I NEED A JOB. I don’t want a job. I hate working. But everyone hates working — and working does have its upsides. Mainly: Income, not feeling completely worthless all of the time, and being able to tell girls you meet what you “do.” Also, it’s very nice when crossing the Canadian border to be able to tell them you’re gainfully employed. There is nothing that makes a Canadian customs official’s ears perk up more than the word “unemployed.” It’s an instant red flag and you can be assured the next words out of his/her mouth will be, “Can you please step through the sliding doors marked ‘immigration’?” whereupon an unsmiling woman in a heavy-looking jacket will ask you all sorts of questions, and you will tell her you live with your parents, and that you “just graduated from university,” and you’re “just visiting a friend.” And then they will let you go, and you will get back on the bus everyone will look at you like you’re a convict.
Anyway, I need a job because the road trip is over. Back to “reality.” Yesterday on the flight back from Minneapolis I sat next to a 14-year-old kid I dubbed “porker” due to his generous proportions and the fact that he consumed sugar pretty much continuously throughout the entire flight. At one point he tried to order a Red Bull from the stewardess but couldn’t because he only had cash. He was crestfallen. I briefly thought about paying for it with my debit card and having him give me cash, but I thought, “You don’t need this, little man. You need a treadmill.”
Descending into Seattle and watching the sun set over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, I had one of those “Tomorrow is the First Day of the Rest of my Life” moments, where you think you’re going to get up the next day at 7AM, go on a 20-mile bike ride, eat a hearty breakfast, and grab the day by its proverbial horns. Now it’s 10:10AM, I’m sitting on the couch in my parents’ living room, my midriff is peeking out between my shirt and mesh basketball shorts, and I’ve spent the last hour talking to people on G-Chat. Maybe I’ll seize this afternoon by its horns.
-Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on April 8, 2009 at 12:14 pm, filed under Uncategorized and tagged alaska airlines, Chipotle, coffman, mill district, minneapolis, mount rainier, puget sound, road trip, stone arch bridge, university of minnesota. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.