death row

02-12-00

Well, today at work, once again, I had the guilt. The guilt hasn't been around since I quit my last job, about three months ago. I haven't even sent my resume off yet, but I feel guilty. Bleh.

I focused on the future. When I get a different job, I'll have weekends off. Saturdays and Sundays I can spend with John, no strings attached. We can go out of town! I love leaving town for an afternoon or a weekend, but it's not possible when I work till 12, then have to work again at 5. And again the next morning. We'll be able to go to Atlanta for the symphony and Savannah to watch the sunrise. Florida for a weekend. I can't wait.

This afternoon we contented ourselves with a short drive to Macon, for Barnes and Noble and Scream 3. I just had to see the movie—once again, Matt Keeslar is the man. Not caught upon my archives? I went to high school with this guy. Other than Matt, the movie was...okay...though plainly inferior to the first two-thirds of the trilogy. Jay and Silent Bob alert! Two thumbs up for the surprise cameo.

Matt in The Last Days of Disco.

Post-movie, I drug myself back to Warner Robins to let the dogs out again. This weekend is a little different from most at the kennel, as I'm playing the Tom Hanks role in a doggie version of The Green Mile. There's a weirdish dalmatian mix who's going to be put down on Monday. We couldn't do it today because the cremation guys can't come until Monday. Given a choice between a live, mean dog and a dead, smelly dog for two days, I'll take the live one.

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I'm extremely uncomfortable looking at this dog. I don't like the idea of canine euthanasia when the dog isn't sick. This dog's not sick. He bit a couple of kids, but his owner didn't decide to get rid of him until the dog bit the owner's wife. All of a sudden, he can't keep the dog in the yard over the weekend.

On the other hand, this dog is dangerous. I'm not allowed to let him out of the cage, and I'm not allowed to feed him. We left a big bowl of food to get him through to Monday, and I'll be cleaning up the mess, then, too. As a gesture of pity, I slipped a rawhide treat through the bars of the cage today. The dog snarled and lunged for my fingers.

I don't know. Just don't.

I'm too sleepy to remember anything else from today, so I'm going to go ahead and just tell y'all a ten-year-old story that's running around in my head, for some reason.

This one time? At band camp? My cabinmates and I attacked a counselor and stole his job. Jonathan Berdyck's father used to come around every morning with a baseball bat to wake everybody up. He hollered "WAKE UP!" at the top of his lungs and whacked the walls of the cabins, in lieu of a simple reveille.

So we had this great idea to sabotage him on the last day of camp. We woke up early and waited for him to whack our cabin door. When we heard him coming, we rushed out the door and threw sleeping bags over his head. Then we duct taped him into the bags and stole his steel bat, much to the amusement of the other counselors and band directors, who were just stirring up the campfire. Manda and I took the bat and went off to wake up the rest of the band. We screeched like ninth grade girls (which is what we were) and tore around in our pajamas.

I went for the first cabin I saw, which happened to be the one counseled by the band director's wife. I hefted that steel baseball bat and whanged it right into the (wooden) door of the Cabin 9. The noise was deafening. Girls inside the cabin shrieked. Adult male counselors fifty yards away whooped. I was caught up in the rush of my new power. Manda and I took turns cracking on the doors of all the cabins.

It seems that, when Mr. Berdyck woke us, he didn't use all his strength. Inside the cabins, my baseball bat sounded more like a gunshot at 6:30 in the morning. Nobody liked us that day.

And after breakfast, Manda and I were charged with the task of repairing the hole in the door of Cabin 9. We used duct tape and put a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid on for a "hee hee" little joke, but nobody was amused. Well, the counselors by the fire were amused. The ones who were sleeping when I drilled that hole, well, they still hate me, ten years later.