Bread and Butter With a Kick

There is something fulfilling about coming home from a hard day's work. Nostalgic even, I suppose.

"How do you like it?" Jallow asked me that first week over my first game of draughts. Draughts, not to be confused with grade-school checkers, is a science. These old men and their games, I thought to myself, watching as Jallow quickly moved over the majority of the board, sweeping a full 75% of my white pieces from the board. "Did you see your mistake? You left yourself completely open. You need to pay attention! Protect yourself. Now, what was your move supposed to be?" he went on, as if he had heard my thoughts.

I pointed and he laughed at my blush.

"Don't worry, if you won me, you would be champion. Many, many people loose to me! Everyone looses, because I always win!" he crowed in his thick foreign accent.

"His name is carved on the board" Lavar pointed out.

"It's not a hard job" Jallow continued, returning to his previous question, absent-mindedly slapping at my hand making another foolish move. I stared at the board. I saw his move, but I didn't want to make it. "Gotta eat!" Jallow urged, taking the piece and slapping it into place, then slapping his own token down and sweeping another two of my tokens I had forgotten about into is palm, out of my play. I had three pieces left.

These old men insist on finishing the game, even after they essentially win in four moves.

I looked up at the monitor and hastily stood.

"You have to go? Go! I don't want you to get in trouble" he said, then just as quickly as his questions floated from subject to subject, his eyes came to rest on Lavar, who had been enjoying the exchange in appreciation of my being new.

I later played against Lavar, as he filled the spot of another newbie who was loosing badly who was called away to attend to a Boeing 737. He sat down, studying the board, then realizing that in one more move his army of black would be reduced to three tokens, he sighed and sat back in the chair, making the inevitable move to spark the bloodbath.

To be honest, he played well with his three pieces.

I cornered him, finally, when suddenly a weathered hand reached over his dreds and slammed the black king down a couple rows over. "Chance! Always take the chance!" he reprimanded Lavar, who was studying the placement of the king. I looked and realized Jallow had simply picked the piece up and slammed it down out of the way of my attack.

"How are you allowed to--" I began to ask.

"When in doubt--cheat!" Jallow pronounced, before pushing Lavar from his seat for another round. I sighed.

I was rescued that time by an airbus. Between you and me, I don't really like the airbusses, but I dislike the Embraeyer, period, so I wont complain. Work is work, a job is a job. Who can afford to not like their bread and butter--not matter how uncomfortable its cargo bin is? And since when was it ever acceptable to not be hungry?

Gotta eat, gotta eat--that's the name of the game. But the real punch on the clock isn't the checkers, it's the sweat. The sore muscles itching for more. Bread and butter with a kick, I decided. None of this bland stuff.

"Want some?" Kevin asked me, passing a spice bottle of some kind of seasoning. "It's got habanero--do you like hot stuff?"

"Not particularly" I admit. That was always John's forte--bread and butter with a kick. Like he couldn't taste it without that physical punch. I guess I see what he meant all those times. Kevin offered me a french fry covered in the mystery dust. I winced as it went down.

"How do you like it?" he asked, watching my facial expressions with withheld laughter.

"I like it" I admitted, punching back. He nodded as Jallow's loud laughter echoed through the room. I fully agreed; when in doubt, cheat.

Entering a Cucoon-Like State

The hallways are always long, do you realize that? With the same tiles in the same pattern. They are always extremely long when you're nervous, though not so long when you're not--just long. Never short though. The room that holds the rest of your life is always the last room on your right.

"Why do you think I should give you this job?" the recruiter asked with a smile. He liked me, I could tell. He was a rather jovial person, this Tim, I had decided. Genuine charm, which is something more felt than learned. Sparked interest in people was his bread and butter, that was for certain.

Yet despite all this he has asked the inevitable question that always comes, like the last room on the right, at the end of job interview. This question is the gateway to the long hallway with your future being held captive in the last room on the right. The last pit of fire before reaching King Kupa, if you will.

Why do you think I want this job? I wanted to ask. A job is a job.

But instead I had smiled and shrugged. He waited, wanting to hear why it was I wanted this job. He knew what I thought. Some people actually say the first thing that comes to mind. But I thought about it. Was there more than just the want of an income and a way to spend my days that had brought me into Arlington's recruitment office?

Then I realized that wasn't the question. Why should he give me the job?

"Because I work" I said out loud, both to him and myself. His smile widened to a grin and he jotted down the answer, the grin tapping into laughter.

"That is the best answer I've ever heard" he admitted, offering his hand. "You're hired."

The beginning was really the fingerprinting though. I shed my life on those papers, documenting every apartment I had lived in, every job I had held in the last ten years. Apparently I move more than most people because I ran out of space and they had to add extra papers onto my background information packet for some contracted agency to go and check. Everything I had done.

"Here," the girl said as she traded me packet of paper for packet of paper. "You understand that having a conflicting job will subject you to possible termination?"

"Yes" I answered, stepping into the realization that I was signing my life into something new. From student, from office worker, from writer, into ramper.

I let everything happen around me as I sat and waited to clear. Every morning I got up, and every night I fell asleep, waiting. Memorizing city codes, and waiting. Doing push ups, and waiting. Watching the world pass me by, and waiting.

I stood in the mirror, watching as my mother trimmed my hair.

"How much should I cut?" she asked.

"Just chop it all off" I sighed.

"No, I wont. Rampers are rough people. It's a man's job. It's hard work that means having muscles, constantly moving. They don't sit around and think. They work. And the only thing feminine about you will be your hair."

I frowned but didn't answer, letting her cut six inches, leaving the other ten or so to hang just past my shoulders.

"I'm not going to be able to recognize you" John protested over the phone.

"It was only a trim" I reminded.

"But you had such long beautiful hair" he lamented.

"It's nothing; my hair is still relatively long" I shrugged.

"Are you sure this is what you want to do?" he asked hesitantly. "I mean, it's a good job and all, and the benefits are really good, but do you really want to be a ramper?"

Stunning Blue Eyes

You joke about exposing yourself and then you look at me. "I'm sorry, we're offending you."

"I'm from DC, I've heard worse" I answer. From Brad, Jack, Will, Colin, Josh. It's a life I left. But you don't know that. You don't know that you are just like them. Down to your gorgeous blue eyes and your two parent-less children and your long record of transgressions.

And when I say that I can't take a break and ignore the customer, you say "You work at McDonalds."

"Apparently you don't know me at all" I say to you. What does that even mean, other than I am getting paid by a corporate presence to take food orders from insomniacs like myself? No, Mr. Hyde, I do not work at McDonalds; you do. I stay awake at McDonalds, I wash dishes at McDonalds, I schmooze people under the name McDonalds. But I also leave McDonalds. I do homework. I paint pictures, I play the piano, I write papers, I sing songs, I hold meetings, I read. And you sleep. You don't even leave to sleep. You work at McDonalds and you sleep, and I do not presume to know anything about that life.

So, my blue eyed monster of a man, what now? It is far more offensive for you to apologize for your crudeness than it is for you to be crude at all. Because while you are foolish and rude to make such a response, you are arrogant to sum my individuality into a stereotype.