Now, I am going to be honest here, and say that with the way that things are in my life right now, I really don't feel like relating too much of the humorous events of the store. But at the same time, I think that I would eventually be disappointed if I started getting away from a chronological narrative. So, crazy people of the store it is!

I think that it would be most appropriate to start describing the people that I work with in the produce department. My boss is, what seems to me, crazily in love with his job. Or maybe it is himself that he is so in love with, I don't know. But in my first few days there, he treated me to a long discourse about how he is the youngest produce manager in the company, a status that he has enjoyed for a few years it would seem, and all about the various achievements of his produce career. He spoke at length on his numerous traits that make him into the ideal produce manager, and all the ins and outs of what it will take him to make it to the next higher position. I have since found that he had apparently practiced that speech to some length, as I have now heard it several times, indeed if I ever feel the need to take a break for a few minutes, I have learned the types of things that need to be said to launch him back into the speech again, thus giving me a good 7-8 minutes of rest while I listen, once again, to his list of achievements.

The next man down the proverbial totem pole coincidentally shares the same first name as the manager, with a notably difference in last names, as his last name is Outhouse. He is a most memorable character who has a tendency to start a conversation with one person, walk away from that person and then finish the conversation with someone completely different. I must say that this took some getting used to. Because to the second person it seems that he walks up to them and randomly starts a conversation in the very middle. And all the while he has the gall to look at you like you are retarded if he has to stop and explain what it is that he is talking about. But, he is overall one of my favorite people to work with, as he provides endless entertainment, as you try to figure out what the heck he is talking about.

The next guy is simply a really nice guy. The only thing that I find to be odd about him is that he is dating a girl from the deli, the girl that most people in the store call Godzilla. But, more on that at a later time.

Then we have the gangly white kid. The one who at 22 years of age is missing most of his teeth. In most cases I would see the missing teeth and assume that it was a product of drug abuse. However, after spending a bit of time with this fellow, I actually believe his story of too much mountain dew. And then on top of that I kinda think that he probably does not own a toothbrush, nor has he for a very, very long time. If ever. He is really just a myriad of problems. My first day on the job I had to threaten this guy with a sexual harassment lawsuit, just to get him to stop talking to me about the problems that he was having with his genitals. Yeah. First day. It wasn't like I had known him for a few years, and so he thought that he could confide in me, no no. He just told everyone about it. Work mates, managers, random people delivering stuff to the store, and then best of all, customers. Overall I am really surprised that people still shop there.

The last person in the produce department, at least aside from myself, is only odd in that he lets his wife beat him. She will even come up to the store, and follow him around hitting him. One day after I had worked there a few weeks he came up to me and asked me if it was normal for a wife to threaten her husband with a butcher knife. And despite all that he still talks very highly of her.

 

All told, October and November were rather uneventful months. At least they were uneventful in the grand scheme of how our lives had been going up to that point. December, however, was back to, umm, "normal" if you will. I related in an earlier post the fact that I got a job with vending company. Well, in early December I tried to lift too many sodas. And my back gave out. So, my employers asked me to take a few weeks off to let my back heal up properly. So, as it turns out that was code for you don't have a job here anymore. Because after a few weeks had passed I called them to tell them that my back seemed to be doing well again, and they didn't answer their phones. And they didn't return my calls. In fact, I still haven't heard back from them. And it has been a year. Oh well. But, really the worst part of December was Christmas. To be honest, Christmas always kinda depresses me anyways. I am not really sure why that is. But I do know that Christmas that year was the very worst. To me, the best part about Christmas is seeing the looks on people's faces as they open a present that I bought them. It really is true that it is better to give than to receive. The problem with that is that you kinda need money to buy people those presents. And we didn't have any money. So, we didn't get anyone any presents. But, people still got us presents. So, this just multiplies the bad feelings, because we were feeling so guilty about not getting anyone presents, and feeling guilty about being so selfish as to accept the gifts that we were given. Which, in all reality, is a point that I am fairly confused about. I know that I prefer to give gifts rather than receive them. I assume that most people feel about the same on that point. So, I have a hard time deciding if I feel more guilty about going ahead and taking the gifts, or if it would be better to not get any at all. Overall I feel like I am, in a weird kind of way, being somehow less selfish by accepting the gifts. Then again, I am probably just thinking way too far into this whole thing. Anyways, since last December we have come across the idea of making favorite desserts for birthdays, in addition to the normal cake. This seems to work really well for the adults in our family, but not so well for the toddlers and babies. We pretty much decided that once we actually have money again, we are going to try to buy really nice presents for all of our nieces and nephews. In a weird way I think that not feeling like we were in a place to be giving stuff away is probably one of the hardest things about this time in my life. I have always liked to help people and do things for them, but I feel like I am crippled in a sense right now. I feel like one of the things that gave us the greatest joy in life is now something that is for the more privileged in life, those who have this little thing called money.

Now. please understand that I really don't mean any disrespect at all to my parents. It is just that when I moved out at eighteen to get married to my lovely wife, well I never thought that I would ever be moving back in with them. So over all the move represented what I viewed to be a huge step back in my life. During the six or so months that we lived with them, we got on their nerves a lot just as they got on ours. Maybe two weeks after we had settled in there, I was home on a saturday and heard a knock on the door. I thought it was probably a member of our church, being as my folks are very active members, as are my wife and I. I opened the door to find that no, it wasn't someone from church. It was the repo-man, come to take our Dodge Neon. Having just one car when you are used to two is annoying, but not necessarily disabling. Having no car is disabling. That is, until your gracious parents allow you to use one of their cars. Now, this was in September of '07, and around that time I finally landed a job. It was for a vending company, that was just starting up. I was their one and only driver at the time, and they were very understanding of the position that we were in, what with not having a reliable mode of transportation and all. After some deliberation my new employers decided that they would be ok with me parking their truck at my parents house. That worked out pretty well, but I would still sometimes borrow one of my parents cars to drive various places, mostly to my bosses' house to pick up my checks and whatnot. On one such trip, I was heading out to their house, and a drunk driver t-boned me in my parents van. He was making an illegal left turn out of a right turn only lane. The impact sent the van fishtailing, and eventually I spun out of control into the oncoming lanes, and back into my lane again. At this point in my story telling, I feel that I need to point out that in all of these things that had been happening, we have been able to see God's protection and care in a very real way. We have seen it again and again, in this case, two points are the most obvious to me. One is that being as I am slightly retarded, I wasn't wearing a seatbelt that night, and vans don't have the best reputation when it comes to flipping over. In my time in the police academy, I have seen several examples of what happens to people who are thrown from a rolling vehicle, and none of them have been nice at all. The other thing was that at around eight thirty in the evening on a fairly busy roadway, there weren't any cars in the opposing traffic lanes. As to what happened next? Well. that is going to have to wait for yet another post.