You’re obviously sick with something. Why else would you spend a lovely summer day reading an alt-weekly newspaper? I know this is the Reader Weekly’s annual “Summer in the Northland” issue (Advertisers drop their panties for theme issues!), but there must be something you can do outside. Isn’t there a group of high school girls holding a car wash fundraiser somewhere? You know at least a few of those girls will be wearing bikini tops.
Oh, right! I’m supposed to be writing about my favorite summer memory from Duluth. It’s not exactly easy. I’m what you locals would call a “goddamn carpetbagger”, so I’ve only spent four summers in the Northland, and they were college summers so I barely remember anything. Every year I’d leave my last class, drink a large bottle of something and blackout for three months. There were brief flashes of coherence – sitting on the roof and chucking bottles into the street, or vomiting directly into Lake Superior – but I’m not even completely sure those events happened. If they did, then kudos to me.
I guess my favorite memory was from my first summer in Duluth. I got on the good side of a local gang when I protected the leader’s sister from being picked on, but then the gang stole Potsie’s bike and there was trouble when I tried to get it back.
Actually, never mind. That was was an episode of “Happy Days” that I fell asleep watching last night. I need to drink less.
The only real Duluth summer adventures I had involved getting fired from lousy jobs. If you think the food at Perkins is bad now, ask the workers in Superior how bad it was the summer they hired me as a cook.
I applied for a job waiting tables, but they only needed cooks, so they hired me for that. “Don’t worry,” the head cook said. “We can teach anyone to cook. We’ve had guys who started out not even knowing how to crack an egg.”
“That’s good,” I said, “because I literally don’t know how to crack an egg. I pretty much just eat cereal three meals a day.”
“Really?” said the head cook. “Jesus.”
“Yeah, I’m about 97% sure I’ll suck at this job,” I said.
“Oh well,” said the head cook. “Everyone who eats here is drunk anyway.”
Actually, I made up those last two quotes. That doesn’t make them any less true, though.
I was fired from Perkins after a month and a half, mostly because I disappeared for days at a time without calling in sick. Then when they asked why I hadn’t shown up, I’d make up some ridiculous story about having to drive to Minneapolis to be tested for rare diseases. The only reason they kept me on so long was because they were desperate. Few people wanted to work the 2-10am shift. Once they found someone dumb enough to take my place, they got rid of me. That day was the happiest moment of my entire life.
I also spent a month as a telemarketer at the now defunct Fingerhut catalog. The pay was great and it was only four hours of work a night, but I had to be a freaking telemarketer. Everyone who worked there was depressed. It was like an office full of suicide bombers who couldn’t properly blow themselves up. When you make 60 calls an hour and 99% of the people you call tell you to go die in a fire, the idea starts to sound pretty good. I stayed a month, and that was only because I sat near a cute girl. She was depressed, but not enough to accept a date with me, so I quit.
Despite how much I hated telemarketing, I was pretty good at it. One night I sold 28 items in four hours. They rewarded me with a $50 gift certificate to their company store. I spent it on a clock radio.
Now that I’ve written a little about the experiences of that summer, I’m realizing it was probably one of my least favorite summer memories. When a clock radio is the high point of a story, it’s time to put down your pen.
There comes a time in every man’s life when he must look God in the eye and say, “Wipe that smirk off your face, wiseass.” Today is that day for me.
A lot of people hate blogs. Not me. I love them. If half the people I’m forced to converse with every day put everything they wanted to say into a blog, that information would be a hell of a lot easier to ignore. Your son did something really cute the other day? Great. I’ll just skim that part of our conversation. You have some sort of rash that’s been bothering you? Delightful. I’ll just stop reading our conversations entirely.