I MISSED MY CALLING

In High School they tested me to see what career I should choose. They recommended I be a preacher. I shit you not, that is what they said. You probably should not drop acid before you do such an evaluation.

HE ALLOWS IT

 Continued from “Return To Living”…

...That is how I came to remove myself from a burned out trailer and rejoined the world of the living. Its August of 004 and now I’ve got an apartment and a job. The kids live just a mile away. I'm back in their lives for the first time in almost two years.  I can walk to work at Subway Sandwiches, two blocks. It pays 6.50 an hour, plus a sandwich a day, and all the cookies I can eat. That’s a major move up from eating dry ramen noodles right out of the pack, although they do make a nice crunchy little snack if you are so inclined. Its an end to eyeballing the chickens that run across the Chester Boyer road right up the way from the old trailer and trying to run over one when I would pass by. Dinner. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Out at the trailer I did do a little work. An occasional odd job and a couple tile jobs where I didn’t charge near enough. I had a guy’s lot I mowed from time to time. Perhaps my most steady job, that I kept for about 6 months was as a sampler at the grocery store. You’ve seen them; usually little old ladies with a booth set up, sampling little cups filled with the latest Ritz wheat cracker, and maybe she has some peanut butter or a slice of the California Happy Cow cheese to go with it.

Having been a chef for 30 years, it felt a little like being in the old chef’s graveyard, or on Lumpfish Row haha,  but for 3 days a week it let me get out of the trailer and engage with human beings and talk to strangers about food. I had fun. I’m good at being a loner and isolating myself, which I had done at the trailer. But I love people. I love talking to them. It makes me happy to see them. And I was probably the best food sampler ever. Not probably. I WAS. The lady I worked for told me so. At Thanksgiving I sold more Spiral sliced hams than anyone in the nation. I had women lined up around the block to buy a ham. I got a bonus!

Its because I’m loud. And when called upon have no problem calling attention to myself. I remember at  Kroger one day-- I don’t remember what I was selling-- a woman popped her head out from an aisle about 4 rows down.
“Steve Bulletholes?” she says.
“YES!” says I.
And she starts walking toward me. I don’t recognize her at all until she is about ten feet away. I hadn’t seen her in about 5 years.
“Well, I’ll be,  my old friend Terri! How are you Terri!” I say.
“I’m fine. How are you Steve?”
“I’m good. But I have to ask you. How did you know it was me from thirty feet away?”
She says “Steve, I knew it was you when I walked in the front door. Don’t you not have an inside voice?”
And we both just laughed. Dumb question.

Then one day the display lady brought me a chef’s hat to wear. I told her I was not going to wear a chefs hat to sell anything at a grocery store display. It was humiliating enough to be a chef reduced to this, but I had to draw the line somewhere.
“You’re my best guy” she pleaded.
“Not going to happen.”
"Then I have to let you go"
"Fine"

Funny, how you start out to write one thing and something else just falls out. This is what I was supposed to write:

I had the apartment and the Subway job for about three months. But I was still spending a good portion of my paycheck on dope. And I don’t mean pot. I mean serious adult dope that ruins lives dope. And after about 3 months I was far enough behind on the rent that on the 5^th of December I had to go to my apartment manager and tell them they may as well start the eviction process. I still owed for November and didn't have a red cent to give them. Whatever break I’d gotten getting out of that trailer, I had  blown it . And then I had to go to the Ex Mrs Bullets.

She was pretty calm. She said “C’mon, I’m going to take you down to Kelly Girls and they will find you another job.
I said “Kelly Girls? That’s like office work, right? I talk too loud and laugh too hard to work in an office”.
But like before I just did what she said.
We got down to Kelly and the manger, Liz, said “We don’t do walk ins, but I can schedule you for an interview tomorrow morning”. An interview was set for 9AM the next morning.
I worked my shift at Subway, and sometime during the night I got cold feet. I can’t work for Kelly. I don’t know anything about office work. And the next morning I called Liz at Kelly.
“Liz, I ended up having to work this morning. I’m not going to be able to make it in” I lied.
“OK Steve. Would you like to reschedule? And I want you to know if you reschedule, and cancel again, then I cant reschedule another one. Ever”
It was a cusp. I hadn’t trusted anything I’d done in years. But someone was willing to tell me what to do, and I guess I could trust that.
“Sure!  Let’s do tomorrow!”
And I made it to the interview. I could tell Liz liked me. That is always a good thing, when someone likes you. I think part of why she liked me was something I learned at Subway. That it is a good thing for people think YOU LIKE THEM. Smile, say hello, be pleased to meet them.

I told her that I needed a job within two miles of my residence because of transportation issues. This was on Friday 12/10/2004. She called that afternoon. She had a job at the airport. “Too far” I told her.
An hour went by. She called again.
“I have a job at 4510 Blue Jay Way. Its in your zip code. Can you be there Monday morning to interview?”

So duly I arrived Monday morning. Talked with the manager. He said they did communication systems for the airlines industry.
‘I wont have to talk to pilots, and talk them down when something goes wrong up there, will I?” I asked.
“No Steve, we don’t do much of that around here.”
I could tell he had a great sense of humor and he liked me. I liked him. Liz called that afternoon. I started the next morning at 8:00 making 12.50 an hour.

EPILOGUE

I started the next morning at 8:00 making 12.50 an hour. Double my wage at Subway. It was a Tuesday, the 14^th of the month. I managed to get 40 hours in by Friday. I turned in my time, and on Monday the 21^st I got my check. Apparently, Kelly is fast getting you paid. Between that and the check I’d received from Subway on Friday I paid rent in full.
Paid in full.
I’m not real good at saying it, but Someone was sure looking out for me. Through all of this, including those darker days at the trailer, Someone was looking out.  I continued to work both jobs for a few months. It was quite a learning curve between using computers and learning office etiquette. Around May of 2005 the company offered me a job as a full time regular employee. It’s a large corporation with a top-notch benefits package I was no longer the best Kelly Girl ever. (That’s what Liz called me).
And I’m still there now.
Sixteen years later, and I'm still there now. 
Believe it or not but I still talk too loud and laugh too hard. But some people in the company will call me just to hear me say "Good Morning". I give the best good morning in the business.

Its amazing what can happen if you follow some instructions. Learn to say OK, you're right. One thing I think I’ve learned about all this is that we seem to continually mess up Gods plan. God doesn’t always plan it, any more than we plan for the pooch to shit on the living room floor or chew up a new pair of shoes. But He allows it, and then goes to work when you let Him. He uses it, and we learn to use it too. It can become our ministry.

It would be a few more years before I finally quit doing dope. But that is a whole ‘nother story.

See the chef on the pizza box?
Thats the ultimate degradation right there. Being the model for a pizza box cover.
But a mans gonna do what he has to do!

RETURN TO THE LAND OF THE LIVING

I lived for 18 months in a  burned out trailer. Like my son says, I just kinda threw in the towel. Fell out of love with being a chef and got chewed up and spit out trying to be a tilesetter for a few years. It was excruciating, and by the time I got to that trailer with no electricity and no plumbing I didn’t care if I ever worked again. And somehow in Gods good plan, the trailer and Arnold blessed me with blessings that extend to the present.
(follow linky's)

But this part of the story is about how I got OUT of the trailer. Its quite simple really.
I let someone tell me what to do.
My ex wife came out there one day and said “You cant do this. You got two kids that need you. What do we have to do to get you to re-engage?”. She may not have been as pleasant about it as all that. But when she decides the heavens and earth must move, the heavens and earth shall move
I told her I had no drivers license, no social security card, no birth certificate, no prospects, a car that didn’t hardly run, and no telling how many warrants out for my arrest.
I said "Frankly, I have never heard of anyone being quite as lame as I am right now."
When I look back, that right there may have been the finest thing I have ever said.

Well, the first thing we did was go downtown. She pretended to be my sister so that we could get a copy of my birth certificate. We went to the post office and I filled out a voters registration card. With a Birth Certificate and a voters registration you can get a Texas ID Card. I could not get a drivers license. Wouldn’t you know that my license had been suspended for some time? A result of the stack of registration, inspection and no insurance tickets I had piled up.

So when she dropped me off at the trailer, she said she would be back in a few days and we could go get an ID Card. I got out of the car, and the wind was blowing about 40 miles an hour. As she pulled away, my birth certificate blew out of my hand, and I had to chase it a half mile down the railroad tracks. If I’d lost that certificate she would have skinned me alive.

So 3 days later and here she is. We go get me an ID. Then she takes me to her neighborhood, where the kids live. “Your going to find a job today” she says. We went to the grocery, where I applied. We went to an MRI Imaging place, where I applied. We went to an IHOP, where I didn’t want to, but I applied because that’s what she told me to do. I was wanting to ask how I was going to get to these jobs, my burned out trailer being 15 miles away, but figured I'd just follow instructions for now.

Then we went to Subway Sandwich shop. I walked in and found the manager. I said “I was a chef for 25 years, and I swore I would never work food service again, so…HERE I AM!”
She said “Can you close?”
“Yes ma’am, I’m the best closer in the business. You’ll walk in in the morning and wonder why your job just got easier, and your coffee suddenly started tasting sweeter.”
She hired me on the spot.
But the ex Mrs Bulletholes, she wasn’t done. We went across the street to an apartment complex. It was like the cheapest in the city.
She said “Go in there and rent an apartment”
“But I don’t have a deposit. And working at Subway isn’t enough money to rent an apartment.”
“Tell them you do tile too”
“But...” and I started to say my car doesn’t run good enough to do tile, but by the look on her face I changed my mind and just said “OK”
(As an aside here, let me say there are three thing I’ve found to be very helpful things to say in any given situation: “Youre Right”, “I’m Sorry” and “OK”. There's a fourth one too, but it takes some practice knowing when to say it, and you don’t really say it out loud. It is “SO WHAT?” and you say it to yourself.)
So I went in and schmoozzed the nice apartment lady and walked out with a lease in my hand, based on having a job I hadn’t actually, you know, started yet. 

That is how I came to remove myself from living in a burned out trailer and rejoined the world of the living. After almost two years I would be able to see the kids regular again. But that’s only half the story. Its difficult to keep an apartment on Subway Sandwich wages, especially if you are doing dope. And despite bankruptcies, foreclosures, divorces, evictions, being a deadbeat dad, the degrading of basic moral fiber, and 18 months of living in a burned out trailer, I was still doing dope.

To be continued...

A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY REPEATING?

 

Deceased Pope Formosus was impeached by Pope Stephen the 6th and the Catholic Church in 897. Formosus body was exhumed; he was dressed in the papal vestments, seated on a throne and he stood trial, dead as a doornail. He was found guilty of being unworthy of the office.
The damnatio memoriae (erased history) was applied to Formosus, all his measures and acts were annulled, and the orders conferred by him were declared invalid. The papal vestments were torn from his body, the three fingers from his right hand he had used in blessings were cut off, and the corpse was thrown into the Tiber, later to be retrieved by a monk.
Following the death of Stephen VI, Formosus' body was reinterred in St Peter's Basilica and further trials of this nature against deceased persons were banned