Topic: The One That Got Away

I’ve been musically inclined my whole life, as far back as I can remember. My mom encouraged me to take piano starting at an early age. Around age 10 we got rid of our piano and got an organ so I changed to that. Then came band in grade school. I started playing saxophone in 5th grade. I stopped taking organ lessons because I was basically too lazy to practice both sax and organ. 

Then I slowly became obsessed with rock music. This was in the late 60’s. I remember the initial popularity of the Beatles and I was fascinated with Woodstock. I decided I wanted to be a drummer. So I switched to drums in 9th grade. Again, I stopped playing sax because I was too lazy to practice both sax and drums. 

My parents were strongly pushing me to get an ROTC scholarship. My dad had fantasies of me going to the Air Force Academy and from there to medical school. But I was convinced my future was in music, specifically drums. I spent every possible moment practicing and jamming with other kids and trying to form bands.

I did cave in to my dad and joined ROTC in 10th grade but I was miserable. The Viet Nam war was winding down and the military was quite unpopular at the time. And I had to wear my hair in a buzz cut and wear that fucking uniform every Thursday. I met some very nice people in ROTC but I became extremely depressed and my dad finally agreed to let me drop ROTC and get back in band.

I became the drummer for the school jazz band. I got a lot of experience with them playing out in public. But I continued to fantasize about playing rock music in front of thousands of people.

After high school I went off to study premed at the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas. Of course I brought my drums with me and I soon found several pickup bands with which to perform. I made only fair grades because I was focused on making music. And I have to confess that I was trying to live what I perceived as the rock lifestyle - i.e., lots of beer and drugs.

I went back home to Kentucky after two years in Dallas. This was a good thing because I don’t think my liver would have survived much longer down there. I resumed premed studies at a local college but continued to play out in rock bands with some old friends.

Finally I talked my parents in to sending me to Belmont College in Nashville, Tennessee. They have a very strong Music Business program and my plan was now to become a recording engineer or producer. I should have gotten a clue when, on the very first day of Music Business 101 the professor said to forget about becoming an engineer or producer - there were way too many people wanting to do that and too few jobs. But I persisted because I was convinced that at age 22 I would land a drumming gig with a big time band. After all, my friend Rick (a pianist) got a job playing piano for Neil Young through connections he made at Belmont!

And shortly after moving to Nashville, I landed a drumming gig with a metal band called 2C. We did some covers but mainly original stuff. I thought this band would be my ticket into the big time because our bass player was Dolly Parton’s first cousin and his dad was a very successful music producer who owned Fireside Studios in Nashville. We got a gig at a showcase club called the Exit/In, opening for a band called the Rockets. They were on the charts at the time with a cover of the Fleetwood Mac tune “Oh Well.” 

And that was the closest I ever got to the big time. Soon thereafter my lifestyle choices caught up with me. I was drinking alcoholically and I had to leave that band. And I was forced to recognize that being a good drummer isn’t enough to make a living at the music business - you have to be lucky too. 

I got in to recovery in 1982. I was 25 at the time and playing for an Elvis imitator. Back then one didn’t find younger people at AA meetings. I heard plenty of old-timers grumbling about how they’d wrung more alcohol out of their necktie that I had ever drunk. And I heard guys saying they took their first drink at age 6 and so on. I thought, "I never took a drink when I was 6 but I damn sure could have used one." Anyhow I ignored them because I wanted to never have to be enslaved to alcohol again.

So I started playing with a gospel band. I thought that way I could continue to play music in a safer (for me) environment. Oddly enough, our gospel band went to Nashville and made a record. And I finished school and ultimately through quite a circuitous route I became a doctor. I continued to play heavy metal throughout med school, however. Our band did all originals with titles like”Anal Birth” and “Dead Girls Don’t Say No.” Our bass player wrote those lyrics. He went on to become a psychiatrist.

My career in music got away. But I haven’t had a drink in many, many years - and I never have to worry about anyone offering me a drink at the clinic!

The One That Got Away or How I Never Made it to the National Spelling Bee

The One That Got Away or How I Never Made it to the National Spelling Bee

 

     I grew up listening to show tunes.  “A Chorus Line” was and still is my favorite musical.  There’s this song called “At the Ballet” and these girls are lamenting how everything sucks in their life except when they are dancing.  One verse in particular seemed to be written about me.   When I was 8 or 9 I thought the lyricist must have been hanging out at our house and listening in on conversations between me and my mom.

     She sang, “Mother always said I’d be very attractive when I grew up-different she said with a special something and a very, very personal flair.  And though I was 8 or 9, I hated her.  Well different is nice, but it sure isn’t pretty.  Pretty is what it’s about.  I never met anyone who was different who couldn’t figure that out.  So beautiful I’d never live to see, but it was clear, if not to her, well then to me that everyone was beautiful at the ballet.” 

     I didn’t dance, but I felt “different” like the girl in the song.  And I felt like I had to compensate somehow for being an ugly duckling of sorts.  At least that’s how I saw myself back then.  I was the second shortest girl in my school.  I was chubby and pale and freckled and round-faced.  I had boring reddish brown stick straight hair.  I was convinced as I entered junior high that I would never date or get married, that no one would ever find me attractive. 

    The only thing I had going for me I believed at the time was that I was pretty smart.  We had a school spelling bee every spring at the parochial grade school I attended in Cincinnati, Ohio in the seventies.   I started competing in fourth grade and I either won first place or placed in the top three in my age group every year until I left for high school in the ninth grade.   

    The spelling bees became an even bigger deal in grades 7 and 8, because the winner of that bee got to go to the regional spelling bee and compete against students all over the Cincinnati area-usually about 50 contestants.  The winner of the regional bee would go to the state of Ohio spelling bee and the winner of that one would go to the National Spelling Bee. 

     In 8^th grade, my final year of grade school I made it to the regional spelling bee.   It was televised.  It was only public television, but I still felt like a rock star.  I was representing my school at a regional competition.   I was going to make it to the National Spelling Bee.  I just knew it would happen.  It would make up for everything-my acne, my thick thighs, and my stringy hair. 

    I have a theory about why I’ve always been a good speller.  It’s not due to anything I’ve done.  I can’t take any credit for it really.  When I hear people speak or see a word in print there is a sort of close captioning going on inside my brain.  As each word is spoken or read it’s as if someone is typing the words across the front of my brain.  I was surprised to learn that not everyone experiences this phenomenon.  In fact, I haven’t met anyone yet who knows what I’m talking about.  It’s how I’m wired, and it helps because once I see a word in print I have this image of it embedded in my brain. 

     I did study for the regional spelling bee.  It was more like training for a sporting event.  There was this book they gave us called “Words of the Champions” that contained something like 10,000 really hard spelling words.  I divided the book up and worked on sections every night in the days leading up to the bee.  They didn’t have to take the words in the bee from the book, but most of them came straight from “Words of the Champions.”

     The big day came in spring of 1978.  I got off school.  I didn’t have to wear my uniform.  Both of my parents took off work to support me.  We drove downtown to the Channel 48 studios where the regional spelling bee was held.  It lasted for about two hours.   In a spelling bee, once you misspell a word, you’re out.  It goes on until there are only two contestants left.   I made it all the way to the final two.  Then if one of us missed a word, the other would have to spell that missed word plus one additional word to be declared the winner and more importantly to earn the chance to go the state spelling bee and then maybe even go to the National Spelling Bee. 

     They gave me a word that wasn’t in “Words of the Champions.”  At the time it was a word I had never heard or read before.   I asked for a definition which didn’t help.   Then I stalled by asking the moderator to use the word in a sentence.  I still had no clue.  In desperation, I said, “Could you say it three times really fast?”  Seriously, I said that.  It’s in the PBS archives somewhere. 

“Matrix, matrix, matrix,” the lady said with a chuckle. 

     There was no template of this word embedded in my mind.  I was certain it had never been “typed” across my brain.   So I just spelled it the way I thought it sounded.

“M-a-y-t-r-i-c-k-s,” I said. 

     The buzzer went off,  and the rest is a blur.  I suppose the winner spelled matrix correctly and then one additional word and then we all left.   All I remember is trying to hold it together long enough to get to the back seat of my parents’ car so I wouldn’t have to choke down my sobs anymore. 

     My mom tried to cheer me up by suggesting lunch at Zino’s, one of our favorite pizza places, but that didn’t help.  I cried like someone had died.   I tried to explain to my mom that I had blown it.  This was my last chance.  I was going to high school in a few months and I’d never get the chance to be in the National Spelling Bee.  It was only for grade school students.  And I really believed deep in my little junior high heart that this was my only chance to excel at something, to do something special.

     My mom put it in perspective for me, “Will this matter five years from now?  Will this even matter a year from now?”  I told her I thought it might matter next year.  She urged me to trust her on this one.  She said I wouldn’t always feel this way, that it would pass, and that I would go on to do things even bigger and better than the National Spelling Bee.   So I took a leap of faith and pulled myself together and ordered a zinover, their version of a calzone, and a Coke.  We went home and sang along to the original cast recording of “The Fantasticks.”  I didn’t cry anymore that day.   

     In fact, I never cried again about losing the bee, and I got over my low self -esteem as I got older.  I got over feeling like I had to accomplish things or win to prove I was okay.  What hasn’t changed is that I still see words in a teletype across my 53 year old brain every day and I still know a lot of show tunes. I’m still short and round- faced, but it’s all good.  Mom was right. 

 

Topic: The One That Got Away

"I Don't Want to Go to Canada"

We circled the building a few times before formulating a plan. Right off the bat, we saw flashing lights; an undercover police truck pulled up and parked nearby, an officer quickly handcuffing a couple of teenagers. We'd seen them cut a hole in the fence and try to run in. They had made it all of 10 feet before the police pulled up. Amateurs, I thought.

"Turn down this street again and park over there. Let's walk around the block," I suggested. Jacob made a quick left and pulled up behind a parked car. He locked the doors as I grabbed my camera bag and we headed down the street, careful to stay on the side opposite the train station.

Michigan Central Station.

A 15 story now windowless building on the outskirts of downtown Detroit, the old train depot could be seen from miles away. In fact, with the right vantage point, the absence of all windows made it possible to see clean through the train station. Jacob and I had discovered that the previous day, when a glance out of the window of an abandoned hospital had revealed the monstrosity in all its glory.

I was determined to find a way in.

The station's main gate was a quick and definite no. Every minute or two, another carload of tourists pulled up in front of the building, its inhabitants hopping out to take pictures with Detroit's Greatest Eyesore. A quick walk around the building revealed large cameras on either side entrance, but the station backed up to several sets of old train tracks. That looked promising.

"How about we drive a few blocks down the tracks and walk them back?" I asked. "Maybe we can find a way under the fence and in through the trainyard." A few minutes later, we were doing just that. After climbing up the side of a hill and wandering through a few crumbling buildings, we found ourselves on one side of a slowly moving train. This is perfect, I thought.

And it was. We followed the train's procession down the tracks, nearly reaching the gate to the trainyard by the time the caboose appeared. As it faded into the distance, my heart sank. The same silver undercover police truck we'd seen handcuffing teenagers earlier was barreling toward us.

"What do we do?" I asked Jacob, as he continued to step from railroad tie to railroad tie.

"What do you mean?"

"Do we run? Do we hide? Do we just keep walking and pretend like we're supposed to be here?"

"Let's keep walking and see what happens."

It wasn't long before the truck reached us, red and blue lights flashing. "Please approach the vehicle," a voice boomed over the loudspeaker and we walked over to the truck.

"IDs please," the officer said, climbing out of the truck. "What are you doing here?"

"We were just going for a walk," I said, handing him my ID.

"A walk on the train tracks?"

"Yessir. I like graffiti - taking pictures of it, I mean, not doing it, and there's lots of it around here."

"Clearly." He collected our IDs and quickly returned them. "How did you get up here?"

"We walked up a hill."

"You walked up a hill?"

"Yessir. A few blocks over that way. My car is parked over there."

"And where are you going?"

"Nowhere, just around. Just taking pictures. Of the graffiti."

"Do you see that bridge over there?"

"Yessir."

"That's the Ambassador Bridge to Canada. Are you trying to walk illegally to Canada?"

"No sir. I don't want to go to Canada."

"It is a $500 Federal trespassing charge to be where you are standing right now. Do you understand that? Just for being on these train tracks I can charge you both $500 each. Now get in the truck. I'm going to give you a ride back to your car."

Jacob and I climbed into the backseat of the truck, my camera bag in my lap. Thankfully, he hadn't asked to see my bag. I briefly thought of the mace and knife stowed inside, the camera with thousands of pictures, and beneath it, the list of 30+ places we'd been exploring that weekend.

"Why are you guys in Detroit?" The Canadian Railroad Officer asked.

Jacob and I looked at each other uneasily.

"Vacation."

"Have you ever been to Detroit before?"

"I played some shows in Hamtramack," Jacob said.

"Okay. Well, be careful. And stay off of the train tracks." We climbed out of the truck and ran down the side of the hill, waiting for the truck to drive off before walking back to my car.

"We can try again tomorrow," Jacob said, as we turned down a nearby street and made our way toward another building. "If you think it's worth it."

It wasn't.

The promise of a $500 ticket and a federal charge were enough to persuade me to give up my dreams of standing on the roof of Michigan Central Station. At least, temporarily. Thankfully, when Ford Motors purchased the building a few years later and opened it to the public for one weekend, it was no longer the one that got away.

Topic: The One That Got Away…

Author: Chris Dunn

Did I ever tell you about the time I wrote a pilot for TV? Back in the early 00s, my long-time friend and oft creative partner, Tony Doench – co-creator of our groundbreaking web-comic Galena – had just graduated from animation college. Two years of training under his belt had him itching to ply his new craft, but unfortunately Cincinnati, where most of his friends and family lived, provided little in the way of career opportunities for an animator. We played around with a few other ideas, launched a failed t-shirt company, sketched out a concept for a dungeons-and-dragons / heavy-metal action comedy cartoon, but nothing got far beyond the planning stage until Z-Ernie came to town.

Z-Ernie was a larger-than-life, Flastaffian character. A friend of our mutual friend Frank, Z-Ernie rolled through town in the middle of a cross-country tour bringing with him wondrous tales from the road and a nearly endless supply of some of the best weed I’ve had the privilege to bum. He rolled joint after joint while regaling us with tales of the old days when he and his crew would imbibe near-lethal amounts of everything on Schedule 1 and then proceed to have the most amazing adventurers. The stories fell and the smoke billowed until I had to cry, “Hold, enough!” and retire to a couch corner to stare at the carpet for a long while. Tony stayed in, however, matching him joint for joint, hit for hit, and in due time, he got around to showing Z what he had been up to.

Tony’s talent is obvious to anyone who sees it, and of course Z was no exception. “What are you doing with this?” he asked, and Tony began our long litany of failed launches which Z dismissed with a hand-wave. “Tutt-tutt, my good man.” He didn’t talk like this, but I was too high to recall the exact words. “This won’t do. We need to go bigger! We need to take this to the next level. What would you need to finish this?” By the time Z was ready to hit the road and return to his cross-country journey, sketchy plans had been made to do a pilot for a cartoon to pitch to Adult Swim. Z knew people you see, people he could show this too, people who were even more connected than he was. This was going to be it!

To be honest, I didn’t think much about it at first, assuming it was all just the dream ramblings of a room full of high guys. (Interestingly, “Room Full of High Guys” was a TV show idea our crew had come up with the late 90s. One which, we thought, really had legs.) Even when Tony started having weekly project management calls with Z, I dismissed it as just another dying project, only in its early stages. But there was more to Z than mere puffery. Before I knew what was happening, Tony’s friend from animation school, Dave, had moved into the third floor and Z was sending them both monthly checks to cover living expenses so the pair could focus on churning out a pilot to pitch.

“Shit!” I thought. “This is really happening. And without me….” That would not stand! No way was Tony going to fly off to fame, recognition and (the end-all-be-all) getting paid to create,  without me. I started panicking trying to think up a way into this project. Of course, my panic was unwarranted. Tony wasn’t about to leave me out. Shortly after Dave’s arrival, he came to me and showed me what they had – a pile of very detailed character concepts, complete with powers, backstories and motivations, but that was it. No action. No dialogue. No story. They needed me, and I gladly stepped up. I dove in head first. I read books on screenwriting, comic writing, screenwriting format for animation, and storyboarding. I sat with Dave and fleshed out his vision for show and plumbed his amazing imagination trying to find the hook for each character. I not only finished the pilot, but had a stenciled plot for a good year’s worth of episodes (two or three years by Rick and Morty standards). I allowed myself to get psyched.

I handed over my idea and waited. Every now and then I would break up a light-saber fight and inquire how the project was going, only to be the last guy on earth to discover that pot – while an excellent way to get you to take time off to dream up some crazy shit - is not the best motivational tool. I can’t complain too much. Mine was the shorter part, and I was more than willing to help the guys shirk work when other activities seemed more amusing. Days became weeks, and as the deadline fast approached and the money began to run low, pencils were finally put to paper. We even got some voice recording done and synced with an opening bit, but in the end there just wasn’t enough time.

Tony and Dave took a train to California, armed with a lot of notes, sketches and a brief animated piece where a folder marked CONFIDENTIAL slid across a desk. I was nervous as hell, and crossed my fingers that it would be enough to impress the investor to throw in another bunch of funding, so we could at least complete the promo. A week later, they returned looking guardedly upbeat. “We’re making a video game!” Tony insisted. Apparently, the project had pivoted somewhere during the pitch. I shrugged my acceptance, realizing a game wouldn’t require my input. It turned out the game idea didn’t really have much energy. Tony hadn’t been back a whole week before he declared he wasn’t actually interested. The money dried up, and Dave moved back to New Jersey. And just like that, another big idea bit the dust.

But to this day, I still occasionally stumble across the pitch folder or a blue-pencil sketch and dream about the one that got away…

Bureaucracy

I've had a lot of name changes in my life.  When I was born in 1965 I had one middle name, my great grandmother's surname, Murray. Mom told me they added my second middle name, Remembrance when I was about seven.  My younger brother Chris in 1968 was given two unusual middle names, Parnell and Telemachus.  Marty followed in 1971 with his two equally interesting and discussion-provoking middle names, Luther and King.  I suppose they didn't want me to feel left out, and Remembrance was and is a pretty badass middle name.  It had been in our family for generations.  Nevertheless, I found having two middle names to be a bit tedious so when I divorced in the late 1990s I discovered that one of the "benefits" of going through a divorce is that the woman can change her name for no extra charge.  I know this is supposed to be a story about bureaucracy and that simple maneuver/name change seemed like I was cutting through some red tape.  But it was only temporary.  That seemingly simple name change would come back to haunt me. 

When I divorced I didn't want to keep my ex husband's last name.  I wasn't particularly fond of the man--he was my ex husband after all.  I didn't want to go back to my maiden name either.  I was a grown woman in my thirties with two children.  I had a wonderful childhood and wonderful parents.  I mean, just look at the cool names they picked out for us-my parents were the best!  But somehow the idea of going back to my maiden name post divorce made me feel like an even bigger failure than I already felt because my marriage had failed-again.  Yes, again.  I married my first husband and divorced him and married him again and divorced him a second time.  I didn't change my name the first time.  So as part of the second divorce I opted to drop my middle name, Murray, and use it as my last name.  Buried in the fifty or so pages of our divorce agreement is the single line that legally changed my name, "The wife shall take the name Bridgid Remembrance Murray."

When I remarried a few years later I simply dropped the Murray altogether and just took my new husband's last name. Fast forward to 2017 when I tried to get a TSA pre-check clearance.  Basically this helps if you travel by plane frequently.  You avoid having to go through the long lines and having to remove your shoes at the airport.  It's supposed to cut through a lot of bureaucracy and save time. I made an appointment at the TSA place.  You couldn't just walk in.  I had to take off work, because they only had Monday-Friday business hours.   I brought all the required documents-or so I thought.  They looked at my birth certificate which had an addendum stapled to it that showed when my parents added the "Remembrance" to my name. The clerk remarked about how cool my middle name was.  Then she saw my social security card and my id wanted to know what happened to the "Murray" in my name.  I explained how it had been dropped legally in the 1990s. 

"We're gonna need to see some documentation, maam. I mean, you can't just drop your middle name. How do we know this is your birth certificate?  This birth certificate has Murray on it, but this social security card doesn't show Murray." Really?  I mean how many people are named Bridgid Remembrance?  I suspect I might be the only one in the country.  I really didn't want to miss any more work, but they wouldn't budge.  So I drove 45 minutes home and found my old divorce decree.  I triumphantly placed it on the counter,

I flipped through the document and proudly pointed, "There, you see, it says on page 32 item #45,  the wife shall take the name Bridgid Remembrance Murray.  See what I did there?  I was tired of having two middle names and so I just used Murray as my last name." 

She wasn't having it. "Okay, that's all well and good, but I'm gonna have to see your original marriage certificate then.  I mean what was your name before the divorce?"

"Which divorce?" I asked. 

"Well how many times have you been married anyway, maam?" she demanded with an eye roll for emphasis.

I asked what that had to with anything.  I really didn't want to get into all of that.  I reluctantly explained that I married this husband and divorced him twice.  She chuckled.  "Didn't learn your lesson the first time, huh? Well I need to see your marriage certificate from your first marriage then" 

But that was 30 years ago!  I stormed out. I called the Boone County Kentucky recorders office the next day.  After an hour on hold they explained I could order a new copy of my marriage certificate from 1987.  I'd  just have to send a cashier's check or money order for $9.95 or so.  It couldn't be a personal check. 

It was then that I decided I was done playing this game and gave up on getting  my TSA clearance.  I thought it would be easier to just go through airport security.  At least no one there asked me how times I'd been married or passed judgment about my choices.  I'd take a pat down any day over what they put me through at the TSA clearance place. 

Topic: Bureaucracy – or Why I Didn’t Minor in Creative Writing

Author: Chris Dunn

There was this lottery I never won, and this failure determined the course of my life. I’m talking of course, about the Miami University Class Registration student lottery. Every semester they “randomly” determined the order in which students could apply for the next semester’s classes. You would be assigned a day based off the last digit of your Social Security Number, and sure enough, each time I would receive my assignment, I was last or second last. This would have been fine once or twice, but it’s a 1 in 10 chance, and I got 9 tries at! Well, technically 13 since I took 6 years to get my BA. I could blame that on bureaucracy too, but in truth it was more simple fear of the unknown that weighted my feet.

Five, my last digit is a 5. Smack dab in the middle of the run, and still every draft found me down at Millett Hall on Thursday or Friday shuffling through discarded printouts and hand-scrawled option lists trying to find some set of classes that fit together, applied to my major or University requirements, and didn’t have me up at 5am every day racing across campus every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I’d scan down the dot matrix printouts hanging on the walls searching for a Fiction class to fit into my schedule. Closed… Closed… Closed… CLOSED! Crap!

The plan had always been, once I switched to English, to get a double major in Literature and Creative Writing. I had completed ENG 226 Introduction to Creative Writing. I managed to muddle through while still wrestling with the two intro-demons every writer meets at the outset (Embarrassment and Worthiness). The class served to slay the first fairly easily. You had to turn in papers. They had to be read before the class. Everyone’s papers sucked, in some form or another. You got over the “Oh, I don’t want anyone to see my stuff…” pretty quickly, and I thank the course for that. I was ready to move on to the next step. Find the next demon, or be gifted the tools to slay Worthiness - who was still crawling on my back, whispering in my ear, convincing me I was little more than a poser and a fraud. But ENG 320 Intermediate Creative Writing: Fiction was always full by week’s end. They only offered 2 classes per semester, and then only in the first semester of the year. For sophomore and junior years, I simply shrugged and took another elective. Sure, Meteorology sounds nice. Want to hear about all the different types of clouds I can recall?

By my fourth year though - arguably my senior year but numerically still far from graduating -things were getting tight. I received my unfortunate placement again, and hurried down at my first allowed minute with hopes held high. CLOSED! “FUCK, Fuck, fuckity fuck-fuck!” What the hell was I to do? I had no interested in “Writing for Media” or “Creative Non-Fiction”. I had stories to tell! Suddenly a bell rang in my mind, and I scanned down the list. Sure enough, ENG 420 Advanced Creative Writing: Fiction Workshop was open. What if….? I filled out my form took it to the registrar window, they entered the data without a question and handed me back my new course list. I was in! Why hadn’t I thought of this years ago? Take 420 since it was open, then circle back and pick up 320 when I had a chance OR I caught a lucky lottery break. Whew! I’d done it. I’d outsmarted the system. I was going to be a writer.

First day of class, we were all seated in a circle. No desks here, just an open forum for the free exchange of ideas. I was so psyched. The professor spoke with a calm, open voice with an undercurrent of inclusion and community instead of dogma and authoritarianism. This was going to be great. Until, “Is there anyone in here who hasn’t taken ENG 320?”

I timidly raised my hand.

“Oh,” he said. “That’s like a total pre-requisite for this class.”

“Well, it isn’t listed as one, and they let me sign up.”

“Yeah… I don’t know about that, but it is.”

Seriously one of the most embarrassing moments in my life, as I gathered my things and slunk out, under the mocking glares of the world’s next great writers. On the way to the Rez to return my books while still within the grace period, I came to a decision. Fuck it! So, I wouldn’t major, or even minor, in creative writing. Why did I need their approval? What could they possibly teach me? I would be a student of life! Experience and practice would be my muses. Surely, it wouldn’t be ten years before I found the nerve to write again…

Topic: Amusement Parks

Where Do Theme Parks Go When They Die?

As I trudged through the Louisiana swamp in the 100-degree July heat, I shoved my hands into the pockets of my thick black hoodie. With the front zipped to just above my navel and my digital camera safely tucked against my stomach, I looked almost pregnant. At least that was the hope.

Making our way through the overgrown backyard of a long-abandoned house, Jacob and I climbed up to the road, where we came face to face with a parked car and a security guard. Glancing suspiciously at the two of us and my awkwardly bulbous form, he climbed out of his car, leaned against the front bumper, and crossed his arms. We hung a quick left down the main road and quickened our pace, grateful when he didn’t pursue us.

Whew. I breathed a sigh of relief and pushed my sleeves up to my elbows. Crisis averted. There was only one problem: the security guard was parked directly in front of the path through the woods, the one marked on the map I had left in the car, venturing only to bring myself, my ID, and my camera on this seemingly misguided trek. I also had the number of a Louisiana attorney scrawled in sharpie down my forearm. Just in case.

So as not to appear even more suspicious, we continued walking, following the road back to the highway we had taken over Lake Ponchartrain not long before. The area was more or less deserted, lending little credibility to our cover as a “couple on a walk”. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before we stumbled upon something useful: an access road marked “Employee Entrance.” Every few steps, I looked over my shoulder and then back to the gate we were approaching. “No trespassing,” a sign read in large, bold letters, with a complete breakdown of the Louisiana laws on illegal trespass. Great, I thought, just great. I looked at Jacob, who was surveying the gate and the fence on either side, nearly ten years of weeds encroaching on upon it.

“Well, I think you can make it under this gate, but I most likely can’t, so I guess I’m going over the fence,” Jacob said, confidently, “Yep, this is definitely how we get in.” I guess we’re actually doing this, I thought as I nodded my head. When I’d sent Jacob an article about the abandoned amusement park a few weeks earlier, I hadn’t expected that his response would be, “when are we going?” Placing my camera in my hand, I laid down on the dusty dirt road and slowly shuffled under the gate. “Shit!” I heard from the bushes next to me seconds later, as Jacob tumbled out of them.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, that fence isn’t very nice.”

Realizing we were still on a main road and still very visible to anyone who cared enough to look, we quickly scurried down a small hill and into a ditch. The ditch ran parallel to the access road and the overgrowth provided just enough coverage to camouflage us. We walked the length of the ditch, hidden from security and the highway, until we passed the lake. Crossing the road quickly, we scampered into the thick swamp on the other side. My pulse quickened as I looked up to see a large, wooden rollercoaster.

We’d made it. We were in Six Flags New Orleans.

The closer we got to the rollercoaster, the more my excitement I grew. All of the research I had done had paid off. Hours of scouring the comments at the bottom of various internet articles, reading stories from the “glory days” of Six Flags abandonment in the years immediately following Hurricane Katrina and the claims of those who said it had been impossible to get in since 2012, two years earlier. That the park had become a set for various movies, and with that came tight security and a slew of arrests. It wasn't worth trying, they'd said.

But we’d made it.

There’s something eerie and exhilarating about being somewhere you’re not supposed to be. Like you’re playing a trick on the world and only you’re in on it. A mix of adrenaline and anxiety that quickens the pulse and heightens the senses. These feelings intensify tenfold when the place is an abandoned amusement park. A place that typically conjured thoughts of the joyous shrieks of children and long lines of patrons eagerly awaiting their next thrill was now entirely still and barren. Even the slowest days at Kings Island couldn’t compare with the complete absence surrounding us.

I was hooked.

We continued through the swamp until we encountered our next obstacle: a chain link fence over six feet high separating us from the innards of the park. My heart sank. We hadn’t made it. Not yet. Maybe this is it, I thought, maybe we've come all this way just to not get in. In the intense humidity, surrounded by the Louisiana swamp and an assortment of large bugs I had never seen before, I started to lose hope. Still, we pressed on, following the fence until we came across a hole slashed through the wire mesh. Jacob held it open for me and I climbed through.

And then it happened. Just like that, I was standing underneath a rollercoaster. I finally was on the wrong side of the fence and in a whole new world. I walked through the wooden joists and supports until I emerged into an open field. All around me, the rollercoaster track twisted and turned, climbing hills and cutting a path through the swamp. Old carousel decorations were strewn through the grass and Jacob and I stood in awe, taking it all in. Just as we breathed a sigh of relief, a low flying helicopter passed overhead.

“Shit,” I said, “do you think they’re here for us?”

“I hope not, but I don’t see why else they’d be all the way out here,” Jacob said. We ran for cover, ducking under the rollercoaster track and quickly disappearing into the swamp. It wasn’t long before we came to the entrance of the coaster, the winding carrels that once lined up excited visitors barely visible through the foliage. We ran like excited kids, ducking under railings and pushing tree branches out of our way.

As we came to the end of the path and climbed a set of stairs, I saw it. The main station and loading platform. The first hill. We climbed onto the platform and took a tentative step onto the track. I could see the rust and worn wood, but the overall structure was stable. Giddy, we followed the track out of the station and to the start of the first hill. That’s when we heard it. A truck engine. A very close truck engine. “Hide!” Jacob squealed, and we quickly swung underneath the rollercoaster track, crouching beneath the swollen wooden beams. We sat in silence for 15 minutes, the sound of the truck engine growing closer and then, as soon as it started, it disappeared.

“Do you think it’s safe?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but if we’re caught, you run and I’ll get arrested. It’ll be easier for both of us if you can just bail me out of jail.”

In silence, we pressed on, creeping through the wooden rollercoaster to a metal one, green and purple with menacing twists and turns. To an old soaring set of swings, its decorations torn and metal seats long gone. Through buildings full of debris covered in black mold, most of them gutted. All over, the same spray-painted message read “Temporarily Out Of Service.” A long row of New Orleans style shotgun houses with wrought iron balconies and various storefronts told me we had made it to the front of the park; the main entrance. I stopped before one building and snapped a picture. On the side, someone had hastily spray-painted a poignant question: where do theme parks go when they die?

“Do you hear that?” Jacob asked. When I listened closely, I heard what sounded like a chainsaw in the distance. “They must be working on something over here. We should get out of this area.”

As we started to make our way down the path to where we’d come in, we heard another sound. This one was closer. A lot closer. We ducked behind a nearby shack and crouched down in the bushes surrounding it. It was only when I looked around that I realized that half of the shack was missing. The remains of the shack offered little cover from a nearby walkway, the thin layer of bushes providing a laughable barrier from any approaching dangers.

We must’ve crouched behind that building for a solid, silent 10 minutes, listening intently for any sound, before either of us spoke. “We should wait for the machinery to start up again and make a run for it,” Jacob whispered, “we can use the noise to cover the sound of our footsteps.” I nodded in agreement, my eyes scanning our surroundings for the most logical path back to the wooden rollercoaster.

“Are you ready?” He asked, and I nodded. We both stood up, glancing around the sides of the shack. “Okay, next time the saw fires up, we run.” I nodded again, but as the noise broke the silence, something didn’t feel right. “Get down,” I hissed, and we both dropped back to the ground. Slowly, I peered around the corner of the shack, just in time to see a security guard approaching. He was walking down the path right toward us!

Time to give up, I thought, picturing myself walking toward the guard, wrists out and palms up in surrender, a night in New Orleans Central Booking in my future. I nodded at Jacob so he knew what had happened and glanced back at the security guard, who was still quite a distance from us. He stopped at the top of the path, looked back and forth a few times, then slowly turned and walked away. I couldn’t believe it. I could see him clearly through the bushes, and yet, somehow, he hadn’t seen us. I nodded to Jake once more and again we stood, ready to run.

When the machines started up again, we were off. As I trailed behind Jacob, my camera clanging against my stomach, I was sure the security guard could hear us, but there was little time to care. We quickly retraced our steps back to the wooden rollercoaster, through the hole in the fence, down the access road and past the security guard who still sat at the entrance to the secret path, none the wiser. As we got to my car and climbed in, certain of our freedom, our excitement was palpable. We’d done it. We’d conquered the unconquerable and barely escaped. We had bested Six Flags.

Amusement Parks

Amusement Parks

When I first learned that the topic for our writing project this week was amusement parks, I balked.  What can I say about an amusement park that hasn’t already been said?  You love them or you hate them.  I am in the former camp-I love amusement parks, always have.  I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and have never lived more than an hour’s drive tops away from Kings Island, one of the best amusement parks in the region. 

When the park first opened in the seventies, my mom took us to Kings Island.  At the time I didn’t fully appreciate the sacrifice that was for her financially and how “not fun” it probably was for her to schlep three kids under the age of ten around an amusement park in ninety degree eighty five or so percent humidity weather for twelve hours.  My mom told me years later when I had kids of my own to take to Kings Island that it was all worth it to her when  drug ourselves back to our Pinto station wagon after the 10 pm fireworks display that still concludes every day at the park when I exclaimed, “Thanks, Mom!  This was the happiest day of my life!”  And at the time, it really was. 

When I got older I was able to purchase a Kings Island pass and go dozens of time every summer.  The biggest draw for me was and still is the roller coasters.  Not to be crass, but for me riding a roller coaster is almost as much fun as sex, and in some ways the thrill when the coaster first drops is pretty similar to an orgasm.  I went to Kings Island and rode every coaster they had every summer for many years until the mid- nineties. 

And then something happened that kept me away from Kings Island for nearly twenty years.  I started going bald.  I wasn’t sick.  I learned eventually that I had female pattern baldness and that there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot that could be done for it, but God knows I tried just about every crazy snake oil cure out there.  The best I could do at the time when my hair first started thinning on top was to try to conceal it.  I did this by using a spray on my scalp that matched my hair color.  I was basically spray painting my scalp every day with this stuff to minimize my pale white scalp showing through my ever thinning reddish brown hair.  So what does any of this have to do with Kings Island?  Well the scalp spray was supposed to be waterproof and sweat proof, but it wasn’t.  I had to avoid being in the heat or being anywhere that I might start to sweat too much, because if I wasn’t careful the spray would start running down my face.  It kind of looked like dark red blood. 

Even when my hair loss got progressively worse over the years I still allowed it to keep me from doing things I loved.  I began to wear partial hairpieces which I had glued to the top of my scalp, but even that kept me away from heat-related activities because the glue would liquefy in the heat and would run down into my eyes. 

By 2015 I had become totally bald on the top of my head and I “graduated” to full wigs.  I also got fed up with trying to hide my hair loss and decided it was time to come out.  I posted about it on social media.  I had professional pictures taken of me sans wig and posted those for the world to see.  I made a speech about my hair loss in front of a couple hundred people and I removed my wig at the climax for dramatic effect.  I got a standing ovation.  The speech to this day is available to view on YouTube.  I never shy away from an opportunity now to share about my hair loss, because, as I said in my speech, “We’re all bald in one way or another.”  I never know who it might help.  And I’ve gotten to the age and place in my life where I truly don’t give a shit what people think.  What a place of freedom that is. 

In the process of reclaiming my life now that I no longer felt the need to hide my hair loss at all costs I resumed activities that I thought I would never enjoy again.  I went swimming, biking in the hot sun, and used a sauna.  In 2017 I bought a Kings Island pass and for the first time in so many years I rode all the coasters in the place.  They were even better than I had remembered.  I wore one of my wigs to the park, mainly because I didn't want my head to get sunburned.  I had no issue with my wigs coming loose.  They are high quality and stay put even in high wind situations. 

I remember saying to myself after my first coaster ride in about 20 years, “Wow I think this was one of the happiest days of my life.”  I only wish I hadn’t waited so long. 

Topic: Amusement Parks

Author: Chris Dunn

Sometimes I’m surprised I’m a alive. If you judge my upbringing by modern standards, I should been dead several times over, and my parents should’ve been locked up. I hear horror stories about parents today being separated from their children because they let them walk home from school alone, or dare to let them play outside without a helmet. I never owned a helmet. I walked to and from school every day. I carted my big wheel up to fifth court to go riding with friends at age 6. “Come home when the street lights come on,” my mother would say. That was the only rule. Are things just more dangerous now? Statistics would seem to indicate otherwise. Maybe it’s our constant diet of cop-dramas which insist that there are so many serial killers loose in the world, that there exist specialized crews of incredibly attractive people flying around the country in jets just to thwart them. Or maybe it’s the 24-hour news cycle, leading with bleeding in our faces for 38 years. Whatever the cause for modern day hysteria, all I know is my upbringing was different.

Take for example the time we went to Toronto. It’s was a long time ago, in a land far away, back when a 7-hour drive seemed like a lifetime. Border security was a brief nod for a family of five back in ’75, even for a long-haired, hippy-type like my father. Just a quick, “What’s your purpose here today, eh?” and we were welcomed to Canada. I don’t remember many of the particulars of our visit. I think we were visiting friends, and we probably stayed with them. Maybe there was a motel with a pool and a game room. The farther back I got the more the trips blend together in my mind to become a pleasant collage of smiles and travel, so it’s hard to say, and this trip happened when I was 7, so it’s particularly vague. What I do remember outside of the smiling border agent, was we went to an amusement park.

Now, I don’t recall the name of the place or who we went with, but I do remember my realization upon arrival that this place wasn’t like King’s Island. There weren’t a half dozen roller coasters to choose from and there wasn’t any product/ride fusion; no Smurf’s Adventure, no Days of Thunder Action Theater. This place was more of an adventure/water park - rope bridges, zip lines, pools and water attractions – those kinds of things. So, a little disappointment, but still, we were in a foreign land in a park. It beat a day at school hands down!

We hadn’t brought swim suits, so the water park portion was out, so it was going to be a day of ropes and climbing. I’m sure we had a picnic lunch with us – we always had a picnic lunch – PB&Js where the jelly had soaked through the bread and the whole thing had gotten warm in summer sun. As disgusting as that might be, we weren’t paying those crazy Canadian theme park prices! The upside to lunch is there would often be a coke, if we could swing it. Can you believe there was a time when refills weren’t free?! Sorry, that’s another story.

Now, at some point, somehow, I got separated from the group. Maybe I wandered off. Maybe I was sent off in my sister’s care and we lost each other. Or, most likely, I was given leave to enter one of the rope bridge areas and told to come back when I was through having fun. Left to my own devices, I remember wandering and climbing and marveling at the insanely dangerous nature of the place. There were kids everywhere! Climbing and crawling, pushing and scratching, all with zero supervision. Wooden planks supported by thick knots of brown, coarse rope suspended over harrowing drops while dozens of kids charged about heedless of anything but their own enjoyment.

Other than a terrifying montage of near death experiences, only a few elements from that day stick out. I remember climbing up a cargo net to reach a higher level. The fibers of the rope were scratchy and cut into my hands leaving behind the stench of thousands who had come before me. Three times I quit the ascent only to be faced with the realization that there was nowhere else to go. You had to go forward to get back. The amazing power of desperation propelled me to the top.

Then, I recall a well. A hole was cut in the wooden floor and from it hung suspended a large net of the thick rope – a single escape rope dangled in the middle. One glance at the writhing mass of limbs trapped below and I knew, this was not for me. How were you supposed to escape once you went down? How were you supposed to breathe with all those other kids pushing and pulling, screaming and crushing you? My imagination placed me down among them and I shuddered, trapped in my own horrific vision until a helpful stranger played the old, pretend-to-push-you game. Haha, right? That one’s always funny. But it jolted me out of my stunned fascination, and I beat a hasty retreat before someone decided to go through with the jest for real.

It was about this time, that I wanted out, and with that thought came the realization that I was lost - lost and alone in some crazy, stupid-add Canadian rope park! I didn’t cry. Well, I probably cried a little, but no one saw me, so it didn’t count. Reasoning it out, I determined that wherever my parents were, it wouldn’t be anywhere near this place, and the only way out of this rope-and-kid horror show was to keep moving. Setting my direction forward and my feet to one step after the other, I stomped, climbed, crawled and clawed my way back to concrete paths and all too infrequent shade trees. No one I recognized was in sight.

I knew what I was supposed to do. My mother had given me the talk. “If you’re ever lost, go find an adult, preferably a policeman, tell them your name and that you’re lost, and they’ll help you find us.” But screw that noise! That meant talking to strangers. I’d rather wander for hours and possibly starve to death than initiate contact with someone I didn’t know. Plus, after what I’d already been through, locating a small family in a crowded park seemed a breeze. Thankful for solid ground beneath my feet, I followed the paths around the park looking for landmarks that seemed familiar. At one point, I wandered too close to the water park and a kid soaked my leg with some water-shooting dolphin thing. The embarrassment at my mistreatment was outweighed by the relief the cool water provided. His attack altered my course, and amazingly that course correction put me on a path to find my family in short order.

“Chris! Where have you been?”

A flood of images with biting ropes and clawing hands leapt to my mind, but my family didn’t wait to hear my answer. They just snatched me up and dragged me to the picnic area. A sticky PB&J and a Coca-Cola thick with syrup brought out the bees in force, but they didn’t scare me like they once had, not after the things I had seen…

Topic: The Worst Job I Ever Had

My worst job ever was the one I got right after graduating college. After farting around for 10 years in various colleges while pursuing a career as a professional musician I finally realized that I’d never make it in that field. I had spent a semester in Belmont College in Nashville studying music business and saw an enormous number of drummers way better than me who couldn’t get a job. I had always secretly wanted to be a doctor but when at this point I asked about the possibility of medical school a doctor said, “Your transcript looks like a checkerboard - I mean, you’ve been to five different colleges over 10 years so there’s no way you’d get in!” 

Thus I decided to finish college with a B.S. in Medical Technology. Medical Technologists work in hospital and clinical laboratories - analyzing blood, typing and crossmatching blood, growing and testing microbiological specimens and so on. So since I had always focused on science courses in college up to this point I figured the fastest way to actually graduate & find a job utilizing my accumulated college credits was to go the Med Tech route. 

I got accepted to a medical technology internship at our local hospital. It was a very intense year. The very first day they taught us how to draw blood. I had no idea something like that was part of the job and it sort of freaked me out but I did eventually become pretty good at it, through sheer repetition. In the didactic and clinical sessions we learned urinalysis, clinical biochemistry, blood banking, microbiology and hematology - in short, how to look for anything a doctor might order on blood or urine or stool or any other biological fluid. And we learned how to operate and maintain all the different clinical analyzers.

The day I graduated a friend and I went to Florida. While we were there I decided to look for a job. I thought it would be awesome to live in Florida, in the warm weather and near the beaches and so on. I answered an ad in a local Daytona paper for a med tech job in a little town called Inverness. It was about halfway between Tampa and Ocala. It was a night shift position but since I really needed a job I thought I couldn’t be too choosy. I went for an interview and to my astonishment I was offered the job right away.

I moved down to Inverness a couple of weeks later and was basically thrown in the deep end. There was very little in the way of orientation and I had to just sort of learn as I went. And I was painfully insecure, I had fantastic theoretical knowledge but I had a very hard time actually applying what I knew. It was an insanely busy lab as well, especially on nights. The doctors all wanted their patients lab results on the charts by 7 AM, when they rounded. There were so many patients whose blood we had to draw that in order to get their labs finished and onto the charts on time we had to go out and begin collecting the specimens at midnight. Then doctors would call and bitch us out for waking their patients up so early! 

And the lab equipment at this hospital was somewhat old and finicky. In particular there was a chemistry analyzer called a Gilford that I could count on to screw up every morning right when I was at my busiest. And I’d have to intermittently drop everything I was doing to run to the ER and collect STAT labs. Plus my chemistry supervisor was this appallingly supercilious and immensely annoying person who claimed she NEVER made a mistake and was always on my case about something.

It turned out that I just couldn’t get used to working third shift either. I never could figure out whether to go right to bed when I got off, or wait and time my sleep so that I’d be getting up right before time to go in.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was an episode one night when I was drawing blood on this extremely large lady. I had to lean over her awkwardly to get to her arm because she refused to roll off of her side. She farted right in my face and I decided right then and there that I wasn’t getting paid enough to put up with all the stress of this job.

I found a job close to my hometown and very happily gave my two weeks notice. I took great pleasure in the fact that the chemistry supervisor was going to have to actually work now because my departure left them so short staffed. But once on my new job I discovered that it too had its own plethora of stressors. So I learned that the grass really isn’t greener on the other side of the fence. 

But it turns out that the doctor who advised me not to apply to medical school was wrong, as I’ve been a doctor for over 20 years now. I was working in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia when the first Desert Storm misadventure took place in 1990 and as the SCUD missiles were raining in I decided my job security was pretty shaky. So I bought textbooks on organic chemistry, biology, analytical chemistry and physics, studied them for a year to prepare for the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test), took the MCAT, applied to med school and got accepted. It turned out that philosophies had changed and by the time I applied the med schools were looking for candidates with more varied life experiences. People may still fart in my face but at least now I’m making about 10 times as much so I just smile and hold my breath!

The Worst Job I Ever Had

     The worst job I ever had also came with the highest annual salary I've ever had.  I was making six figures and had been hired to work Monday-Friday as a corporate nurse consultant for a group of privately owned nursing facilities all within an hour driving distance of my home.  I'd been working in long term care in one form or fashion or another since 1991.  I'd started as a floor nurse working night shift in a nursing home and by 2017 had worked my way up the nursing home ladder.  This was supposed to be my dream job.  And it wasn't the job itself that it made it the worst ever.  It was my boss, my direct supervisor, that made this the worst job ever. 
     My boss, let's call him Donald, not his real name, oversaw all of the facilities now that his dad was semi-retired. Donald was 40 years old and he was the son of the owner of this group of nursing homes.  He drove a Saab, lived in a mansion, and was born into money.  To be fair he did have a college degree and he had obtained his license in nursing home administration. 
     On the first day he took me on a tour of one of the facilities.  He was actually serving as the interim administrator for this particular building at the moment because the prior administrator just "hadn't worked out."  I never did get the story as to whether she'd resigned or been fired or what.  As we entered the unit a resident was sitting on the floor next to her wheelchair.  She didn't appear to be in pain or distress.  I thought maybe she had fallen or perhaps she had decided of her own volition to sit on the floor.  I mean, after all, we were on the dementia unit and sometimes confused nursing home residents sit on the floor just for kicks or for reasons only known to themselves.  Two nursing assistants rushed to either side of her and lifted her into the wheelchair.  Not cool on their part.  Correct protocol would have been to have the nurse assess the resident for injury prior to moving the resident.  And then they should have used a gait belt to safely transfer the resident, but they did what is informally known as a "chicken wing" transfer to lift the lady back into her chair.  The gait belt is supposed to go around the resident's waist and instead of pulling on the persons arms and possibly injuring a frail elderly person you hold onto to the belt instead. 
     Donald began berating the nursing assistants in front of me, in front of the other staff in the area, and more importantly in front of the resident herself, "You guys are doing that all wrong!  Why the hell didn't you use a gait belt?!"  The nursing assistant looked at the ground and said she was sorry.  Donald then addressed the nurse behind the desk and told her she needed to write these people up. 
The resident looked frightened as if she had done something wrong and perhaps she was the one getting written up. 
     When we went downstairs to the laundry room we came upon an employee with her cell phone out.   Donald began yelling at her because she had broken the no cell phones in the work area rule.  She protested in broken English that she was taking a picture of a coat that had made it's way to the laundry room.  Her plan was to show the picture to one of the residents upstairs who was missing a coat.  She didn't want the lady to have to come down to the laundry and she thought it would save time so she didn't have to schlepp the coat upstairs. I thought it made good sense and in her defense there was a coat laid out on the table.  Her story seemed legit to me, but Donald wasn't having it and he found the laundry supervisor and within earshot of the lady and all of her coworkers proclaimed that she should be written up for having her cell phone out in the work area.  Then he introduced me and said she should be embarrassed for her behavior in front of the new corporate nurse.  This woman was old enough to be my mother and her eyes brimmed with tears.  "I'm sorry, Miss.  I love the residents here and I try my best to do a good job."  I took her hand and told her I was honored to meet her, that no apology was necessary and that I was sure she was an asset to the facility.  Donald had already headed upstairs. 
     After the tour we met in his office and he asked what I thought.  I told him it was a beautiful facility but that I thought our management styles were very different.  He asked how I would have handled the situations and I said that I would never reprimand an employee in front of a resident or in front of their coworkers.  I also said I'd want to get the employee's side of the story and pointed out that he hadn't given really given the employees a chance.  "I like to manage by fear," he told me.  "Fear can be a motivating factor," he told me.  Yes, Donald actually said that.  What had I gotten myself into?! 
     I've always preferred to work through lunch and eat at my desk.  Then at some point in the day I like to get out of the office and get a Starbuck's coffee.  This has been my habit for years and it probably started once I stopped being an hourly employee and entered management.  Imagine my surprise when during my second week of work, Donald followed me out into the parking lot as I was making my Starbucks run.  He explained that he didn't let his employees leave the building during the work day and that he couldn't have me getting to leave when they weren't allowed to leave.  I asked what the reasoning was behind this.  He said that they had coffee and free food in the break room and he wanted everyone to be available at all times.  I explained that I was just going to run up to Starbucks and that I'd be right back.  He told me he was going to have to insist that I go back inside and not go to Starbucks, that if I wanted coffee they had some downstairs.  I decided it was pointless to argue with him so I sullenly went back to my desk.  After that he got into his Saab and was gone for about 15 minutes.  He returned with a venti Starbucks cup in hand and casually stopped by my office ostensibly to discuss a work issue but the real point of his visit was to make sure I knew my place. 
     I almost quit that day but I decided to think about it first.  The next day I got called up to one of our facilities about an hour away because they were having their annual inspection survey.  The administrator was in a panic because her period had started and she didn't have any tampons.  She burst into the director of nursing's office and asked if any of us had any.   When we turned her down she became frantic, "What am I going to do?!"  I was puzzled and asked why she didn't just run down to the CVS and get some tampons.  She explained that they were not allowed to leave the building. And she didn't leave the building-she feared for her job. 
     The next morning I was back at the facility where Donald was filling in as administrator.  I sat in the morning meeting with the managers and he berated them and told them they were doing things half-assed and that he was tired of their shit.  Something snapped.  I gathered up my things and wordlessly walked out of the meeting and out the front door.  He texted me, "Where are you?" and "Call me ASAP!"  My phone began ringing as I drove home but I didn't answer. 
     I turned off the ringer and typed my resignation email.  I told him that I was resigning my position as Corporate Nurse Consultant effective immediately and that due to my brief tenure with the company I didn't think a two week notice was necessary or appropriate.  I thanked him for the opportunity and told him that due to the differences in our management styles, the job was not proving to be a good fit for me.  And I never looked back. 
     Now my job is being an inspector of nursing homes for the state of Ohio and once two years have elapsed since I worked for Donald I could be sent into one of his facilities.  I think I'm going to be carrying a venti Starbucks coffee in my hand when I walk through the front door. 

"If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em" - Bugs Bunny

Topic: "The Worst Job I Ever Had"
by Drew Oetzel

In the late 90s I finally decided to quit my non-profit jobs and sell out. It was the dot-com boom and I decided I wanted a piece of it. I had many an interview at companies now long gone - some even iconic of the era. The now infamous Pets.com was looking for an Exchange administrator - sadly they didn’t call back after my interview. Finally though, I got a lead on an amazing well-paying job managing the web page of Banana Republic. It wasn’t a tech startup, but it truly was the cutting edge of e-commerce. I lied at the interview and said I loved shopping at Banana Republic and hoped they wouldn’t notice my interview clothes were more Target/Goodwill than BR. Lucky for me I got the job!

All three of the e-commerce pages offered by The Gap, Inc. were quite complex, even way back in the early days of the web. Everyday there were complicated updates that had to be pushed out to the web servers and databases that ran the web pages and my job was at the center of that. I worked with the web developers, the photographers, and the pricing and marketing people to make sure all the elements of the web page came together for the daily update of the site. It was an exciting and stressful job with deadlines and many different types of people to interact with. Everyone from the nerds who wrote the code, to well-dressed and perfectly coiffed fashion photographers and marketers who made the pictures and decided what would be featured and what would be put on sale.

During my first few weeks on the job I was trained in the painstaking and manual process of facilitating this daily update. My role had a hand in every step: as the update was first generated, then sent to QA (quality assurance), then on to staging and then eventually, I personally had the stressful job of updating the live web page itself. I remember once during those first few eventful weeks spending an afternoon trying to track down a picture of a pair of ladies wool socks that had gone missing from both staging and the main web page. No one had a picture of them anywhere! I jokingly suggested to the photography maven from Banana Republic that I thought I saw an identical pair on the Old Navy web page, and couldn’t I just grab the picture from there? She looked aghast and even when I assured her I was joking - she still seemed very disappointed in me. One of my counterparts, the manager of the Gap.com web page, finally found a copy of the picture left over on a server that had been reapportioned from BananaRepublic.com to his domain. That night I went home tired but happy knowing that I’d saved the day for all the ladies who wanted to pay too much for some grey wool socks on BananaRepublic.com!

Up to this point this was quite possibly my best job. It was fun and exciting - sure it was stressful at times, but there was always something going on. My desk phone was ringing and my email was pinging constantly from different departments checking in on their updates and the status of the daily push. During my third week on the job when I first started getting my stride I found out that BananaRepublic.com would be moving to the web page management software that OldNavy.com was already using. What I didn’t realize was this software was basically an automated me. It facilitated web page updates and allowed various teams throughout the company to work together seamlessly on web page updates and QA. Then once it was all ready it would automatically push the updates from staging to production - all the web page manager had to do was click on a button in the software that said “Deploy.” 

By week four this software was fully implemented and all the teams had started using it. My job started to slow down. At first it was a gradual slowdown but by the end of my second month on the job my daily tasks had dwindled to around 15-20 mins of work. I sat at my desk and waited for the phone to ring or email to ding but not much came through - the software kept track of everything and it NEVER lost any sock pictures! Once a day I got the go ahead and pushed the big deploy button and watched as the software did automatically what I used to do by hand. My counterpart on the Old Navy web page pulled me aside and said: “Isn’t this awesome? Our job is so much easier now!” I smiled and agreed with him - but didn’t really feel that way. I was bored and my ability to entertain myself with non-work things was quite limited. The office internet connection was blocked for all sites except the three main store sites. If you wanted normal outside access that had to be granted with special fiat from IT and even then it was carefully monitored based on the web proxy logs. I found myself shopping on Gap.com and OldNavy.com just to pass the time - refusing to shop at BananaRepublic.com since it seemed like the same crap as the other two just at twice the price! I still have a few tank tops from those sheer boredom purchases back in the day. 

By month three I was losing my mind. I had nothing to do but none of my bosses or coworkers seemed to care that I sat idly at my desk all day and then pushed a button around 4:15 PM every afternoon. I had a modicum of privacy in my cube so I read some paperbacks on the down-low and spent long long stretches in the men’s room reading the SF Chronicle front to back. I even took to reading the sports page since there was another guy in the office who also had nothing to do and had decided to spend his days wandering from cubicle to cubicle kibitzing about sports. The first few times he stopped by I just said: “I don’t really follow sportsball . . .” but now when he stopped by, thanks to my bathroom reading, I was able to chat about the sports controversies of the day. This alone could kill 20-30 minutes of what had become a grueling 7.5 hour daily slog. Turns out trying to look busy and worrying about being found out to be an overpaid slacker was twice as stressful and annoying as actually just working all day. 

Mid-month five I was reaching the end of my tether. The final straw came when my manager said in a meeting that we needed to staff up our team with at least two more team members. My immediate though was, I don’t know what these new chumps are gonna do, but they better not take any of my 15 mins of precious duties! I knew then that I had to quit. Where to go after this? The answer was right in front of me. I went to work for the company that made the web page automation software that had ruined this job: Interwoven.