Mike Literman

My second job was pretty awesome. When I was about to turn 16, my uncle got me a job at a party place. It was the place that you would call to get balloons, clowns, and streamers. Cool, right? So, having taken seven years of Tae-Kwon-Do, I was the perfect fit for this job. What job you ask? Why, dressing up as Power Rangers and going to people’s houses for birthday parties. Not just Power Rangers, but I also dressed up as other stuff, too, like Mickey Mouse, and maybe Fred Flintstone. Possibly Barney, too. I know they did Barney. So, onto the stories.

This was a dozen years ago so you have to remember that XBox, Playstation, and the internet weren’t as prevalent as they are in today’s society. That’s an important fact to remember for this.

We serviced many areas of town, uptown, downtown, around town. The majority of them, though, were A Street, B Street, which, if you remember from your Social Studies class, are not pleasing, pleasant, or welcoming areas. They were basically, if not 100%, the ghetto. So picture this, if you will…

I get out of the car, a 15 year old scrawny kid dressed like the red Power Ranger in the ghetto. It was the perfect setup for anything, right?

I go to these houses and the kids loved me. It was up to me whether or not I talked, but I had to keep character the whole time. Most of the time, I didn’t talk because I didn’t want to give away my identity of a non-Power Ranger. I had to keep up appearances, you know? There was one time where I remember talking because I taught a karate class in the peoples front yard. Front kick, back kick, left punch, right punch. I used to mess with kids all the time by making them do left kick, right kick, both kicks. Kids can’t do both kicks. Adults can’t do both kicks. Jean Claude can do both kicks. Jean Claude could do splits no problem.

The parents though, the parents…they didn’t care. It was one hour of their time, your time, the kids time that they hated life more than they did and hour prior to your arrival. They used to just leave the room, sometimes the house, for the 45 minutes you were there. Most of the times they just smoked. Someone I went with, probably a magician, told me that the parents smoked weed in the other room while he performed. Lame. I went with a clown once. She had sweet boobs, I remember that.

I am going to leave you with that. Perfect. See you next time.

I’ve put a lot of thought into this and I’ve decided to do it. I’ve had a lot of jobs with many different fields and none of them have been without stories. Therefore, I have decided to go, as best as I can, chronologically, through my positions in the work force and let you in on the work ethic part of my life. Here goes…

My first job was at a bakery. I was 14 at the time and a friend of the family “hooked me up”. It was a dish washing job on the other part of town. My mom had to drive me to work for three hours every Saturday and Sunday. I worked there for about three weeks before another kid by the name of Mike came to work there and help out. He was trouble. I remember going to his house once for something and it was covered in garbage and he showed me porn under his mattress. Cliche.

So I worked there from the time they opened to the time they closed which wasn’t that long, like 5 hours. Their only job was to bake the bread and have it ready for the delivery guy to come. I had to clean up later in the day, mop floors, clean bread mixers, etc. At fourteen, I was very stupid. Case and point: I used to do a fantastic job cleaning everything but spent the next day crying at home? No, not because I was a wimp, but because I used to clean the floors with bleach and ammonia which is basically one step away from mustard gas, but it sure did the job.

During the week, the bakery was open to the public and they made sandwiches in the small front of the warehouse. They had all the fixuns that anyone could want, including my still favorite cheese, sage cheddar. I used to make sandwiches with Mike that were as big as our heads on bread that was minutes old, then my boss decided that he could monetize off that so he charged us like $3.50 a week for the ability to make/eat sandwiches. We gladly paid since those sandwiches would be the best we would ever had. We’re talking like 5 different meats, vegetables, sauces, spices, and cheeses.

We then got a commercial dishwasher that we weren’t allowed to use much because it cost like $0.50 a run because of all the hot water and soaps and stuff. There was no set limit, but it was about what they were paying me at the time so it made sense to get, I suppose.

Then I messed up.

I don’t know what happened. I was working one morning, by myself. I think it was a Sunday. I was cleaning pots and pans and came across a knife. I might have dropped the knife on the commercial grade plastic sink, you know, like the one you use in the basement to get paint off paint brushes. A chunk of plastic shot across the room and I thought it was awesome. I was so stupid. I then, voluntarily, hacked away at the sink, taking away quarter inch pieces from the top of it. Then I went home. The next day I got a call from my boss asking if I had done it. I think that I lied at first and then fessed up. To this day, I don’t know why I did it and I’m still ashamed. Needless to say, the next week at the end of the day my boss said that they wouldn’t need my anymore.

I don’t miss the job, obviously, but I do miss those sandwiches.

When I moved to the city, I moved two blocks from one of their restaurants and then it promptly changed owners and removed my favorite sandwich from the menu. I deserved that.

As someone who doesn’t drink, I would personally love to see this day wiped from existence. A year ago today, I had the longest day of my life. I will talk about it, but you won’t think it’s that bad because I am definably in the minority here.

Wake up at 8 and make breakfast for around 20 people. It was awesome. Green waffles, green rice krycThe cispie treats, green eggs, etc. It was delicious and awesome. Then it all started to go downhill. We went down to the bars at about noon or one and went to one after the other for about 8 hours. It was awful. Everyone and their mothers were out and every one of their stupid boyfriends. Seriously, beer attracts stupid boyfriends. Stupid boyfriends attract hair gel. Hair gel attracts stupid girls. The cycle continues. It got colder as the day went on and I had to spend my time babysitting drunk kids to make sure they didn’t sleep with horrifically ugly birds.

I just drove seven well lubed up people to get more drunk. Screw this day, I’m going to the movies to see The Goonies. You think I’m joking? I’m not joking.

Dear Craigslist,

I love you. Don’t change a thing. I don’t want to see background colors, styled text, flashy graphics, or anything. You do a wonderful job at what you do. My only complaint is that there is no justice. It’s just an open area for scammers to take advantage of unsuspecting people. Having been one of those people, I care about all the old and naive people that use your site. I once lost $600 on Amazon because of a sweet deal on a laptop. Why I thought that it would be a good idea to use Western Union and not their wonderfully secure system is beyond me. It was my appetite for punishment, probably. Anyhow, back to you. Any time I buy something off your site, I feel like I am going to be stabbed and robbed simultaneously when I go to get the item. I once bought a Wii of some dude with the worst skin condition I’ve ever seen. Why don’t people like that wear gloves? Dude was gross.

Since I have been taken advantage of before, I find myself with the necessary “street smarts” to take care of myself when in “the net”. If there was some sort of central meeting place, that would be awesome. Like a Craigslist center of commerce where all deals went down, so when some creepy pedophile wants to sell me old XBox games, we have to make the deal in the same dark, cold, damp office room that others are buying old tires and Beenie Babies. I just like having people around me when I am making my deals. I’m not a huge fan of things that fell of a truck. I mean, don’t get me wrong. If I knew a guy I would be all over it. I’ve got to stretch my money out as far as it can go and it’s strange how things that are illegal are so much less. Seems like it should be more as there is no danger with buying things from stores. Must be the overhead.

In closing…Craigslist, I will continue to use your services, but please do something about the vultures and dudes with wicked eczema. Maybe a glove sale. I know a guy.

—-Dictated but never sent—-

I went, I heard I left. It’s funny, I get there, pay a hidden fee of $5 which my girlfriend, Jessika, so conveniently forgot to mention until we were getting in the car, and sit down. It’s fine. I don’t expect much as I have never been to a poetry reading that grabs me by the balls as to say, “Hey, you are interested in this.”.

First thing the MC says, “We’ve got 18, well, 14 people reading tonight…”. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a long reading. If it was one dude, reading from a book, I might be into that. Eh, scratch that. Since I don’t read, I don’t really care. Ignorant, I know, but it was my upbringing. I’ll tell you some other time in detail, I don’t feel like it now.

First: Not too bad. Some were short, some were longer, all were relatively followable. It took me a minute to get into it, the whole poetry thing. Like a running start to become moderately interesting.

Second: Pretty, gave up on poetry, and read three very linear, easy to follow works.

Third: Quite dreadful. Everyone was supposed to have 5 minutes. This guy and his dozen full pages, knowing he had to read fast to get all the “important” content out in time, did his best Micro Machine guy impression and made his work suffer. I don’t know. Some run on sentence about God and existence.

Fourth: Weird. Long haired veteran to poetry read three or four works that made less than little to no sense. He had a very soft voice, too, which made it harder to pay attention.

Fifth: Kristy. Our friend. Read a story that was well written, quickly read, and intelligible. Win. That’s all it takes.

Sixth: Seriously?! A joke. Here’s what happened in numbered order to make it more dramatic.
1. Dude has twenty or so index cards with assorted phrases on them.
2. He read the cards one at a time.
3. Places each card on the table side by side
4. Finishes last card.
5. Picks up one card at random.
6. Reads card.
7. Repeat steps 1-7 again.
Honestly. You thought it was going somewhere, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t.

Seventh: MC. It was good. A slight bit of oddity and stragity. Not a word? Honestly? You’re going to call me out on it? Story about woodchucks and zombies. Enjoyable, humorous, witty, and entertaining.

Break: Leave.

It’s not that we couldn’t take it, it’s just that we thought of a few things that we would rather do. It was like a, “Woops, I shouldn’t be here.”. Was it over our heads? Maybe. Are we stupid? Absolutely not. Was that poetry acceptable? Half. At best.