I’m a hard worker. I shouldn’t brag. I’m just one man, I pack a lunch like everyone else, put my pants on one leg at a time. I’m a hard worker not because I want to be, but because I have to be, and have had to be.
My dad made me.
My brothers and I were in grade school when my dad bought us calves to feed. Five a.m. in autumn and winter, that sort of thing. I believed then, and for decades after, that he’d bought them so we could learn the value of hard work, because we did. We learned from that and a list of pensums too dull to recall. I’ve since learned we raised calves because we needed the cash. We sold them come spring, fat off powdered milk and grain with molasses. They were money for school.
Isn’t school free? you ask, and are right for asking. Not ours. We did not attend a public school. We attended a private Christian school, Protestant if you want to get granular. It wasn’t terribly expensive, I don’t think, maybe a few calves per boy. My dad taught there, so we got a teacher discount. But we also lived on a teacher salary.
Cue the golden calves.
I hated getting up that early in the dead, dark winter. Montana, five to ten degrees Fahrenheit. But I did it for those little fuckers. Because I was and am pretty tender and sensitive. I loved slipping them the warm bottle. The way they stretched their necks out, gnawing the rubber nipple, guzzling nutrient-rich calf formula with their greedy eyes wide open, desperate and thrilled.
Twenty-five years later, thirty years, whatever, I’m still a hard worker. I don’t want to be, don’t want to have to be. I don’t have pitiable calves to get up for now. Just a laptop and some books. Good books, bad books, forgettable books, the big book. I put a knot in my neck lapping up their words. All their words, even the big’s ones.
Like…any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure.
But then I have to go to work. My job is terrible and there are terrible people there who torment the good people there and torment me there. And a good deal of beeps emanating from terrible machines. And echoes and bangs. The moment I close a book each morning my mind skips straight to those people and those horrible sounds.
Beep, beep, beep. Bang! Jesus Christ!
Less than two years ago I allayed my pre-work queasiness with a healthy dose of alcohol. At least two White Claws before getting into my car, then one on the drive, and sometimes one or two in my lunchbox (before they made us carry clear bags).
Every day, too, I would set an alarm for three a.m. to have three White Claws, or two glasses of wine, before a four a.m. alarm, which reminded me to take a quick nap before five. This three a.m. feeding never interfered with my five a.m. breakfast drinks because I considered the former night and the latter morning.
Never the twain shall meet. A new day begins at five, praise Jesus, what’s in the fridge?
I found it difficult to work an entire shift given my demanding schedule outside of work. But I rarely left before final break, because I’m a hard worker.
todd of tacoma 