It's got to be done.

You see....everyone, and their mother, is probably blogging about Michael Jackson. Some love him, some hate him.....some lost their love once his life started spiraling out of control.

I don't really have an opinion.
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I now present to you, my "Way Back When-sday" posting..........on Monday. In honor of Michael Jackson.

I think it was 4th grade....but maybe not. It was either 2nd, 3rd or 4th. Take your pick.

There was a boy in my class that was diagnosed with cancer. He eventually received a bone marrow transplant, and then passed away around 8th grade. He was never well, and really didn't come to school much...if at all.

For Christmas, when I was in 4th (?) grade, our teachers decided to put on a Christmas play, and he was brought to school so we could perform it for him.

Even now, the details of the play are a little sketchy in my head....but it had something to do with an angel losing her wings, or her smile...or something. She was one of the smaller girls in the class, and she spent the whole play whining and crying about losing whatever it was that she'd lost and wanting it back.

It could have been Cinderella losing a shoe for all I really remember...but the angel thing fits with the whole Christmas genre a little better....so we'll go with that.

After a couple rehearsals, I was ready to find whatever it was myself just to make it stop.

She played the whining part well.

Too well. :-)

It was then the goal of the other characters in the play to spend the rest of the performance trying to cheer her up.

Frosty the Snowman danced to his namesake song.

St. Nick and his reindeer stopped by.

There were a handful of guys dressed as the reindeer...whose costumes, to this day, crack me up. More specifically, their horns. They had pantyhose stuck on their heads like hats....and toilet paper tubes in the legs to create the horns.

Oh the imagination of elementary school teachers!! :-)

I was one of the sugarplum fairies. And what did we do to try and cheer up the sniveling brat heart-broken child??? We danced, of course.

Isn't that what the sugarplum people are known for?

It was horrible. Not the performance so much as the choice of music.

You see....I'd taken dance since I was 3. The two other girls had taken it for quite some time as well...but from a different studio.

Since they already knew a choreographed dance, I was outnumbered, and had to learn their dance.

For a couple hours one afternoon, we got together to practice.

For the performance, they dressed in matching costumes...because, again, they had them. And again, I was odd man out and had to wear something completely different of my own. (sigh)

If I recall, their outfits were blue, and mine was orange. (Denver Broncos fans weren't complaining I'm sure) :-)

And you'll never guess what song we sugarplum fairies danced to?

For an elementary Christmas program.

For a classmate dying of cancer.

Thriller

Oh yeah....very appropriate.

:-)

Waaaay Back When-sday, Episode 7, Things I've done for a paycheck (part 2)

It occurred to me once that most of my waking hours are spent at work. I see the people I work with more than my own family (or so it seems sometimes). If those jobs are good for anything, it's something to blog about. :-)

Here are my previous posts on the topic, Part 1, babysitting


In high school, early high school.....my dad worked for a courier company in Omaha. One summer, I went to work with him everyday, to help out. My first job was accounts receivable. I was the thug...the person that called to collect on monies owed.

I'll give you all some time to laugh hysterically at the notion of introverted me strong-arming people over the phone for money.

(humming to herself)

OK...is everyone done? It's OK if you aren't....I'll wait a few more seconds.

(straightening her desk)

Done? Good...now, back to the story.

The courier company was smaller, and short staffed....so there were literally file cabinets (plural) full of invoices and monies due to them. I spent all day calling people...for weeks...and made little to no dent in the files.

One day, the offices flooded. It had been raining for days...and the offices were located in the older part of downtown Omaha. They had actually kinda sank below street level (isn't Chicago doing this as well...or is that just something I read somewhere?)....and as it rained...it literally filled up with water.

We spent the morning moving any office furniture we could up onto desks to keep it out of the water. I sat on top of one desk....with the phone cord taped to the wall out of the water....calling people collecting money. Now that's dedication. :-)

The company also had warehouse space. They stored materials for different clients...one being a very famous musician, even to this day. This musician puts on one heck of a Halloween show each year...so we stored all the set decorations used on his tours. It wasn't unusual to find a severed arm, or head, here and there in warehouse. Kinda creepy when I think about it.

The offices eventually moved, and that next summer, my dad wanted me to try my hand at dispatch.

Dispatch!

I don't know as that I even had my license yet...and he wanted me to tell drivers where to go?

I grew up in a town of maybe 3000 people. Omaha is a city.

(gulp)

Luckily the drivers were AWESOME. They'd call for a pickup, and I'd go down the board listing the addresses...and they'd tell me which ones were close to them.

One afternoon I got a call from someone, wanting to order pizza. I told them it was a wrong number...but the gentlemen with the suspicious southern accent tried to strike up a conversation. I was polite, but insisted he hang up and try a different number.

It was then I started hearing laughter from behind me.

The owner of the company was on his phone, with a couple other guys in his office.....prank calling me.

It turns out many of the drivers had been asking him what I looked like. They wanted to know who was on the other end of that sexy phone voice.

Me, with a sexy voice?

(giggling)

Kinda explains why they were being so nice, even though I had no clue what I was doing.





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Waaaay Back When-sday, Episode 7, Things I've done for a paycheck (part 1)

I consider myself a Jill of all Trades, master of none.

And I'm still not satisfied with my current job. I want to get out there and experience everything. Why be tied down to one career??

Those who enjoy their job can fu.....I mean, good for you for getting paid to do something you love!!!!

I'm not bitterly jealous or anything.

Really.



Because I have no idea what job it is that will make me happy, I've not been shy about trying on different hats (so to speak) for a good fit.

Granted, my mortgage and utility bills have kept me grounded in one job for the past 6 years. 6 YEARS!!! That's a lifetime for me!!!

Damn you, Responsibility!!! :-)

My first official job was probably babysitting...if you consider that a job. (I consider it hell. Voluntary hell, none the less.) Babysitting is a pretty typical first job for many.

I once babysat Satan himself. Or maybe he was Satan's grandson?

Doesn't matter really.

I think he single-handedly insured I would never generate a parasite of my own.

One day I arrived for an afternoon watch at Satan's house. The garage door wasn't even all the way down from his mother leaving, when I heard a scream. A gut-wrenching scream. A scream that would make any babysitter crap her pants.

I didn't though, let's make that clear. :-)

I ran to the source of the sound...the kitchen...expecting blood and gore...maybe loss of limb.

Instead I found a little boy with blue hands.

Blue SMOKING hands.

Yep, smoking!!!

The little sh....I mean, the child....had put his Gak in the microwave to make it more fun to play with.



After removing it from the microwave, he plunged his hands right into it.

(In hindsight, it reminded me of the first time I made marshmallow treats by myself. Putting my hands in the mixture to spread it out in the pan. Hot, sticky marshmallow. Not bright!)

It was the last time I babysat him. His mother was furious with me. (even though he'd obviously started the microwave while she was still home)

(sigh)

This child was evil, and his mother wore rose colored glasses when it came to his behavior.

Does anyone else have a babysitting nightmare to share?

Waaaay Back When-sday, Episode 6...Pets of Years Past

Call me Ishmael,
Moby-Dick

When I was a kid, and living with my parents and younger sister, we had 2 fish.

I don't remember exactly where they came from...but I'm pretty sure they belonged to someone who didn't want them anymore.

Orphan fish.

Very sad.

One was white and one was black - with big, bulging eyes.



The white fish was Moby, the black one was Dick.

The names were cute............

................until Moby died.

It was death by golf ball.

The golf ball was in the tank for a reason.

(Mom - why was there a golf ball in their tank?????)

Anyway, one day, aforementioned golf ball came loose from it's moorings, dropping on poor unsuspecting Moby.

The impact was fatal.

It burst his swim bladder, propelling him into a life (albeit short) of floating on his side.

(sigh)

When CSI arrived on scene. All that was found was a floating, soon to be dead fish, and a golf ball at the bottom of the tank. We'll never truly know what happened that fateful evening.

From them on, we just had Dick the fish.

Dick wasn't young when we got him...and he lived at least 8 or so years at our house.

Dick was a couch potato? Aquarium potato?? Ah, hell....Dick liked to watch TV.

It's true. We noticed he always hung out in one corner in his tank. After careful observation, we found that corner was always the one closest to the TV.

Every time we rearranged the living room furniture....Dick would find a new favorite place to swim. And it was always, always, the corner closest to the TV.

If the TV was on.....he just sat and watched....and watched.

He was an addict.

"Hello, I'm Dick the fish. And I'm a TV addict."

"Hello Dick!"


An orphaned fish, survived the loss of his tank mate, and an addict.

Poor little fella.


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Waaaay Back When-sday, Episode 5

I don't have a story this week....it's more of a topic. Cars. But not just any cars.

The History of Nej: in Cars.

I learned how to drive...in a school bus. Crazy, eh?? My dad was a manager for Laidlaw busing...and he'd bring a bus home every once and a while. And, it was in one of those buses I took my first driving lessons.



I was young, early teens, and really didn't learn much. But boy was it fun driving those buses around empty parking lots and such. :-)

Next up, the car I actually learned how to drive (for real) in. The 2 door 1979 Chevette. I couldn't find a picture of one in the color we had. Pea soup green - cream colored vinyl interior in this waffle pattern...that would be burned into the backs of your legs on a hot day. Ugh!



It had a name....Doodlebug. That car was a mountain goat...it could go anywhere. Put a couple sandbags in the back in the winter, and you were golden.

My one (and only) driving lesson with dad in this car went something like this....

We're driving down highway 183....way out in the country, with no one around. We come up on a pickup, and dad tells me to pass it. So, I did. I gunned the engine and went whipping by.

I hadn't gotten the "look in your mirrors and don't cut the guy in the pickup off" lesson yet. Copious amount of honking occurred. Whoops.

At one point that day, we were on the interstate. On an off ramp, my dad started to yell "decelerate, decelerate!!" Seems I was getting the 'you must slow down on the exit ramp, or you will die' lesson. It would have been good...except I misheard what he was saying. I heard "accelerate, accelerate!!" Whoops.

Doodlebug eventually died, or horrific death (oil leak, I didn't know, trashed the engine). Unfortunately, it died while mom was driving it, on the interstate. In the winter. Whoops.

** I found the picture of the Chevette in an article called The Top 10 Most Idiotic Cars of All Times. It got #10. I'm not sure how to take the information...I loved that idiotic little car!! :-)

Let's see...next up? Oh yes.....



1969 Ford F-250, but picture it in U-Haul orange instead of this blue. I was 16, just barely 16...my dad bought it for me. There was some rust on the outside, but inside the cab was cherry.

Wow, I just used the word cherry to describe a truck. (shaking her head)

White leather seats, that had spent their entire lives under a seat cover. A/C (that didn't work), and those funky blue disks they put in the red taillights to make them look kinda purple.

I spent one afternoon detailing the cab, 100%. It took me all day. My sister wanted to help, so she tackled hosing out the box. When we were finally done, I took her to McDonalds as a thank you. On the way home, some dude speeding down the highway, t-boned me.

It hit us so hard, I pulled the steering wheel out and onto my lap. It knocked the box 2 foot off of center, and it popped the back tire. Luckily it was raining, so we spun around and around, instead of flipping over. My sister left 8 little slits in the seat, where her fingernails dug in. She was 11.

I was knocked loopy. Like, wandering around the highway, nearly getting hit my a semi loopy. The lady behind us on the highway was a friend of the family, and she rounded me up. My sister was freaking out, thought I was going to die. My head was split open and there was some blood. (when she was younger, she puked all over my bed...we were watching Stephen King's IT on tv in my room...the blood was too much)

She got a teddy bear in the ambulance.

I just got yelled at by a cop...who assumed that since I was only 16, it was my fault. She followed me into the hospital, into my room, through the CAT scans and everything. Yelling at me the whole time because I wouldn't talk to her. I don't remember much of it...I had been knocked silly.

I do remember mom and dad arriving on the scene. And I remember the riot act my dad read that cop. (hehe)

I had that truck for exactly 1 week. Whoops.

You know, the next few cars are a blur.

There was this red car, that looked really cool, but the floor filled up with water when it rained. I could never figure out where the water was coming from...but it would get an inch or so deep.

There was a truly ugly white Pontiac something. I sold it when I got my first job out of college. I sold it and bought one of these....



1995 Geo Prism Lsi, oh yeah. Stylin' ain't she? (I'll wait a second, while you wipe the dripping sarcasm from your screen)

36 miles per gallon, drove it well over 200,000 miles. Her name was Sweetie.

I needed to rent a car, and was too young...so I "test drove" this one. The guy at the car dealership was a friend of a friend. After driving it for the weekend, I bought it.

The only damaging thing ever done to her was a small crunch in the bumper, when a retired fire chief of Forsythe (sp?), Georgia backed into me. He was in town visiting relatives, and decided to go out garage sale-ing that morning. I was out for garage sales as well, as luck would have it.

When we moved to Omaha two years ago...we gave her to a friend of mine. We moved into town, and at the same time, they moved out of town. Mot wanted to keep driving his Explorer, and I had my current car. So we gave the good gas mileage spare car to her to use.

Speaking of my current car....

2002 Ford ZX2. (or is it a 2003? I forget. It's whatever the last year they made it.)

Besides having a car wash try to eat it....it's been damage free as well. It handles like crap in the winter....so I don't know how long it will last in the family.

There you go, nothing exciting. I mean, everyone learns how to drive with a school bus, right?

No?

Well..ok then.



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