personal stories – Page 6 – Aremyfeetofftheground

Shaving the dead

Sorry. Not a story for bed time.

Have been in the bad place for a few days now with depression. There’s the cue for you to abort this reading, if you like……the picture is not of me, but of my phantom friend.

If you’re a kindred spirit, you might identify with some of these:

Sleep (fitfully) for ten or eleven hours
Waken for a bit, realize you need one more, then drift back.
Shuffle to kitchen for coffee, which clears the fog somewhat.
Eat some little thing (for “energy”, not appetite)
It does not work as promised.
Back into bed, this time with the door open. Two cats join you.
You think “Shit, I can’t do this”, and force yourself into the bathroom for a shower.
Brush your teeth, a must. You never skip this. Not yet.
God damn, I really need to shave. I look like shit. But not today. Tomorrow, I’ll do it.

I think of getting dressed, when the back story about shaving hits me.

The first person that I shaved, other than myself, was my father. In his 70th year, he was dying of pancreatic cancer. Before I go further, I will say that all of the caregivers I have met are worthy of high praise. Nurses especially, for what they do, their long hours, and their continual need for more help.

Dad was always a stickler for his appearance, but once he started to decline, of course he could not take care of himself. I asked a nurse one day if I could give him a shave. She was apologetic that they hadn’t done it in a few days, and was appreciative of the help. Looking at his jaundiced eyes without crying was difficult. That was the last shave he ever got.

My younger brother, about whom I have already written, died in his home, where we had set up a hospital bed at his request. I had stayed there for several nights, when his partner asked me if I could give him a shave. The same eyes studied me with regret and tears. I wonder if he knew who I was.

At last, my old father-in-law. He lived far away, and we used to visit once every month or two. He always made sure that he was presentable when he knew we were coming, and that included a shave. There eventually came a time when he had lost the will and the strength to do it, and I once more got out the hot cloths and warmed up the shaving cream. This third set of hopeless eyes was almost too much.

Now, I have given myself a figurative slap, and said “God dammit, you’re not there yet. Do the fucking shave!”

Nobody’s going to catch me looking like hell, and staring out of those 8-ball eyes.
Selfish, maybe. Running scared, maybe….but I would not want to inflict those moments on anyone who still loves me.

Parental recollections

Having the privilege of being there at my son’s birth, after many hours of my wife’s painful labour.
Quitting smoking and deporting our cat to the in-laws while the baby was growing.
Being zombies for the first few months because of rocking chair duties to help calm him down from his colic.
Missing, by minutes, the birth of my daughter. I had taken her mother to the hospital, with my son in the car, because it was a late night surprise, and then thought I had enough time to take him to my mother’s place and still make it back. Arrived breathlessly at the hospital, only to have a nurse announce that I had a daughter (delivered by the nurse, because a doctor was not on hand at the time).
Walking through a park with my family and some friends, with my son toddling beside us and our daughter in a carriage. She became fussy, and I picked her up and rocked her while singing “the bear went over the mountain”. I think it was her favourite song at the time, and seemed to be the only thing that would calm her down.
Bedtime stories, starting off with the mythical Dr. Seuss, then books by Richard Scary, to name a few. One of them involved complex cartoon pictures, in which you had to find a little critter called “Goldbug”. That certainly developed a spirit of competition between the two kids, and a little jealousy when one got the better of the other.
I actually read the complete “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” books to them. It took about a year. Daughter lost interest, but the son couldn’t get enough.
Piggyback rides down the hallway to their bedrooms, as part of the nightly routine, with the wife in the background telling me to “get them the hell to bed”.
Singing them to sleep when the reading and games didn’t work. Mostly Beatles and Wings. If the singing didn’t work, we pulled out a small electric keyboard on which I taught them to play “Smoke on the Water”, I think.
Having my son come home from school, very upset, because he had lost a model dinosaur that he had brought there that morning. This was in November, and we got pretty cold while retracing his steps back there until we found it.
Driving my son to a job interview quite far from home, then stopping on the side of the road. When he asked what for, I said “you’re going to drive”. It was a standard. He eventually got the hang of it.
Taking my daughter on her first driving lesson (same car) around the oval up at the high school. She found it difficult, and more than once stalled it, but that is to be expected. She does claim, though, that I got impatient and said to her “the lesson is over.” I do not remember that.
Physically barring the door so she could not get out to go to a friend’s place late one night. It had been freezing rain, everything was slick, and I just said no. She hated me for a while.
Being involved in a serious accident one winter night (not hurt), and arriving home at about 2 a.m. Kids were crying in the hallway.
Coming home from work, with my daughter waiting. I tried picking her up and slinging her over my shoulder (she was about 11 years old), and instead slipped, collapsed, and wrecked some stuff in the hall.
Having tickling sessions on the upstairs bed when I went up to get changed after work. The two of them would run up there, and we would see who cried Uncle first.
Bedbugs. Lice. Fleas. Numerous cats.
Driving my girl two hours through a snowstorm to attend a talent contest. Spending 14 hours there, only to have her fail the audition.
Taking a load of teenagers to downtown Toronto so they could attend some concert or other, and spending several hours bumbling around waiting for them to get out.
Fond memories of going to plays and concerts with my daughter.
Going fishing with my son. Not catching much, but just going fishing.
Golfing with both of them at one time or another
Many, many trips to North Bay, complete with serious sibling rivalry in the backseat. Never ever again will I put the four of us in one vehicle.
Thinking about taking my son to a strip club, then changing my mind.
Having a bunch of kids knock on my door, screaming that my son had been hurt. Running down the roadway to find that he had broken his wrist in two after a roller blading accident. He then went on to a career of fairly regular calamities, including another broken arm, elbow, and various accidents with saws etc.
Taking him for a dental emergency to a guy that turned out to be something of a butcher. I could hear the screams from the waiting room, got him the hell out of there, and took him to a place that did sleep dentistry, a thousand bucks later.

Looking back, I loved (almost) every minute of it, and surely would not change it at all.

Randy Randy

So many human foibles have we. So many.
In the mid 1960’s, we lived in a fourplex, and had some new neighbors move in. It was a mother and her teenaged son, and we got to know them and to be friends. The son’s name was Randy. He was a skinny, wiry little guy, something like a young Mick Jagger, with kind of a hard looking streetwise countenance. He may have been a year or two older than I, but we chummed around anyway, being convenient to each other.

About fifteen years old at the time, I was easily impressed (and corrupted) by his cunning ways, and by the picture he presented of being a rebel against his mother’s authority. Each escapade of his seemed to top the last one. Looking at it now, I think he was acting out because of his broken home life and estrangement from his father. He never talked about it.

We got involved in some small time misdemeanors, such as creeping out in the middle of the night and running down the street in our sock feet with a shopping bag to rob a coke machine at the local gas station, using his deft technique, learned from who knows where. He came on vacation with us one time, to a cottage we rented each summer, then suggested we go for a long walk, whereupon he magically produced some bags from his trousers, and we pilfered a local farmer’s garden. We were chased before we got far, but managed to elude the pursuit in the bush. Farmer Maggot never did catch us.

Things got more serious later on in this career of crime. Randy got involved with drugs, and his behavior became more erratic and unpredictable. He made it known that he had a gun, but of this I am not certain. He was still allowed into our house, as my parents didn’t know. One night, while we were playing poker, he took out a small bottle from his pants and began to sniff it. Nail polish remover. It had an instant effect upon him, and he did some crazy and destructive things. We got him to his house and left him with his mother, and we had to explain to our own folks what had happened. That was effectively the end of our association, and it wasn’t long before he moved away. A short time later, I heard that he had been picked up for grand theft, and was spending time at juvenile hall.

It may seem wrong to have “Sympathy for the Devil”, but there are a few things that I will always carry with me about Randy…..he needed a friend, and so did I, and it happened. The little hints that one could divine from his conversation showed what kinds of wounds he had within his soul.

And, lastly, he may have saved my life one night when we were attacked by a group of hoodlums trying to show off to their girlfriends. They got us from behind, pulled us down on the pavement, and began the beating. Six against two. I didn’t know how to fight, but he did. We both took a pretty good beating, but my wiry little skinny friend managed to defend both of us until they took off. The last memory I had was of Randy beating one guy’s head against the pavement, before someone came along and called an ambulance.

Nobody home

It’s like a boogeyman tale from when we were kids. I’ve been in this town for thirty years, and do quite a bit of walking. I suppose I could say I have been by her door more than five hundred times.

Reputedly, the spinster (or widow, depending on which story you believe) either inherited, or was born, in this house. Back in its day, it may have been reasonably fashionable, but from my picture you can see it has fallen into decay. There have never been any men, at least none that anyone knows of or will talk about. I personally do not even know how she survives or gets her supplies, and it’s a subject that few want to talk about.

Some of the vile things I have heard I will credit to the overactive imaginations of adolescents. Freezers in the basement, full of who knows what, or who. An overabundance of felines, whose population reputedly has dwindled with the last few years. Pungent cooking smells coming from the place. Ashes and tiny bone fragments in the back garden. All my eyes have seen, and can confirm, are the broken windows, mossy carpets on the outside of the place, weeks and weeks of newspapers which accumulate until some good Samaritan collects them, and, yes, on a handful of occasions, the specter herself (or so I suppose).

My own imagination is overactive at times, and I am something of a romantic bookworm, and so I will say that the pale, grassy-haired figure with sunken eyes vies for comparison between two literary figures of old: The ghost of Catherine Earnshaw scrabbling at the dark window in Wuthering Heights, and the cobwebbed Miss Havisham
from Great Expectations. She appears at odd times peeking through moth eaten drapes of lace, never in full view, and quickly withdrawing once she has seen what she has needed to see. Uncomfortably, it has been me on a few occasions.

I have not met a single soul who has ever spoken to her, or seen her out of doors. As for me, I am divided between a sense of dread and one of exciting mystery, and have more than once considered plucking up the courage to rap on her door.

Do wish me luck, reader, for, if this gets the best of me, I may come to know more about Miss Earnshaw-Havisham than is good for me.

Perhaps the newspapers will begin to pile up in front of MY door.

Our Place

In the summer of 1969, I was 18 years old, and absolutely enthralled with the concept that we, as a species, were actually going to land on the moon.

At that time, my family and I were vacationing at a rented cottage on a lake in the middle of the bush, and, through the noise and static of our weak television signal, we sat huddled and watched with fascination as the event unfolded.

Since then, and to this day, the question of our place in the cosmos has always been with me. Some think we are alone, and view with ridicule the concept that there may be other civilizations out there. I think there must be more than just ourselves, since our own sun is but one of billions of stars in the observable universe.

We are only beginning to reach out, and things more strange than even the wildest science fiction will one day be revealed. I’ll not be alive when this happens, but I hope to last long enough to see us explore Mars.

Religion and Science, ever at odds with each other, are, perhaps unwittingly, travelling divergent paths that will intersect when we find that there is, indeed, a Creator. There has to be. Look at the wonder around us.

My soul aches to know this Answer. I have been comforted in some of life’s worst moments by an encompassing spirit not of my own kin. That is why I believe there’s a force that guides us and wants us to be the best we can be.

At the office

Up until May of 1980, I had worked in a series of warehouses and factories, my duties consisting of gopher, grunt worker, shipper, machine operator, and clerk. The last couple of years in that stretch was with a large retailer, and, in their warehouse, I tried to advance my prospects by training myself to operate some of their motorized equipment such as forklifts and small electric tow trucks that pulled long lines of trailers laden with furniture.

I loved this work and was thrilled that they let me do it, once they saw that I was a natural. In those days, training and licensing requirements weren’t as they are now, and, if your boss saw that you were going to be an advantage, then you were “in”. I made some good friends there, including an old Lithuanian gentleman whom I will never forget. Sadly, this particular wing of the company was eventually closed up, and we were all out of jobs.

We had had enough notice to allow us to look for work, pending the actual closure, and I happened to spot a newspaper ad that began with block letters “FORKLIFT OPERATORS WITH A DIFFERENCE!” It was touting the arrival of a new company (yes, another warehouse) and promising immediate hires to successful applicants. You had to reply to a post office box, so I sat myself down and wrote something of a cover letter in fountain pen if you can believe it. No computers at that time and I did not have a typewriter, so I thought this would be a way to stand out amongst the mail I expected them to get. I got called for the interview, and the first thing my future boss said was “You know, I kind of pulled this one out of the pile because of the way it was written.” His first question, which took me by surprise, was “We are looking for a foreman. What would you think of filling that role?” It made me a little uncomfortable, but I responded by saying “I’m sure I could do it if allowed to grow into the job. I am not one who could go around barking out orders to people.”

And so, I was hired, to be the supervisor of two youngsters that had been there for a couple of months and thought they knew everything there was to know about the business. They certainly knew more than I did, at the outset, and were blatantly rebellious to have anyone disturbing their daily routine. I was still wet behind the ears at this kind of thing, and let it go on longer than it should have, but, eventually tried to lead by example, bringing in some new ideas and innovations, gaining a little grudging acceptance, if not respect. They still looked upon me, however, as a straw boss, and thought they could get away with murder.

The older of the two was particularly upset because he had been passed over for the job for which I had been hired. With the strain of increasingly busy daily operations and a Mutiny on the Bounty situation developing with my huge crew of two, I thought I had better do something, and asked for a meeting with the regional manager, my boss Fred. I wanted to establish whether they were going to give me any actual authority over personnel, and of the way daily operations were to be run. Bear in mind that this was a new company, and many of us, including the bosses, were greenhorns in some respect.

The meeting with Fred was a vote of confidence I did not necessarily expect, and its success was due partly to two things, I think: Management was eager to get the day-to-day operations out of their hair, and, because of some the improvements that had come about, even during an obvious increase in business, I was seen as being worth the risk of shouldering additional responsibilities. Within a couple of days, I was informed, through Fred, that the hiring, discipline, and termination of staff was now my responsibility, as well as the design and layout of warehouse operations. I left his office with a light step, having secured what I needed, along with a new title and a raise.
Self-doubt was nagging at me nonetheless, and this unexpected event had left me overwhelmed.

Immediately, I was given the go-ahead to hire more staff and had to learn how to be the personnel officer, trainer-in-chief, and disciplinarian. The hats were beginning to multiply. Time went on, along with with more of the hats…approval of accounts payable, directing transportation logistics, sourcing of equipment, business flights to other company locations and suppliers.

My first foray into a serious personnel matter came when the disgruntled co-worker, whom I have mentioned earlier, had an incident involving horseplay on company equipment, and disrespect of a fellow employee. I challenged him, brought him into my office, and said I was sending him home for the day. He said “Why don’t you just fire me?”, so I did. This is never pleasant, but, in this case, it was necessary, to show what would and would not be tolerated, and also that I would actually do the deed. There were other occasions where I needed to make these decisions, and I have had grown men cry in my office. Not the best feeling to take home with you.

Through the thirteen years that I was there, we moved our business to two successively larger locations, and our staff and equipment grew accordingly. It was necessary to go to two shifts, for which I had to appoint lead hands, both of which are still with the company 25 years later, and one of whom took over my job.

I had many people through my office, some hired from all different nationalities, including one who we found out was working under an assumed name, being an illegal immigrant who was waiting on papers. He came to me himself with this information, so we went to bat for him, and he eventually got his social insurance number, was able to use his real name, and stayed on with us. By this time, we had a staff of 40. Being so busy with paperwork, phone calls, and all else, I was moved to the front office and was now in a suit and tie.

This was a new world, although I knew each of the people. I got to know the relationships and dynamics of the place and grew to have a special affection for some of those people. There was Dorothy, who became known, unkindly, as Dorothy from OZ, because of her quirky personality. I went along with the joke until she asked me for a private meeting, during which she wept and told me she was Manic Depressive and didn’t know what to do. She hugged me, and I learned to treat her with more respect after that. She liked my whistling, and secretly tape-recorded it.

There was Yvonne, our Regional Secretary, who kept office affairs running smoothly. She had a great sense of humour, but was all business when it was needed. We had something of a friendship that extended beyond our careers. Between the two of us, we managed to convince our boss that an extra person was needed in the office to help with some of the paperwork and personnel matters that were becoming too much for us to handle, and so Baljit was hired. She proved to be a great help to us and, as she grew into her position, she was given more responsibilities. Baljit eventually outlasted me and many others, I think.

There was Jane, who, by all accounts, was a bona fide Witch, being of the Wiccan persuasion. She had a particular distaste for Bob, one of our salesmen, who would utter sarcastic barbs to her whenever he had the chance. One December, he said “So, what are you doing for Christmas, Jane? Having a Sacrifice?” The look in her eyes was frightening, and she made some sort of sign at him.

There was Janine, an older woman with whom I got along very well. I fixed her car one day in the parking lot, and found a note on my desk saying “thank you for doing this, and for your grace”. I still have it.
There was Richard, one of our sales managers. Whenever I saw him in the office, he appeared to be alternately looking off into space or gazing into a crystal paperweight that he rotated in front of his face. He was gone in due course.
There was my boss, Fred, who I think was having difficulties in his position as Regional Manager. Many times, he would come out in the warehouse and show people how to sweep the floors, for example, and pick away at some trivial thing one of the employees was doing. He had decided to move me to the office, and he was worried that he would have to answer for it.

There was Beatrice, the office clerk, a woman who was in her mid 40’s and was an alcoholic. I was a little afraid of her. Her eyes were like a shark’s, the soul very far away.
There was a girl named Lee. She had the most beautiful and quirky handwriting I have ever seen. It looked like a foreign language until you paid attention. She was a fashion rebel, and, since those days, I swear she was a trendsetter.

And then, there was Joan, a capable and pleasant woman who was Head Office representative at our location. She technically worked for them, but still just had the title of secretary. She was sharply aware of the glass ceiling between the sexes and felt she was unrecognized for her contributions. We heard, through our connected grapevine, that she had asked for, and was granted, an audience with the company President, during which she itemized all of her responsibilities, and had the guts to demand appropriate compensation and title. When he refused, she lifted up her skirt to expose a strapped-on item, obviously of the male variety, and said: “Now will you hire me?” It was not long before she left the company “voluntarily”.

My turn finally came after a period of serious inventory problems, for which I had not found a solution, and a spate of accidents involving property and equipment damage. A month after my 13th anniversary, I was let go.

This I will always think of as my “career”, although afterward, I held two more jobs totaling 23 years. Proud that I started with a company at ground zero and helped to bring it forward. Not so proud of my failings. Blessed for meeting many of the people, some of whom I remember with love to this day.

True story.

Workplace folly

I’ve worked in a number of places that have had trade unions, and I know the unions have their purpose and are responsible for many of the advances and benefits that employees enjoy. I have been on strike several times, against different companies, am familiar with grievance procedures, have been on joint committees and have attended many union meetings. I’ve also been a supervisor in non union shops, and so I feel that I understand something of employee-management relations.

Much depends, of course, upon the people in authority, in the company and in the union, and the philosophy of each of these entities. I spent 13 years as a warehouse employee in a manufacturing plant that was unionized from the get go. The last six were in a solitary job as Storekeeper for parts and supplies within the plant. The store room was kept locked, and I handed out parts from a window to the general warehouse staff. Maintenance personnel and supervisors had keys, and were permitted to come in and sign out their own parts.

During my tenure there, I was witness to things that, by any yardstick, would be considered to be gross misconduct, if not criminal acts, that went almost unpunished. Machine sabotage, sleeping on the job, assaults, the concealment of substandard product, and theft. These were the acts of some of the unionized employees with whom I worked.

The company, for their part, were inconsistent in their disciplinary practices. Many of the worst offenders, after exhausting the grievance process, were let off with a warning when it became clear that their cases would go to costly mediation or legal proceedings. Some people who had committed lesser offences and were perhaps viewed as more co-operative, were given stiffer penalties because of the perception that they would not raise as much of a fuss. Result: poor morale, and disrespect for company policy.

I never informed on anyone directly, unless it involved the safety of others, and then I would talk to the offender personally before going to anyone else. That is, until I became storekeeper and was made responsible for the factory’s parts inventory. We had to count the stockroom regularly, and, if there were any large variances, then it was on me.
The store room was only manned for 8 hours out of 24, and the rest of the time it was accessible to those who had keys. Missing stock became more and more of a problem, and so it was obvious that it was either being taken and used legitimately and not signed out, or was being stolen.

When the problem had worsened considerably, I sent an email to the company controller, with whom I had a reasonably good relationship. In it, I blamed either non-compliance with procedure or outright theft for the missing product. She became concerned, and responded positively to the email, and apparently then had a meeting with the union president about it. The next day, she did an about-face and basically said that, as there was no proof of these inflammatory accusations, I would just have to be more vigilant and develop better systems to prevent further loss. A week later, I received a registered letter from the union, stating that unless I withdrew the note I had sent, that I would be thrown out of the union, and, in essence, would be without a job.

I knew absolutely that there was theft going on, because I would count particularly valuable items, such as batteries, each and every day. They went missing much more quickly than anything else. I consulted with my lawyer, who said, in a nutshell, that the toothpaste was already out of the tube and I could not put it back in, so I might as well do some sort of a retraction and get on with life. So, I drafted a letter apologizing for offending anyone, with the explanation that it was done out of frustration for not being able to do my job properly. I fully expected this to be posted publicly by the union, but that did not happen. I was never officially informed of any excommunication, and stayed on in the job, with reduced enthusiasm and morale, until the next contract talks came around, and a strike was looming.

I will say that, of all the strikes I have participated in with various companies, most have been unprofitable and divisive for both parties. Sometimes, we were off the job for weeks or months, in the middle of winter, receiving a pittance in strike pay, and wound up coming back to work for less than we had been offered at the start. This, together with the lost time and hardships, would take months, or longer, to make up. In the job of which I speak, the company of course knew well in advance that a strike was likely, and proceeded to build up a “bank” of stock that they estimated would be enough to ride it out. This was accomplished with the co-operation of union members who wanted the extra overtime, for the same reasons. We were cutting our own throats.

I had many good relationships with both unionized and management employees within these companies, but the negative experiences have given me a jaundiced view of industrial relations, at least the ones within my experience.