Writing Column for Newspaper

[Mitch]

[size=1] This definitely needs work...but I'm satisfied.

[i]You need to get a job[/i], the little happy voice would say to me. And I'd grin back like a little happy person and say that I guess I did, and that I guess it would be good.

The little happy voice came from so many different places. Sometimes it smiled its little curvy tooth up to me from my parents' faces. Other times it was like an internal demon doing its demonic little sneer at me, beating me down like a hammer with large [i]thud thuds[/i] as if as soon as I had gotten what it wanted, it would be able to finally complete its process of creating something special; something different. Something that was complete.

So, as summer collapsed and crumbled out at me like a bleeding, festering wound I decided it would be right to listen to that little happy voice. For it would not only shut it up if I did, but it would also change me. It would make me a maggot becoming a fly in the web of things. I would be born. It would be my debutante. But I wasn't a woman so I couldn't use that nice little word. It would just, simply as can be, be my debut into society.

I began filling out applications very methodically and as slow as I could. Being too lazy to put forth any real effort, I became something like Barney the Dinosaur. I had all my I love yous and hate yous yodeling out from me in deranged and collapsing tunes. I scribbled my scribble like I had nothing to lose and nothing to gain.

And really, I didn't.

My signature on the end of every application was my certification that my soul was going to be given. That I was theirs forever and ever cross my heart and hope to die. But at the same time I didn't care as I signed it. It was just me signing some piece of paper. It didn't mean anything.

I filled out about four applications all at once in some brave courage. For weeks I didn't hear anything.

Then one day as I was asleep the phone began ringing. So I picked it up. And just like that, two days later I had my job.

I was certified as a colonel at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I was given my habiliments and wore them along with my hat as if I were enlisted in the army.

I learned to cook chicken. I learned to appeal to the crumbling Berlin Wall that is the masses.

I became from a maggot to a fly. I buzzed around doing my tasks, earning my money.

Five weeks elapsed like a wide-eyed, howling moon. During these weeks I learned to prepare chicken, pack chicken, and to mop up other's messes.

Then, suddenly, as if hell had no guttural love for such wastes as me, I was fired.

Diane, the Queen of the KFC for which I worked at brought me into her office that day. Right away I knew something was wrong.

Diane, while I had been working at KFC for my five weeks, had been on vacation time, living it up on some beach of sand, sun, and fun. Walking into her office I knew just what was going to happen. It was all over her face like some casual mess trying to not crumble all over a cleansed floor.

She sat me down next to her, staring at me. She began by explaining that she had gotten some "complaints" from my gracious fellow co-workers. One had complained that I had a bad habit of always putting my hands in my pockets, she said. Another had claimed I didn't know how to pack chicken good enough.

And then it was like a boxing match, her fat girth suddenly transformed into lean, muscular being. She hit me with the last and finally degrading punch.

"I don't know what to do. I've wasted all the hours training you already. You should know how to at least work the till by now." I just stared at her, everything seeping in like blood seeping back into an open wound.

[i]I should know how to work the till by now? Well just look here now. You're the one that sets the pace at which I learn my job, you are the ones that train me. So you're telling me it's my fault I haven't learned the till? If you wanted me to learn it, then you should've done so. [/i]


I didn't say a thing. I only sat there thinking that, telling myself that I was sure that part of it was me probably. But lookie here, lookie here. Ms. Queen of the Chicken was on vacation. I'm supposed to pick up the slack of your absence and learn as fast as I am supposed to?

Then it was time for another punch. "You haven't even learned how to pack chicken yet. You should have that nearly mastered by now." I just glared at her, not saying a word. "Do you even know how to pack?"

"Somewhat," I said. I could've said that I did. I could've told her that I actually mostly did. But what was I? I was a little colonel, I was a yodeling cajoling little Barney the Dinosaur. I didn't know jack.

"Somewhat. So you see, you should have it all down by now. So I'm going to let you go. You could've been a cook, but Arnold already has that."

So then it was all over, and I left. I drove off and drove home like a maniac. I was pissed. Yet I didn't know what the hell to feel. Defeat? Anger? Hate? What was I to feel?

I had loved working at KFC. I had met friends in my coworkers. And just like that, bang, I was gone.

Here's to the maggot that turns into a fly. I'm still trying to eat enough dead wounds and tissues to make it back into another job.

It just won't be fast food this time. And when I do finally get another job, one that will be the one I will have for nearly all my life, I will have to pay Ms. Queen of the Chickens a visit. I'll have to wring some necks and laugh because in the end I was better than she could ever be.[/size]