Moments with Michael

Mystery Man in the car

It's the year 1989, and you have just finished your education in psychology a few weeks ago. You live in a small apartment on your own, but regularly visits your parents. You have a boyfriend called Peter, and you have been together for almost a year. You are a big fan of Michaels, but have never met him in person.

"Well, the job is yours!" The balding man in front of me says with a big and not very convincing smile plastered on his face as he reaches out to shake my hand. I shake his, and the smile I send back is probably nothing better than his.

I just finished my education in psychology a few weeks ago, and my naive self of course thought that now the only thing I had to do was to get a good job. It shouldn't be that hard, now that I have the education, right? Wrong. I was so wrong. The man who is right now shaking my hand is the owner of the local KFC, where I now work. Turns out that a job as a psychologist wasn't as easy to get as I thought...

I let my thoughts run, while the man escorts me out of the door and my legs automatically walks me to my old, red car. I sigh as I sit down in the driver's seat and begin on the ten-minute drive home. I can hear some, to say the least, weird, noises from the motor, but I'm pretty much used to that by now. My dad is, lucky for me, a mechanic, and he checks the car every once in a while to make sure it works, and he says that I don't have to think too much about the noises.

I decide to drown them out the best way I know: with music. My absolute favorite singer, Michael Jackson, published his album Bad two years ago, and I must have listened to it a thousand times since then. But I don't care, because no matter how many times I hear it, it's always just as amazing as the first time, if not even better given that I now know the lyrics and can sing along with the beautiful voice from my radio.

When I get home, I eat, and then collapse in my bed, given that the job-interview happened very late, and now I'm just tired. A sigh escapes me by the thought of having to go to my new job tomorrow, a job that couldn't be further from what I dreamed of. But at least it means money, and I really need that if I want to continue living in my cheap apartment.

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"Before you go, Gry, can you do one last thing?" Asks Mark, another employee who have taken the job of learning me everything, and in exchange gets to boss me around all the time. It's 10 PM now, and time for the restaurant to close and me to go home. Or so I thought.

"Sure," I say in a tired voice that he doesn't seem to notice.

"There's a guy who always drives by at this time, and buys some chicken. I know, I know, it's after closing time, but he pays twice the price to get his food now, so we let him." Says Mark, while showing me a tray with some food that has seemingly been put aside for the guy.

"Okay" I say wondering. Who could this person be? A rich business man with late work hours and an addiction for cheap fast food? A spoiled little kid who wants his late-night snack? 

I take the tray and walks outside, while Mark, who is the only one apart from me in the restaurant now, fixes the few, last things that needs to be fixed before we can go home.

"Oh, and by the way, just give him the tray too!" I hear Mark yell out from a window before he closes it.

Well, I guess that makes sense. We can't really take it in again, given that Mark is now locking off the building, and if the guy pays so much, he probably deserves a tray to his food.

Only a minute later a black limo stops in front of me, and the chauffeurs window go down. He smiles at me, a real smile of gratitude, before taking the tray and passing it backwards to whoever is sitting back there, rich enough to have a private chauffeur, a limousine, and double-priced chicken. I hear a soft voice from the back of the car, a bit high but still unmistakably a man's, thank the chauffeur for passing it down. The driver then smiles at me again, rolls up the window and drives away.