My mom had asked me to pick up my Grandma, so I exited at Bloomington and headed toward Pekin. The roads just kept getting worse and the driver’s got exponentially more so. “Oh my Gawd! A snowflake! I’m going to pump my breaks and swerve between lanes of traffic!” Don’t get me wrong, the roads were snowy and getting worse, but… At times it looked like I was driving behind cars that were avoiding the rolling logs that almost kill the people on the freeway in Final Destination 2 (or maybe 3 or 4… You know what? It could have been 5.)
I brave the storm and arrive at my G-Ma’s place, and by this time it actually is bad. The snow is piling up and it is actually appropriate to be driving twenty miles an hour. Well, I saddle up my G-Ma and then hop in my car and start the excruciatingly long trip to Springfield. By the time we get to Interstate 55 again from Pekin I have been in the car for 6 hours on a 3 hour trip and we have like another 45 minute trip to get to the Sherman exit. By this time we are all driving 15 and the snow is shooting up like blow in Whitney Houston’s sitting room. My grandma and I are keeping spirits up, generally exchanging riveting dialogue about the snow:
“Wow, it sure is snowing.”
“It is!”
Then later:
“Look at all this snow!”
“I’m glad I’m not driving.”
Then:
“Wow. The road is sure snowy!”
By the time we get to the Sherman exit, Tedd has his hands on the wheel, his knuckles are white and he is trying not to hate everything about Christmas, driving and the 7.5 hours he has been in the car.
My Grams and I get off the exit for my parents place and I literally am driving down the ramp at 5 miles an hour. Remember I have been driving through blinding snow for about 3 hours, have come like 160 miles and have had no problem. We are five minutes from my parents and the nightmare is about to end.
Well… About three-fourths of the way down the ramp my car begins to go into a slow skid. It drifts off the road and Tedd, in his extremely composed manner, overcompensates like crazy. The resulting reaction causes the car to gently turn around and slowly slide off the road. The speed of this could roughly have been at two miles an hour.
So the car spins and slowly plops into a ditch. When all is said and done we are about eight feet from the road in a really small ditch. My Grams is not happy.
I have no idea what to do.
So Tedd hops out of the car and tries to push. I tried to rock the car back and forth and get it unstuck. At one point a Dad with four high school boys jumped out and tried to push me out. It was all to no avail.
After being in the ditch for about forty minutes, a cop drives by and pulls over.
“You stuck?”
“Well, you won’t get out tonight. Tow trucks are all busy.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to tie a ribbon around your car to mark it, so everyone knows you’re safe.”
So the cop gets out this cartoonishly long piece of ribbon and awkwardly threads it through my windows, my doors and my entire car. No sooner has he finished this excruciating process than a tow truck rolls up.
“You need help?”
“Yup.”
This led to Tedd awkwardly unthreading the huge ribbon from his cars, doors and throughout his car. In the end the tow truck pulled me out and there was much rejoicing. We get home and all laugh about it. “What an experience!” “Phew! We’re lucky!” “You won’t forget this Christmas Eve!” Etc.
The next day I get a call from my brother:
“Hey Tedd, I heard about the accident. You guys okay. I heard you almost rolled the car over.”
“Wait…what?”
The story seemed to grow and grow in extremity. Recently my mom said that my Grandma had been talking about “the wreck”:
“You know I have nightmares. What if the thing would have rolled over! I feel like we’re lucky the car didn’t catch on fire!”
…Wait…What?
My Grandma images the car (in onomatopoeia) as:
BAM! CRUK! BOOOOOM! SHAPPAPAPA! BOOOOOM! CRUNCH! WAKA WAKA!
Whereas… In onomatopoeic reality it was more like:
Woooo wooooo wup. ………..slup.
No more than five miles an hour.
I worry about the next time I see her.
“You know I feel like we’re lucky the T-Rex and Robo-Droids didn’t fire their space lasers. And imagine if we had rolled into the volcano!”
Wait….what?
Et tu, Nana?
So I got fired from Banana Republic.
*Holds for laughter*
Of course in typical Tedd fashion it couldn’t have been for actually doing something wrong or really make any sense at all.
The whole thing started when I got a new job for a company downtown Chicago. It was a weird series of events that led me getting it, but it was full-time, full benefits, amazingness.
So I put in my two weeks notice at the Nana.
About a week later I was wondering what was going to happen with my exit interview. About that time my boss grabbed me and said that I was needed in the Manager’s Office. Thinking it was for my exit interview, I was shocked to enter the office and find a burly Latino guy and some man that I had never seen before sitting at the desk.
“Have a seat.”
So I sit down and the guy immediately starts questioning my moral character. “Do you think stealing is okay?” “Why would someone steal?” “What should happen to someone that steals from the store?” I gave honest answers because I had no idea that they were talking about me stealing stuff.
Well it gets down to the final couple questions and the guys like: “Have you ever stolen?”
I said no.
Then he likes. “No, really.”
And I was like: “No.”
Then I thought about it for a minute and had an “AHA!” moment.
About two weeks earlier I had been buying Christmas gifts. This was this weird loophole where if I opened a Banana Republic Card, used my student discount and got the additional 15% off sale merchandise I would save like 65% off of stuff already on sale. So I took advantage of it. While I was in line someone who works at the store asked if I would buy something for her. I said sure because the only reason that I could get in trouble is if I abuse my company discount and not a customer discount. The person who asked me to get the coat was also more important than I was at the store, so I didn’t imagine she would ask me to do anything not on the level. So I buy the coat and it literally saved her 15-20 bucks.
This was evidently store theft.
So I remember the story as I’m sitting there and bald mall cop is interrogating me. I say:
“Yeah, I did buy something for someone the other day, but I didn’t use my employee discount.”
The guy shakes his head but looks surprised because he didn’t expect me to actually to tell the truth. What he said next was… so... amazing:
“Thanks for being honest. Now you have a chance here. Not many people are given this chance. See some people choose to go in fast forward. Some pause. Some people go in rewind. Some people never get past play. So you can choose to go in fast forward or make this easy and go in rewind.”
I almost laughed out loud. I say: “So… You just want me to tell you what happened?”
And he’s like, “Yeah. From the beginning.”
So I tell him the story and then he proceeds to make comments about the event like, “Why would you think stealing was okay?” “Do you steal from other places?” “Did you steal other things?” Really class stuff.
At the conclusion of me going in rewind, play, fast forward, frame by frame, he hands me a sheet of paper and goes “Fill this out to the truth of what happened.”
So I go, “So I just write, ‘I bought a coat for someone using a credit card discount?’”
He goes “No.” He then proceeded to dictate an entire page of text which included things like, “I abused my discount, a discount reserved only for myself, and shared it with another person” and other lengthy, legalese text.
After I finished this part he takes the paper and goes, “I’m going to discuss this with an HR person.”
He leaves the room, and the huge Latino guy who was also in there, but said nothing, continued to sit in stony silence and watch me.
He comes back and goes: “After contemplation we have decided it’s best if we terminate your employment. Please hand in your name badge. You’ll be paid for the rest of the day.”
So I turn in my name badge (They forgot to ask for my security access card and fitting room key… Both a bit more important than a name badge) and awkwardly leave the store.
Thus, the end of my illustrious career in customer service/mid-level retail/fruit named clothing brands.
The best of the story is actually what my friend brought to my attention later. She goes, “Wait. So they fired you over twenty bucks and then paid you eighty bucks for the rest of your work day?”
Yup.
The Nana is dead. Long live Nana (in rewind, fast forward, of course)
One Diamond NO ONE WANTS
I had the great pleasure of seeing the Swedish pop sensation Robyn this past week. Yes, she is the singer of junior high fame who sang “Show Me Love.”
Well, evidently she’s not dead and actually makes really awesome dance music, so a bunch of my friends and I went to her concert.
Robyn was AMAZING. But as we all know, I don’t write about things that are good or fun or interesting or insightful.
Only trainwrecks.
So her opening act…
Well, the first band was called “Natalia Killz!” It was this pretty British chick and these fierce dancers. The best part about her 20 minute performance was the fact that she played two songs the entire time.
She opened with half a song and then started saying weird stuff about how love kills. She loved to make a fake gun with her finger and pretend to shoot everyone in the audience… Okay, whatever. That’s why I don’t really care for the British. So she played a song called “Love Suicide” – yeah, girls got issues…
But after her second song, she goes, “This is my first single…”
She then proceeds to play the song she opened with…again… My friend turns to me and goes, “I’ve heard this before.”
To which, I responded. “Yeah. Five seconds ago.”
But overall it was actually a pretty good performance, albeit repetitive.
The next guy, though…
Oh. My.
The.
Next.
Guy.
It’s a one man band called “The Diamond Rings.” Never in my entire life have I been so uncomfortable at a live show of any kind. He opened by coming out in a purple mask and rolling around on the stage. His singing voice is this really deep baritone, but then when he welcomed us all to the show he literally sounded like a fifteen year old girl. Trust me. I know what it’s like to be a man and talk like a fifteen year old girl.
He then proceeds to pretend to play fake instruments and “dance.” Oh. My. His dancing was just THE WORST. The intensity of his failing more accurately falls under the category of drowning instead of dancing.
So about two VERY similar sounding songs in everyone starts chanting “Rob-in! Rob-in! Rob-in!”
The guy gets really moody and is like “She’ll be out in…49 minutes.”
Everyone let out a collective groan.
Everyone that is, except for one awkward man in a flannel shirt standing next to me, who for some reason found this wildly entertaining.
“Stop trying to ruin it for us that are trying to have a good time!”
The girl next to flannel guy was awesome and wearing a power suit. Her response was: “Dude, I’m actually enjoying him being an awkward mess. It is VERY entertaining.”
This guy gets huffy and continues to awkward dance.
The BEST, though, was the man who had an iphone and put up a banner that read “Shoot me in the Head…Please!” and held it up for all of us to see.
Yes… That’s how we all felt.
Evangelical Fierce
The last stupid story I have is from church the other week. I’ve been awful about going the past few months and in the interim we acquired a new worship band. They seemed really great until the end of the service.
Until that point most of the songs had been sung by the lead male singer, but at the end of the service a woman stepped up and started singing. She has a lovely voice. Also terrifying.
We get to the middle of the song and she starts clapping. A few people clap… Which wasn’t good enough.
“I CAN’T DO THIS MYSELF!”
If her head had spun around and he she had sprayed green vomit on the congregation, it would have fit her tone. Terr.If.ying.
So everyone starts nervously clapping and when we think her greed for clapping has been satiated it starts to die out.
She KNEW.
She immediately puts on a fierce Mom face and claps her hand really hard. She didn’t even have to say anything. Everyone immediately started clapping out of guilt.
Now that’s how to use God Guilt. And I’m not even Catholic.
So that was the rewind, play, fast forward, main menu screen recap. Fur shure.
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