the old-school guestbook archives
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the long road back to high school ~ October 22, 2003 - 2:38 a.m. I actually just crossed something like five things off my to-do list. oooh, it feels good. coming back to the land of the living. today I went to this chi-chi (and not very good) restaurant downtown to fill out an app, and after I read the attached letters, decided not to fill out the app at all. the first one was a curt little snippet about their expectations for employees, and the second was a dense and wordy pageful of stuff they wanted you to sign off on, including the possibility of a criminal records check and a pre-employment drug screen. hello, people? I want to wait tables, not drive a train. I walked out, laughing. kept the app as a souvenir. but, luckily, that place was just a couple of blocks from edwardo's-- and I'd decided it was time. edwardo's is where I had my first job, in high school. I started there answering the phones when I was seventeen, and over the next three years worked my way up to waitstaff, passing through just about every other position on the way. I have edwardo's to thank for every waitressing job I've ever had. and that job meant a lot to me, at the time. my adolescence was a vivid nightmare, and I very nearly flunked out of high school-- mainly for not showing up, and sleeping through my classes when I did. at a time in my life when I was screwing everything else up, I was damn good at my job. and it was a better job than most kids my age had, at a real restaurant. edwardo's specializes in stuffed pizza. it's a corporate chain, but it's not bad. once upon a time, I loved it so much I had a birthday dinner there. of course, after three years of employee meals, I can't even taste it anymore. I left edwardo's when I left for college at antioch when I was 20. I went back at the age of 24, after quitting my first post-college professional job-- this time to deliver pizzas. and I discovered that delivering pizza was one of the best jobs ever. especially delivering for edwardo's, which has a somewhat upscale clientele and does a lot of corporate business. I was just driving around in my car, listening to NPR and rolling in cash. I made between fifteen and twenty bucks an hour. *loved* that job. left it when I moved to cali. and now I'm back, six years later. I walked in the door and ray was at the counter, totaling his delivery reciepts from lunch. I walked up to the counter and he said "hello, how can I-- oh my god!" you can come give me a hug, I told him. ray's been working there since before I started, thirteen years ago. he's a great guy, heart of gold, carrying a lot of extra weight that hurts him in the romance department, which is hard since his wife left. but he bears up, cracks jokes, he loves his kids and his friends. just one of those genuinely good guys. it turns out the same manager is running the place, too-- so I asked if he needed waitstaff, and he said he could probably set me up quick. I've got to check in on friday. he also told me they need drivers, so when I've got enough money for a car, I can have one of my all-time favorite jobs back. funny, the smell of that place. it's weird how it's just sitting there, all frozen in time while I've gone out and lived this whole life. I'll tell you some edwardo's stories, one of these days. this place, this city, is so swarming with memories for me. it makes me dizzy sometimes. I rode by my old apartment the other day. it's on the fourth floor, so all you can see from the street is a patch of ceiling, but it was a trip to look at it and think-- that used to be my ceiling. and everything that happened in that apartment. and everything. I've been kinda tripping on my life lately. but I'm here, now, and that's what this is about. the past, and the present, and all of it mixed up together. tonight was my meditation night at the shambhala center, and karina wasn't feeling up to it, so I went alone and was chattier than usual at tea-time. went out to the pub after with some folks and laughed a lot. it was nice. see? I can do stuff.
(((rings))) |