A Pyramid Scheme

A Pyramid Scheme - Part 1

Sometimes I think the reason men bond over the crazy things they do in their youth is because those crazy things are actually stupid things – stupid and mundane things – which nobody else really cares about. Hey guys, remember when Joe was really trashed and got in that garbage dumpster and it started rolling and crashed into that Porsche! There was a scratch on the bumper! Wasn't that wild? Hey guys, do you remember when we were just totally out of it and stealing road works signs, and there was a guy there already stealing road works signs, and it was Billy Ambrose who we hadn't seen since school! Wasn't that wild?

No, sorry, none of these things are wild, or interesting, not even to us anymore. They just serve to keep us together, the easy ice breaker when we're at the bar, the things we did that broke the rules just a little and make us feel special. And we all need to feel special.

Yet all these years later, the one thing which really sticks out in my memory from my days as a young man is a thing that I actually didn't do. Not even nearly. I don't even know what really happened. But I do know, am absolutely positive, that I passed something by, something that was definitely crazy.

It went like this.

I was the first person in my family to get into any form of higher education. I am not sure if I was proud of that at the time, not even if I really think it was that useful today. Back then, it seemed normal. My parents certainly didn't make a big deal out of it, though I think that was part of the point; keep it normal, keep it nothing special, don't put any attention, don't put any pressure, and maybe, just maybe, it will slip by Fate's notice and the boy will pull it off. My mother was adamant later that she was proud and that my father was proud.

If so, the old man certainly did a good job of not showing it. He was an engineer. For him, there was truth in physics and mathematics. Heck, even chemistry, which I put in the same category of “hard” sciences, to him was an abomination, as far as dad was concerned was an arcane world of arbitrary symbols and uncertain reaction, governed by self-interested and self-preserving snake oil salesmen explaining away failure by blaming quantities or environments. Physics was not dependant on how much copper sulphate you did or did not put in the petri dish. Physics ruled the world.

Imagine then his disbelief at my own descent into English Literature. Oh the horror. Discuss the use of Holden Caulfield's vernacular in Catcher in the Rye? For eight whole pages? How can you write more than one line, that the guy cusses a lot? And he's not even real! Why do you care about the way a guy talks who isn't even real?

But he never tried to force me to change my mind, or my subjects, I will say that for dad. We weren't rich, but we weren't poor either, and I got academic fees paid by scholarship and my folks paid what they called “maintenance,” which was rent plus a certain amount to live. I covered the rest with student loans because everyone else did, and if everyone else was going to carry a debt which can't even be cancelled through personal bankruptcy, why not?

Which all led into the Great Battle of the Summer Job. Now, you might think I'm a dick for what I'm going to say next, and, I won't hold that against you. I have a very different view of things now, and if either my son or my daughter wants to haul themselves off to some hallowed halls I will likely find myself agreeing with my dad. I have an older brother, we talk pretty often (which is good), and lately we find ourselves talking about how much we've started to show the old man's habits (and that's not good).

But I am getting off track here. My dad wanted me to get a job during the long summer vacations. The usual reasons – make some money to help cover costs, but mostly just to show willing, show it meant something and I was prepared to work for it.

Trouble is, the way I saw it, I already was working for it. In the classroom. It's not that I am lazy, at least I don't think so. It is more that I was very much aware that after I graduated, I would have to get a job, and jobs don't have 8 weeks breaks over the summer. And that would be it for the next 43 years, through 65 years of age. So if university is the one time you get to have a long summer while a young adult with a little money in your pocket, well, maybe that's one of life's perks, right?

I won a couple of battles with dad. I had grown my hair to shoulder length, which sometimes I had up in a ponytail, and sometimes I had down, mostly to throw around dancing in nightclubs. Dad hated it. Was always on me about it. Till one day we had it out, and I was like, Dad, I could be taking drugs. Get a sense of perspective man. And that battle I won. He shut up about the hair. The Great Battle of the Summer Job, on the other hand…that one I lost.

But I did get things on the up side in the end. I joined up with an agency, and the first thing they found me was a job packing shoes in a warehouse. I was on the 6am to 2pm shift. Had to get up at 5am to get in. Dad sure loved that job, or rather, loved me having that job. But I only did that two weeks before the agency moved me over to a new position. Turned out there is a huge – and I really mean huge – car auction place out in the sticks near the town where we lived. I didn't know the thing was there, but apparently it was big business, biggest clearing house for rides of all shapes, sizes and ages for a couple hundred miles around. I had a license, and a clean license I might add. And they had a spot. And I got it. Fate was smiling on me that day, I can tell you. I worked 10am to 4pm, and made more money than I did at the shoe mine.

Thing is, I also had a friend who could get me a job working at his bar from 6. When I was shoehorning, I was too damn tired to work through midnight, not when I had to be up at 5am. With the car auction job, no such problems.

So I drove cars from 10 to 4 and served frosties from 6 to midnight and pocketed more cash than I had thought possible. And to add to my riches, it pissed off dad no end. I wasn't supposed to be enjoying myself! And sure enough, that was a grand summer. But it was also working at the car auction lot that I met Gary the Egg Guy, and it's what happened to him – or the things I think might have happened to him – that stick with me most clearly to this day.