In the cold, dark days of winter, I like to count my blessings. When the few hours in the day that I’m not toiling
away in a windowless warehouse are spent sitting on the couch looking out at the snow and wind howling in the dark, I’ve got
to do something positive, lest one more clump of slush seeping into my shoes drives me to the point of stark, raving insanity.
You know, the kind where you run screaming into the nearest travel agency, point to the first poster you see of a beach with
a palm tree and babble, “There. Now. One-way ticket.” even though the image of
your pasty-white, Christmas cookie-bloated body in a swimsuit is enough to summon every cetacean biologist on the planet hungry
to display to the world their sighting of a previously undiscovered species of marine mammal. Did I mention I’m sick to death
of winter? No? How could you tell?
So in order to stave off the madness I remind myself of all of the good things in my life. Good things like the fact
that I live in a nice, warm apartment, and not in a drafty hut made of bark or a shelter of deerskin. Good things like the
fact that when I have to poo, I don’t have to pile on a parka and snowpants and boots and trek to the outhouse, only to have
to take them all off in order to do my business, then put them all back on again to go back to the house. I have a little
room right inside where I can poo, and I don’t have to do it in a pot in a corner and then shove it under the bed or in a
closet or open the door and let all of Mother Nature rampage inside while I throw it in a snowbank. I press a lever and whoosh! away it goes. I want light, I flip a switch. I want to talk to my sister in
Denver,
I pick up the phone. I tell ya, I don’t know how people survived three hundred years ago. Today, if I get the munchies, I
go down to the garage and get in our nice, warm, clean car and drive a half-mile to the nearest convenience store and get
Cheetos. Back then, to satisfy those late-night cravings they had to bundle up and tromp through the drifts and kill something,
hopefully with one shot so it wouldn’t charge them while they were reloading, then gut it and chop it in pieces and cook it
over a fire. And they most certainly did not have aluminum foil to wrap it in for easy clean-up.
If I lived back then I don’t think I’d move more than ten feet from my hearth for the six months of winter we seem
to have every year. Sometime in early October I would start filling my house with chopped wood. By the time the first snow
fell, I would have a small bed tucked right next to the woodstove. At one end would be a huge pile of yarn, and at the other,
a huge pile of books. The rest of the house would be stacked floor to ceiling with wood, except for a narrow path to the pantry,
which would be stacked floor to ceiling with food. (The poo? I’d burn that, too.) There I would stay until six weeks after
the local groundhog saw his shadow or didn’t see his shadow or decided it was just too friggin’ cold to hang out with the
guys in the top hats for a day. And then I’d only venture out far enough to see if the world had come to an end in the interim.
Or to see if Cheetos had been invented yet.
So I’m glad I live now, and not back then. I’m even glad I go to work every day, except for Saturdays and Sundays which
I have off thanks to the tireless labor union leaders for whom I am also thankful. Last week my boss came out to the warehouse
for a meeting, and when the manager with whom he was meeting couldn’t meet with him because he was meeting with someone else,
he had an impromptu meeting with me. And during this meeting, one of the things he asked me was if I liked my job, or if I
was still “just doing it for the money”. (He obviously remembered that during my interview I answered his question “Why do
you work?” with “Because I need money to survive.” Hey. I’m blunt and honest.) I told him that 1.) he had a good memory, and
2.) that I guess I could say that I like my job, since my self-confidence has grown exponentially in the last year and a half
to the point where I no longer collapse at my desk and cry tears of frustration three times a week, and that’s an improvement,
right? Plus there’s all the salad. Everyone in our department teases me every time we go out to lunch because I almost always
order a salad. My boss even checks with me to make sure that the restaurant he picks serves salad. So how could I walk away
from all that?
I’m not sure why he asked, though. It was kind of weird, like he was worried that I’d up and leave. He even asked that
if I could go back in time and take my old mailroom job back, if I would. I told him that was a decision I’d have to sleep
on. For a couple weeks. But I think he knew the answer before he asked. You see, our department is pretty small. One manager
and six employees small, to be exact. And we all get along pretty well, almost like brothers and sisters, but without all
the fighting over the bathroom in the morning. We joke around a lot, and that’s important to me. A job where you can’t laugh
until the boogers fly out your nose is not a job worth keeping.
So I guess I’m going to stick around. How can I leave “my guys”, especially when they gave me such a thoughtful and
lovely Christmas gift? (Flash back to the morning of Friday, December 21st.) My boss and I had worked the 20th
together, trying to keep the flaming trainful of rabid monkeys flinging poo from derailing right in the middle of my cubicle.
I think he was thankful that I had been there, since I’d planned on taking the day off to do my Christmas shopping. So when
he came over on the 21st and the gifts started getting exchanged I felt bad that I had nothing to give, especially
when my two delivery drivers placed a box in front of me and told me to “open it right away, because it’s kinda perishable”.
I slowly undid the tape, and was about to open the box flaps when the drivers giggled. And that kinda weirded me out,
two tall, strong guys giggling and glancing at each other like little boys who’d just gotten away with hiding a toad in their
big sister’s underwear drawer. Of course, that kicked in my paranoid side, and I got a little worried and leaned away from
the box and, with images of spring-loaded-snakes-in-a-fake-can-of-nuts flashing through my mind I asked, “Is it going to explode
or something?” They assured me that it wouldn’t, and to go ahead and open it.
So I did.
Inside the box was a salad spinner.
And inside the salad spinner was a head of lettuce.
Twenty minutes later, when we could finally speak after laughing until our sides hurt, I told them it was the best Christmas gift I’d ever gotten, gag or otherwise.
Blessings, man. Blessings.
If my boss thinks I’m gonna walk away from that, he’s crazy.
