Dolomite's Ranting
june 2000
Hello loyal readers. Welcome back to another Ranting. This time around,
I shall tell you the tale of a day that all dread: the first day of work.
That's right kiddies, old Dolomite quit that gig at the CVS and instead went
with my brother over to a cemetery. Do not worry, I am not digging graves, I
only do the landscape around them. Dolomite has traded easy work and
sleepless nights for manual labor and napless afternoons. Why, you may be
asking? Because the only people I work with are either co-workers or six
feet under!
Now, before we get into the actual horrors of this day, let us do some
background info for those of you at home. My last night at CVS was Saturday,
May 13th. That was a night I will easily forget. For those of you who did
not read April's Ranting, you may not know exactly why I was packing an
instant camera that night. For those of you that did, keep your hands out of
your shorts because nothing good happened. I got a few good pictures of nice
looking females, but none of them were drunk enough to talk into kinkier
pictures than simply standing by the Coke machine. Actually, one was drunk
enough and did lift her shirt, but I learned a bitter truth then: bras can
easily be stuffed. So, after eight hours of that, I slammed down my nametag
and apron in victory and left. Two minutes later, I returned, grabbed my
books and cookies, and slinked out with as much dignity as possible. From
then on, my sleepless nights would be filled with studying, looking at the
girls' dorm through my roommate's telescope, and masturbation.
Finals week went as mercifully slow as possible. Usually that would be
good, but if you ever had to study for a math exam, Western Classical
Literature exam (Reformation through Modern Periods), and an Asian Politics
test, you feel like every man feels at the proctologist, you want it to be
over with as soon as possible. And much like a visit to the proctologist,
you feel as physically uncomfortable after as you mentally felt before. That
is usually why college students drink heavily after finals. However, I went
home to hear two things of bad news. One: my dad threw his back out again so it was up to me to load, unload, and distribute my things from the dorm.
Two: work at the cemetery started Thursday morning at 8:00 am. Well, fuck me
up the ass and call me a prison bitch, happy fucking summer for me!
Well, as I hinted at before, my first day was a bitch. First of all,
instead of using the shiny riding mowers that I saw when entering the garage,
I was handed a gas-powered weed-whacker. Second, there were only three
working weed-whackers, and my brother was using one as well. Third, the
humidity in the air was horrible. At least the sun wasn't out.
Within the first hour and a half (before the first break of the day), I
had broken the heads on each of the three working weed-whackers at least
twice. Out of the two sections of graves that were supposed to have done
before the break, we had only four rows of the first section done. Then, for
those in the Erie area, it began to rain. And it rained some more. For
about the next two hours, my brother and I carried these twenty-pound
whackers in the pouring rain, whacking the weeds that were not matted down by the waterfall of precipitation that knocked me over twice. Then it was
lunch. Since it was my first day and I was used to getting back from work at
8 instead of going to work, my mom packed my lunch. I found two
Hot Pockets, a banana, and a juice box. There was no microwave in the break
room, the once frozen Hot Pockets had changed the banana into something that
is usually under a Petri dish in some laboratory two miles underground. And
the juice box reminded me of kindergarten. I found out why it reminded me so
much of kindergarten, it expired the same year I passed that grade! It was
supposed to be apple juice, but it tasted like grapefruit juice and looked
like fruit punch. Also, my one co-worker mentioned that he knew of that
company. Five years ago, it was bought out by Juicy-Juice. Well,
yippie-fucking-kie-yi-yay!
After that nourishing lunch, my brother (who went off to McDonald's for
lunch) and I went back into the monsoon that was the cemetery and headed
toward where we last were. At one part of it, the road between sections dips
down and goes back up a hill. I had flashbacks to all those movies about
Vietnam, when the soldiers cross the river with their rifles held above their
heads. That was how my brother and I went about crossing that river of
muck, rainwater, and sewage (they had flooded during the intense rain). So,
with whackers held above our heads, we waded through the thick, dark liquid
until the really bad thing happened: lightning struck, swiftly followed by
thunder. As most people know, the less time between the lightning and
thunder, the closer it is. I could hardly blink in the time of that gap.
So, my brother and I ran for shelter, which was a five-minute run back to
the garage. In a panic, I dropped my whacker in the edge of the dirty river.
Nearly back to the garage, both of us heaving for oxygen, my brother
asked where my whacker was. I told him I dropped it when the lightning
struck. He told me to get it or the boss would be pissed. So back out I
went.
When I got back to that dreadful river, I saw one of the most
disheartening sights ever. There was a crow on a tree branch floating in the
river. Suddenly, the tree branch tipped and was sucked under. That crow
tried to get off the log, but its leg appeared to be caught on the branch.
It went down, cawing and flapping its wings in vain the entire time. Within
minutes, all that was left of its existence on this world were the bubbles
coming to the surface and whatever collected at the bottom. If a creature of
flight cannot escape this mucks deadly grip, how can poor old Dolomite? It
was while dreading this quandary that I spied the whacker. It had washed up
on the other side somehow, but it looked like it was slowly being dragged
back into the river. I was not in the mood to search the bottom of that
mess. So, I struck the best swimmer's pose that I could and dove in. It
was like swimming through pudding, but it certainly was not chocolate
flavored. Doing my best breaststroke/doggy paddle that I could, I managed to
get to the other side just before the rising current pulled in the whacker.
Unfortunately, pulling the whacker out of its muddy encasement threw me
back into the river. I was swept by its current to the edge of the cemetery. I was saved by a wrought-iron gate. My crotch was not as pleased as the rest of me, but it would do.
On my trek back to the garage on the other side of cemetery, I noticed
that I was much larger than before. I hardly cared, because some of it was
coming off with the rain and because I was on my feet and not in that damn
river. Upon reaching the garage, everyone was staring out of the door to see
the spectacle of Dolomite with ten pounds of mud/sewage stuck to him. My
foreman, either a neat freak, a nice guy, or in need of a good laugh, decided
to hose me down. Besides mud and sewage, a few odd items managed to come off of me as well: several used condoms (one was still slightly filled), many bottle caps from numerous beer companies; a sock, three buttons, and one dirty, dead crow missing one leg. I had never been so happy to go home.Dolomite
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