On a lighter note..

I was playing GoW last night with the usual suspects and we got to telling some stories. Now, mind you I am known for telling stories, almost all of which have some funny end to them, even if it wasn't particularly funny at the time. I am a firm believer that if you can't laugh at yourself, you got no right to laugh at anyone else. Hell, I'm the funniest guy I know, most of the time by accident.

We were talking and I was telling a story about working at some crap job and everyone chuckled. Then one of the guys says, "Damn, Mass, you've had a lot of jobs." It got me to thinking, have I had a lot of jobs? I've done a lot of things for money, some of which were legitimate-pay-the-IRS-half-your-money, and some were odd jobs here and there for cash. So I started making a mental list of the jobs that I've had/done and was quite surprised. So as Gatsu stated in his blog, I gotta lighten things up a bit for everybody. Put away some Grinch and get out some Kringle. I'm going to do them in order that I remember them, so if you can't keep up with the timeline, you're probably left-brained. :)

Age 12-15: Working for dad's sheetrock crew during the summer. I would wake up at 5 am and get in the truck with the old man for a trip out to Grandpa Jim's house. We'd drive into Arkansas, usually 1-2 hours and get to the site, sleeping with my head in GrandPop's armpit. I was a drooling armrest with a pulse. My job was to move the drywall boards into the rooms based on Pop's count written on the doorjamb of each room and then help with the ceiling. Being about three foot six at 12, the ceiling portion consisted of standing tiptoe on the sawhorses in the middle of the board with a sheetrock hatchet and trying to help hold the board to the ceiling while they nailed it up. As rooms/walls were finished, I would drag the scrap rock to my Granny's pickup and fill the bed. I would then lay on the top of the sheetrock (weather permitting) and sleep all the way back to Pop's house. Ate a lot of bugs during those summers! Never fell out of the truck and fell on my head, as many of you are now thinking. It's my punchline- don't try and beat me to it!

Age 13-16: During the school year I would work evenings and weekends at the new buffet restaurant out on the edge of town. Not a lot of fun, but my buddy and I made the local paper for washingover 1000 dishes every Sunday. I can still smell the soap and hear the roar of the Hobart washer. There was a hot waitress who we all went to school with, who suddenly became too cool to socialize with us, even at work. We, in akward teenage boy ways, kowtowed and deferred to our hash-slinging goddess until we all realized that she was just another bitchy small town deb. I got my happiest moment when she came back into the washcave with a glass in her hand. The assembled cast was of course myself, Deb (fictional name), and three other fellows, one of whom we'll call JC, ' cause he loved himself some church. JC was a very devout, very unpopular fellow who I saw as my duty to up his coolness factor. That was a tough job because JC, while he loved him some God, he didn't cotton to a toothbrush. He was a nice guy who very rarely came out with anything rude or quick, but this was his day:

Deb: (brandishing offensive glass) "This glass is dirty! This is not my shade of lipstick! "

JC: (pulling out belt and peering into his pants) "I'll be damned, you're right!"

It took us about thirty minutes to stop laughing at the look on her face. I about shit myself. Never again did we hear about a dirty dish.

I'll stop there, you guys don't want to read a fricking novel. Hope this made you smile. I'll throw you some more later-

Mass Da Ass