Cool! Job Undone

It was August in Phoenix(in terms of limitations...think Green Bay in January, without the piled drifts) and steamy as fuck, though not half like the dreams in which you starred.

A nothing weekend, just waiting to be Saturday night officially so I could sing mawkishly along with Sam Cooke songs. You mail me you’ve moved in with her...I send back some stupid quip that I barely think about as I click out the words. The only summer assignment I never finished: Getting over you.

I like this topic. These have all been great so far.

erika broke me. What is it about the wistful, in these?

Feel another one coming on....

This is not a very good drabble, but I was determined to write one this week.

Summers in high school were always the same. I worked at the library, first as a volunteer, and later, when I was old enough, as a paid employee. I liked listening to the younger kids tell me what they thought about the books they had read and giving them paper ice cream scoop for each book, but my favorite part of the job was getting a big cart of books to shelve. I loved get lost in the stacks, often reading more titles than I was shelving. I found hidden treasures in those stacks and day dreamed my summers away.

Temporary employment is the perfect job for college students. No real committment, jobs can be dropped on a whim for the lure of a day at the pool with a fruity drink. You also learn a lot about yourself, the types of jobs and work environments you like and what you just cannot stand. I worked as a clown for the grand opening of a drug store, I answered the barely ringing phone at a jewelry store, I put security tags on expensive handbags, I folded turtlenecks for a solid eight hours. I moved from place to place like a gypsy just doing my thing and getting a paycheck.

No real committment also meant that I had no real relationships with people. While I was working for the insurance department for a hotel chain, I got the call that my grandmother died. I sat in a ladies' room stall alone and lonely and listened to the hollow echoes of my quiet crying.

These are really good ones. ChiKat, yours made me tear up.

Summer of '93, and the river flooded. Earlier that summer, I'd been living in Omaha with my best friend, and had slunk home when another friend -- god, just 21 -- dropped down dead in my prof's house. She was housesitting while he was in Europe.

We still don't know why.

I was doing inventory in a Montgomery Ward's, and there was no water. The stench from the toilets was incredible. And after a day in the attic warehouse, sans AC, toting bales, lifiting bras, the stench emmanating from me was incredible.

I'd go home and bathe from the pickle barrel we stored water in.

That's what I remember from that summer. Death, shit, cheap bras and pickles.

Man, these are very good drabbles.

Help Wanted

I never had a "summer job." I loafed my way from June to September, spending days on the lawn prepping my tan with baby oil and iodine, rubbing lemon in my hair trying to encourage it to get streaks. Sometimes, Mom needed help watering the vegetable garden or pulling weeds out from between rows of carrots, onions and radishes. Rainy days were spent inside with a good book, curled up in Dad’s easy chair before he came home and kicked me out so he could watch the six o’clock news. I loved that summer job of just being a kid.

Tour Time

A couple of summers, seemed he was always heading out on tour, or off into sessions somewhere.

The prep was always major. Arranging dialysis, no matter the city or country. Negotiating medicine, from Dallas to Berlin. Packing the flash wardrobe for a big tour, the casual stuff for something smaller. Dreading anything that took him back to London, because his wife was there, but hoping if he got sick, it would be in London, because the healthcare was free.

Packing, arranging, praying he'd come back sober and unaddicted, praying he'd come back at all. You could call that a job.

Remember when the intern was under the desk? (100 words)

Christ, he sounds like an overprivileged Yalie lecturing inner-city kids in some sort of resume-padding summer job: If you work for the Man and never question the system, you'll get a slice of the pie.

Never mind that he can't even string together a coherent sentence, let alone convince anyone that he actually gives a damn. It's not like he needs this 'summer job,' with Poppy's connections. Try as he might, he could never screw up so badly that he would ever have to face the consequences, personally.

I get up in disgust before I throw something at the goddamnoisybox.