I didn’t
want to repeat the spectacle in front of someone that I knew and who could
share the tale with people that actually know me. We said our hello’s and
started catching up. I had met Linda a while back and so we were fairly comfortable
pretty quick, and fell into an easy conversation. At some point, she mentioned
that they now had a third roommate, and suddenly I felt like an idiot. I had
invited Sophie and Linda to dinner, but I had totally forgotten that they had a
third roommate now. Wow – that must be an awesome feeling to have both of your
roommates taking off for dinner but you weren’t invited. . . When I realized that I had screwed up, I
encouraged Linda to call her and invite her to join us, but it was a bit too
late at that point and she essentially had no chance in hell to join us. . .
Linda and I had been talking for about twenty minutes when she pointed
toward the door.
“Sophie is here!” She said, waving to her as she had to me.
I looked, but ultimately I had to take Linda’s word for it as I was
wearing contacts that allow me to see up close, but turn everything at a
distance into a blur. That’s right folks, my vanity is so bad that I’d rather
be damn near blind than to wear my glasses. Of course if you have ever taken a
look at my flickr site, you already knew that my vanity was out of control,
didn’t ya’? Anyway, eventually the blur coalesced into Sophie, and we had us a
little hug fest. We spent the next few hours talking about nothing and
everything, and this and that, and sharing our tales. I don’t recall most of
our conversation, though I do recall telling them one of my least flattering
stories from my much younger and dumber days that I won’t repeat right now
because it would triple the size of this blog, and let’s face it, it is already
shaping up to be a long one.
It became evident fairly quickly that Sophie and Linda both knew our
waiter fairly well, as they were joking and laughing, and he had a clue what
drinks they wanted before they ordered them. He was a good waiter – checking on
us from time to time while not becoming a pain in the butt. I’d have to think
that that must be a difficult balance to achieve, but he had it down pat.
Toward the end of the night, Sophie stopped him as he was making one of his “flybys”.
“Would you do us a favor and take a picture?” She asked him.
“Well sure!” he agreed enthusiastically, and so I turned on my camera
and handed it to him, making sure to show him where the trigger switch was. He
took the camera from me, gave us all a shit eating grin, and then turned the
camera around and started taking “selfies” with it! Imagine the nerve! I mean
what kind of egotistical, narcissistic, and self-aggrandizing individual takes
their own damned photograph?! Oh – hold on a sec – scratch that thought . . .
Of course we all laughed like hell before either Sophie or Linda told him
that that was not exactly what we had had in mind.
“We were sort of hoping that you would take a picture of us!”
“OHHH!! Well why didn't ya' say so?!” he said ‘apologetically’ and then was kind enough to take
several photos of us.
Oh, and on the way outta the restaurant? Yeah – I almost tripped on my
own damned shoe again. How the hell DO women walk in pumps without falling on
their faces anyway?!
The same young lady is usually at the US Airways First Class
/ Premium passenger counter and so she has come to know me in both male and
female modes, and has even begun to loosen up a little bit these days as I am
checking in with her. I like this, because I am much more comfortable myself when
others are clearly comfortable with me. 
