I thought about when I was the one that learning how to make those cursed springs. It was actually the very first task I did on my first day of work. I don't remember much about the first few weeks - it's all kinda hazy, and full of half-memories. But I recall making those springs. Cursing - not in such a vulgar matter, mind you - and throwing fistfuls of screwed up sensor springs into the garbage.
It's getting pretty darn close to the five-year mark since that happened. I graduated in June and worked part-time at a mini golf/miniature train theme park outside of a major tourist trap near where I lived. Towards the end of the summer I had my heart crushed into itty-bitty pieces, and took a couple weeks off (now that I'd lost my job at the tourist joint, as it closes for the fall/winter). I remember bumming around home a lot. I remember long walks in the cool autumn air, and sitting at the computer occupying myself with... I can't remember what game. Probably Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Battlefield 2, or a concoction of all three. Concoction. What a weird looking word.
Anyways, the weeks rolled by and I applied for work here and there with no luck. I got my first car, purchased with a loan from my parents - a red 1986 CRX Si, with standard transmission. Which I didn't know how to operate. I got a job as a vacuum salesman, believe it or not, where I learned how to drive stick under fire. Including the commute, my day went from 6AM to 10PM. Two weeks went by where I realized that the job wasn't quite as elegant/lucrative/easy as the three-day training had made it out to be. I was making a late appointment in a nice neighborhood at 8/9PM - my last of the day. It was raining, and I was standing there with a vacuum in one hand and a kit of necessary props for making the pitch in the other. I was tired and wet, and I'd been spending more time in my car than actually talking to people. I rang the doorbell and put on a smile. A mid age couple answered, I could see some kids in the back of the house. They didn't want to see the demo, of course - not even the free gift (kitchen knives! Wow!) would get me in the door. But rather than the cold, yet polite, refusal, they talked to me for a bit. About... Me. Who I was, what my plans were. I said I wasn't sure what my goals are, but I'm working towards saving for school. Then something weird happened. They told me to go home. They said I could do better than hawking vacuums all day. Maybe they knew or recognized something I didn't know was there. Or maybe they just knew how to screw with a fatigued and naive kid, in a soaking dress shirt under the late-night glow of a porch light with rain pattering all around. I quit the next day. I mean, yeah, I knew the job wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, but that event pushed me over the edge and give me the courage to make the jump. I meant to send that couple in the nice house a card or letter of some sort, but I never did.
I made about $250 with that job, a gross fortune less than the hours or effort I put into it. I went and got a job with a large telephone computer-support center in town. Everyone knows about it, and no one wants to work there unless they really have to. I got the job (they were hiring ANYONE), at a whopping $10/hr. I was thrilled. I went through training for two weeks with a collection of pretty good people. I wasn't particularly thrilled by it, but I figured I'd manage. The one or two calls I did live scared the crap out of me, though. It came down to the last week of training, and my mom said that my uncle was looking for someone to come do basic labour at his business in the next province over. Sure, I wasn't too comfortable with my current job, but I wasn't sure if I hated it enough to pick up and leave home just yet. So I sweated over it for a few days and decided a change of location might work out for the better.
To tell the truth, this was largely fueled by the desire to pick up and get as far away as I could from She Who Broke Hearts. So a day before I graduated from training, I quit. I left my second job in as many weeks. Before I even finished training, no less. I felt like a scumbag. But I rolled with it. Said my goodbyes, packed up my computer, and hopped on a Greyhound Bus. I ended up winding sensor springs less than 24hrs later.
So I worked and saved. Assembled kits and products, swept floors. A few months later I learned my CRX bit the dust - there was unrepairable rust on the frame that made the car undrivable. I felt bad because a) My first car had been a failure and b) I ended up stiffing my folks who said they'd hand the car payments. At work I moved up to doing some graphic design - something I'd dabbled with in high school. Did the odd graphic here and there, taking a bit of the load off of the boss. Started doing it more and more, eventually I was doing the creative and rendering for print advertisements and doing product photography. I had a $1000 bursary from graduating which expired within a year. I sent a letter in and got an extension. The next year I bought a grey 1996 Civic CX and moved back home. Hauled everything I owned with my over the Rockies in my lil' Honda. I used up the bursary (and a good chunk of my own change) to take some general studies for two semesters. A bit of business, music, graphic design, and communication theory. I'm not sure if any of it ever became useful. I look back on that year, spending the time not in school by bumming around the house, as a waste of time. I got so little accomplished and spent so much money. I'm not sure what came out of it.
Then I went back to my uncle's business for the summer, intent on going back to school to take... something. But the end of the summer rolled around and I stayed. For a year or two. Moved out of my uncle/aunts house, and in with some co-workers and friends. Applied at art school, got accepted, and was freaked out. Bought a green 1997 Integra without taking my time to really think about it, ending up with a car with a fistful of reliability problems. Did my first year of studies, and worked harder than I ever have in my life. Learned how to throw away all sorts of personal interests for the sake of being productive, even though I wasn't having a whole lot of fun. Finished the first year, applied for the Bachelor of Design program so I could pursue Graphic Design, got accepted, and got freaked out. Three more years of hard work ahead of me, apparently. Worked 50-60hrs/week during the summer between years one and two, where I sat at a desk typing while a 19-year-old straight out of high school is cursing at the little gold wires that contort themselves around a teal cordless drill.
Looking back, that rainy evening by porch light seems like a lifetime and a half ago. Five years. Five years. But at the same time, it can't be that long. How can that much time pass by so quickly?
This summer we had a family reunion. Lots of grey faces I don't recognize. My grandmother is moving out of the family home, though. They're going to sell the house my father grew up in, which will probably be bulldozed along with the meticulously kept garden in the back yard. People are getting old. My parents are getting old. And that means I am too, which freaks me out more than a little. Look at me, I work overtime and renew my car registration and plan out my second year of education. I'm not 15 or 16 or 17 any more, and I never will be again. Time is such a brutal, relentless beast.
It makes me wonder what I have to show for it. My musical/instrumental skills, something I used to cherish and practice so intensely, have gone all to hell. Same as the relationships with the people I went to elementary/high school with for 9 years. But I can kinda draw now. I can build a computer from scratch, and replace a dead car battery. I know how to use selective colour in Photoshop to balance out the inherent magenta hue from the florescent photo table. I can use writing to be long-winded and cathartic. I can work 80hrs a week for 15 consecutive weeks. I can... Flawlessly wind hundreds of sensor springs without screwing up a single one.
Is that it? Is that all I've got to show for myself for 1/15th of my life expectancy? And me, here, now. Is this the best I can do for being 1/3 of the way through my existence? Where are all the glorious adventures and exciting experiences and all-around awesome things I expected to be doing by now?
Looking back at me of five years prior, it's so easy to point out how dumb and clueless I was. It's harder to admit, though, how dumb and clueless I still am. Especially over the last year or so it's become obvious how little of the world I can see and understand, even comprehend. It's like I'm wearing horse blinders or something. Walking around in a fog. Driving a 20-year-old Honda around in the dark and rain, straining to see the unfamiliar road ahead through the streaks left by old and decrepit windshield wipers.
It's a crappy realization to stumble upon. One part disheartening, two parts frightening. I'm a male in his mid-twenties. Shouldn't I be on top of the world, having all sorts of adventures, conquering whatever gets in my way and forming a foundation for a happy future? Foundations need terrain to excavated before they can be laid down. Some days it feels like I'm just diggin'.
There's still lots of time to have adventures, right? So what, maybe I'm pissing away what many consider to be the best time of a person's life. I still have the majority of my life ahead of me, and I can turn things around and make things alright. The world will keep rolling, so maybe I should roll with it and take things as they come. Maybe things will get better. Maybe they won't. Maybe I just oughtta shut my trap and keep on keepin' on.
-Cril
The pages of the calendar
Are flyin' off faster as I get old
And if I had a second take
I'd wanna make the same mistakes
Except for the clothes
And the part about the one that got away
When I was blind I fell behind
And here I've gotta stay
And I'm lying here wonderin'
Is it finally sinkin' in
To my weary heart, my foolish pride
And my stubborn head
I woke up on the right side, I woke up on the right side
On the right side of the wrong bed
Smash Mouth - Right Side, Wrong Bed
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