It’s Monday! The single day of seven when employees by the billions waddle, wade and stumble their way back to a workplace that’s garnished the energy of every dream from the darkest corners of your soul turning it into an unkind act of unfiltered failure, fear meeting survival, chocolate overtaken by raspberry preservatives. Whatever the artwork, it ain’t feeling right on the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk.
A quick stop at the newly designed convenience store this morning put me in the front row of a budding concert of passerby’s whose faces resembled waking monsters. Their clothing wrinkled, shoulders slouched, their walk a bit pouty; if I had just dropped in from space the picture painted would be of a scrunched up and shredded orange that had been forgotten in the hot Carolina sun.
Cars and trucks come with dents and dings and front seats of vehicles resemble portable offices with no place to pee. Basically meaning…life in general has become the job.
CBS This Morning did a feature yesterday based on accepting the new normal. A reality piece based on how difficult it continues to be to convince this current workforce that we aren’t going back to the land of used to be.
I remember what it used to be in Montana 1968 and a few chapters thereafter; my stepfather Joe would mumble, fumble and foil his way through the kitchen each morning complaining about what didn’t get finished over the weekend? As kids we’d sit in the living room or nestle up to the mirrored image in the bathroom and hear his ill feelings loudly torching the bread of his lightly fried bologna sandwich the mother figure had made for him an hour earlier.
At that age, I believed going to work was a prison sentence. How dare he be tortured to leave his family at 7am on a Monday and expect there to be togetherness at the dinner table less than twelve hours later. Wow! When was the last time that happened?
Dinner has become a series of choices, The Olive Garden has all you can eat pasta, Golden Coral has far better salads with endless rows of steaks, pot roast and mashed potatoes, Taco Bell gets away with selling candy coated Spanish food for 79 cents, there’s all you can eat at China Buffet and Chic Fil A is never open on Sundays.
Why do we eat out so much? Because macaroni and cheese boxes claim to feed four to six and we feel guilty when it barely reaches beyond one. Meat without the seasonings are blanketed with newspaper print of always being connected to the latest disease, toss in the veggies and most recently eggs and the end result is a country that fears eating. So we choose to stuff our faces with Doritos, Lays Potato Chips, Snickers because it has peanuts so it must be good and a flu shot because the stomach tends to be spinning a lot lately. Let’s nip this in the butt right now…there’s too much junk food available to get sick now.
I’m not saying we’re eating badly. I’m not an expert. I tend to react to what’s being read on the teleprompter during the 5 and 11 o’clock news. Personally, I tend to enjoy the food better when the restaurants rating is below 90…there are some things we shouldn’t know and whatever they’ve chosen for flavor can’t be any different than having breakfast, lunch and dinner on a real farm in Ranchester, Wyoming where we’d milk the cows and dump it into a pitcher in the fridge before serving it fresh. The cream that rose to the top was scraped off and turned into butter. There were always flies in the kitchen that featured a wood burning stove and air conditioning on farm was open windows blessed with spider eggs, bird feathers and some germ that traveled hundreds of thousands of miles and was tossed down through the trees during last nights storm.
Uncle Willie is now in his 80’s and is still built like a rock. Both his parents lived deep into their 90’s and I’ve yet to pull from personal memory banks the videos that showcase those two wild beasts force feeding themselves with pills and liquids to keep the heart ticking and the cholesterol at the correct level.
People don’t hate their jobs in America…your neighbor, cousin, sister and whomever else you can stuff into the frame sitting on the piano dislikes what they’ve become and the job is always going to be the innocent bystander that can take the punch and keep giving nothing back.
We are a nation of incredible ability silenced by the makers of false hopes and highs. Depression is what you feel when life becomes normal. Dr. David called me the perfect example of one who is addicted to excitement…if it’s not readily available I tend to create it. Like 92% of American households that requires the art of using ones mouth torking the tension of relationship be it at a business or somewhere in the halls that wind through your home. Why? Boredom!
We aren’t addicted to fast food in this country…we’re convinced that we’re bored. Drug and alcohol abuse comes from boredom. We’re not bothered by $10 movie tickets and $12 buckets of popcorn because it means we won’t be bored. We’re still the two year old children that drove mothers insane. We want it now and if we don’t get it that means we’re headed toward the shopping row at Wal-Mart labeled Boredom; buy anything in the store and get six cases of boredom free.
People hate their jobs because it’s become too expensive to feed our boredom. While some hoist their life and style into seven day work weeks, theft and daily acts of begging are the other pages society keeps. The days of being free to blow with the wind are no longer part of what CBS called the normal. The career you’ve been attempting to design nearly three quarters of your life is nothing more than a conversation you’ll save for a grandchild who’ll softly ask, “Is there anything you didn’t get to do while growing up?”
I’m currently in the midst of enjoying the 16th seasonal change outside this writing window here at the radio station. The leaves are yellowing, a few a bit drier than normal, maybe one or two look as if they’ll be turning red soon or like sly fox they could be sneaky and go totally golden or bright orange. Total cost…free. Boredom level…nowhere to be found.
There’s a seriously high chance I won’t be consuming fast food today.
Stop chasing your tail and locate the character that makes it swish like a cat on a playful rainy Monday. Bat the air with your paws pretending to catch an invisible bird or mouse then lay back and purr like a human figure is rubbing the curves of your fuzzy tummy.
Cough, cough, gag, cough, hike the back up high, cough, burp, gag, gag…it took forever to get rid of that fur ball. Let’s get back to living.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
No comments:
Post a Comment