I think I’m ready, he says. What was it like for you? Did you
do anything special? The story is, yes, it was, in fact, special,
but not because of any particular planning, or creative
proposal-ing. It was spontaneous and, actually, I don’t
want to talk about it. Despite all my admonitions
to students about vanquishing vagueness, it’s not
a story I like to share. It involves Santa Cruz and sea lions
and a tall bearded man playing bagpipes in the midst
of a mournful fog, and that’s all I’m going to say.
The story is for me and for Karen and, maybe, one day
for our children. I hold it tight to my chest and I want
to keep it like that, an heirloom.
Except, it’s nearing 5 a.m. when he asks,
and I’m mopping the floor. Sort of. It’s been
a long, unnerving night, ice and snow and roads
that want to bite, and he’s counting money
in the register and accomplishing other mysterious
paperwork-related functions—I think I made
about $105 in tips, add on the 54 cents per mile
and the $5.25 an hour salary and I’m around 180
bucks for eleven hours, not horrible—but the floor
sneers daunting and salty and the water in the mop-
bucket already swims swampy, so I’m swishing back
and forth as quickly as I can but the truth is the world’s
not a whole lot cleaner and my arms and upper back feel
like I just survived six minutes of wrestling against a State
Champ, so I’m half-tempted to tell the story just to cheer
my own damn self up.
A university professor earlier tipped five dollars
on a ninety-seven dollar bill, and he also declined
to meet me at the door in the midst of the snowiest
bluster. Sent down a student clearly unprepared
to schlep seven pizzas (including one gluten-free)
upstairs to the classroom, so I did it for him, an extra
ten minutes of my time while another customer’s
delivery camped in the car, and I don’t know what
kind of class it was, possibly marketing, something
in the how-to-make-money-by-lying-to-people genre.
About thirty undergrads inhabited the classroom, each
likely capable of chipping in a buck, though none offered,
and I considered making a public announcement exposing
their instructor as a 6% tipper after he asked me a bunch
of bullshit questions like do I get sick of pizza and does
my car smell like pizza and so much of me wanted to say,
listen up, students, the dude here who’s grading your papers,
or, more likely, foisting that job onto a graduate assistant who
gets paid little more than expired lettuce,
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