They Called Fire

I don't consider myself a morning person. I mean, I REALLY don't do well in the mornings. Even as a kid, I couldn't do them. My Dad used to have to wake me up after I had already snoozed the alarm clock to death. He called me "Giggles." This, of course, was purely facetious.

To this day, I still don't wake up very easily. I have to set two alarm clocks to make sure I get up. Because, chances are that I won't.

Well, I've been working the morning shift at work. This has it's pros and cons, of course.

This morning was particularly hard to get up. And for once, it wasn't my fault.

Usually, I force myself to stay awake until at least 2 a.m. Going to bed earlier just emphasizes the fact that I am growing older. And I will not go down without a fight.

So, this night, I couldn't do the whole "stay up late because I'm cool" thing and was drifting off at about 1:30 a.m. or so.

And that's when it happened. This excruciating noise began to pound through the walls of my apartment building. I was thinking about just sleeping through it, but the ringing just would not stop.

I walked out of my room to find my roommates getting ready to go outside.

The fire alarm was not going to let anyone rest tonight.



So I grabbed a jacket and stepped into the frigid night air. My Hello Kitty pajama pants did not do much for warmth.

There were groups of people standing outside, waiting for something to happen.

But, nothing did. The fire alarm just kept ringing. And we kept standing, shivering it out.

I was beginning to hope that I would witness the apartment crash to the ground in a blaze, or at least smell some sort of smoldering something or other.



Anything to let our freezing not be in vain.

I glanced at my watch. 1:40 a.m. Still no sign that anyone with proper authority had recognized our disaster.

I reached for my cellphone and called the security guard. There had recently been some sort of murder in my apartment complex, and the owners thought that plastering the security guard's phone number all over the place would let our worried little hearts rest.

So I called the number. It rang about five times. And wouldn't you know it, no one answered. Just the lousy answering machine.

"The bastard is probably asleep in his nice warm bed," I groaned.

I then called the next number on our "Emergency" list, courtesy of the apartment complex. The man gave a standard, "things are being taken care of bullshit" reply to my quelm.

We stood outside with the ringing and flashing lights for another 20 minutes.

At about 2 a.m., a fire truck rolled into the apartment complex. It took Hillsborough County 30 minutes to respond to a fire alarm going off at an apartment complex full of students.

"Nice to know that in a real emergency we'd be safe," I said sarcastically.

A fat man in his warm fuzzy jacket hopped off the truck and strolled up towards the building. No rush. No alarm here. I should have bribed him with donuts. I bet firemen like donuts, too.

An ending

I don't like to cry. I especially don't like to cry in public. There's something so humiliating about putting yourself out there like that. There's something shameful in being honest about your emotions with other people. I don't know why, but that's the way it is.

I can remember several moments that I've cried in public:
In fifth grade, when I had a 103 degree fever.
In my tenth grade math class, when one of my brothers was kicked out of our house.
Two weeks after I got my driver's license, when I got my first speeding ticket.
Last Saturday at work.

Before I went in, I wondered if I should call out because I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and I felt like I was teetering on the edge of an emotional cliff. But I went in anyways. I figured keeping myself busy would somehow keep me from thinking about how miserable I was. About how terrified I was. About how I had let things get to this.

So I wore my best mask. I used my best automated "I'm fine, how are you?" responses.

It worked for about an hour and a half.

Then, one of my managers asked me if I was ok. I said I was fine.
"Are you sure? You seem flustered," she said.
"No, I'm ok. I'm just dealing with a few things," I trailed off.
"Nothing wrong here?"

Why, oh why couldn't she just drop it? Every lying answer I gave only made things harder and harder for me to bear.

"No, just some stuff at home," I said.

But that was the final straw. I couldn't look her in the eyes. I could feel my face getting red and blotchy. I could feel my eyes swell, threatening to spill over. I tried to blink it out. I tried to think about something positive.

She just stood there waiting. It's like she knew this was coming, and she was just trying to coax it out of me all along. I had held it all day, and I couldn't hold it any longer. This was it. I was breaking.

I started to cry, right there by the front registers. My manager let me leave the floor. I trudged up the stairs, trying my best to hold it in. I futilely wiped my eyes in an attempt to hide the tears staining my cheeks. The tears that were leaving behind evidence that nothing, in fact, was alright.

I got to the employee bathroom where I sat on the floor and cried.

I have a few days off. I think it will be good for me.

How old is too old?

Imagine seeing this



on this



WTF

Zebra Bites

Hung over. Not the best way to go to work.

Especially when they surprise you with register training.

Nevermind standing around the store, keeping to myself while I fold clothes.

At least I got to hear an amazing story. About zebras.

I was ringing up this older lady, and decided to make small talk. One of the shirts she was buying had zebras on it, and me, being the animal print fiend that I am, told her how much I liked the shirt.

She laughed and said she was buying it for her neice. Her neice that got bit by a zebra once.

WHAT?!

The lady started to cackle at the thought of seeing her poor neice opening the Christmas present only to find the one thing in the world that terrifies her most. Zebras.

How in the hell does someone get bitten by a zebra? Apparently as a child, the neice was at a zoo with her family, stuck out her hand towards a zebra, and the zebra bit it. The neice remembers trying to scream, but nothing came out, like in one of those bad dreams. The lady told me that everyone just couldn't stop laughing when it happened.
They even took pictures of it.

That's a little fucked up. Getting bitten by a zebra as a child clearly has had an effect on this poor girl, as she is still terrified by them. I'm sure they bring out the pictures every once in a while just to shake her up a bit. I can hear it now:

"Oh, remember that time when soandso got bitten by a zebra?! Hahahaa!"

The neice probably secretly wants to kill them all. And I'm not talking about zebras.

Sober Friday

Today, I was up at the front of the store folding clothes and eavesdropping on people coming and going.

I was listening in on this blond lady in her late 40s. I heard her ask the person on the other end of her cell phone,
"When did it happen?"

Her mother died.

The blond woman started crying right there on the spot.

"I can't believe she's gone," she repeated over and over through her muffled tears. Her husband held her and slowly escorted her out of the store while a sad song filtered through the speakers.

It made me want to cry. I wanted to hug her, to somehow make her feel better even though I knew that a simple hug never could.

My parents are getting older. They will die someday, and that scares me. I will have to continue on without their guidance.

Sometimes I think that I haven't been a good enough daughter. That I haven't thanked them enough. That I've asked for too much and given too little back.

What a solemn night.

Dazzled

I saw a guy in a silver sequin suit and top hat while I was at work.
It made my night.

Drug Test, Schmug Test

Alright, kids. I finally did it. I finally buckled down. I gave up my moaning, my groaning and my hopes of becoming a hobo. I got the job.

My first day was Sunday. Easy, Easy, Easy.

I have to admit, I was scared that they were going to make me do a drug test.

Not because I do drugs. I don't.

Rather, because of an unfortunate drug test experience I once had.

It was fall of 2006. I had just moved up to Tampa for my first semester at USF. I didn't really know a whole lot of people up here, and I figured I would just kinda do something on my own and apply to work at Howl-O-Scream. (See Previous Blog Posts)

So there I was, filling out paper work to be some sort of ghoul or demon and they asked if I could do a drug test. No problem.



Boy, was I ever wrong.

I walked down this rinky-dink road to some motor home shack stationed out in the middle of nowhere in some corner on Busch Gardens' ground. I walked up the creaky stairs and into this room where several people sat waiting.

"Are you going to need help going pee?" some creepy Chinese guy asked me.

"Excuse me?" I responded.

He was scrawny. His hair was too short. I looked at the book in his hand: The Life of Pi. This could be nothing good.

"Oh, I didn't mean to scare you," he replied.

"I think I have it under control," I said as I took my seat. Far, far away.

I waited for about 10 minutes, and a nurse called out my name. I followed her to this back room where the Chinese guy waited.

He handed me a cup, a very large cup, and instructed me to pee in it.

Well, wasn't that just perfect?

He took me across the small room to a stall. Yes, I had a stall all to myself.

He stepped back and waited.

AWKWARD.

I took a deep breath and told myself it was no big deal that he was in the same room. Listening. And being creepy.

So I proceeded to attempt filling the cup. That's when he started talking to me.

Needless to say, I could not do it. I could not pee with some strange man talking to me through a small, thin stall door. For all I knew, he was one of those weirdies with some pee fetish. It only makes sense.



So I was escorted back to the waiting room, where I chugged a bottle of water. I needed to get out of this place. And fast.

I grabbed the cup from the Chinese guy and peed as quickly as possible.

And then, to my horror, he started to touch my hair.

But I had to let him. Because he needed a hair sample. A LOT of hair. Three big chunks from the base of my head, to be exact.

Now, this was a horrifying experience for me. And it only got worse.

I was at school the next day, the first day of classes. I was sitting on this bench reading a newspaper by the Burger King waiting for my lecture hall to open up, when I happened to glance up and none one other than the Chinese guy was walking by! I quickly looked back down, praying to God he didn't see me.

Out of all of the people on campus, why, oh why, did I have to run into him?!

He didn't stop, so I figured I was ok. About 15 minutes later, the lecture hall was cleared out, so I stood up to make my way over. I looked over by the Burger King tables.

There he was. The Chinese guy. He was just standing there, watching.

And that's my creepy Chinese guy drug test story.