Erin and the Florida Incident (Part 2)

I.                   El Rodeo Circus… Oh.

While the more-or-less toothless cowboy feebly slung his lasso round and round, in what I would consider a loose interpretation of a “rope trick”, to a wonderfully butchered piano version of “Cheeseburger in Paradise” by Jimmy Buffet that somehow suited the spectacle perfectly, my brother leaned in to ask me, “Craig… why are we at this rodeo circus thing instead of back home playing Resident Evil 2?"

I shrugged.  “Maybe I just thought it’d be fun for the family?  Lindsey seems to enjoy it.”  My little sister, who was about 4-years-old at the time, picked her nose and shook her moneymaker to the music, which entertained the immediate surrounding crowd of five wartime veterans more than the main act onstage.

We were at the local VFW attending a rodeo themed circus troop called Buffalo Willy’s Saucy Bronco Circus… or some such name like that.  You see, after several long months of patiently waiting, Erin was single at last!  Her boyfriend, whom I never really met, but always saw at a distance whenever he gave her a ride to school, was history.  I was biding my time for the perfect opportunity to make a move… as soon as I figured out what that move was going to be.  Erin had been babysitting for my parents for a few months, providing with ample opportunities to do something, anything, however...

***
WEEK'S AGO...

It was the beginning of sophomore year, and I run into Erin again for the first time since summer vacation had begun.  She had quit babysitting for us some time ago because she had gotten some other job.  So, since I was too much of a chicken shit to call her regularly, we just cut off communication entirely.  It was good to see her again, and I was instantly excited.  Her eyes were wide at seeing me, which I mistook as mutual excitement, before she said, “Good god, Craig, are you pregnant?”

“Huh?” I grunted in surprise, entirely speechless.  I regarded myself for what was apparently the first time in awhile.  It seemed that I developed quite the enormous gut over the summer.  This was a new development.  I had always been in really good shape my whole life, so while enduring the ravages of adolescence it somehow escaped my attention that I had grown fat – quite fat.  Well, to be fair, it was more like stout, but it still wasn't good.  The previous year, I had to get glasses, now this year I had grown fat; I was nervous that next year my hair would fall out.  It turned out to be a silly thing to be fearful about – my hair wouldn’t begin to fall out until senior year.

“Why have you gotten so fat?” she asked, laughing as if this was surely some kind of prank I was pulling on her.

“Uh, um, uh,” I was floundering.  “I guess I should get my parents to stop paying me to do chores with pizza rolls!”  She laughed at this.  I count it as unfortunate that I was merely telling the truth.  “So… moving swiftly onto another subject… tell me about this new job of yours!”

She waved it away.  “Oh, it’s not really a job.  I just sell tickets for the VFW shows.  You know how they put on wrestling events and stuff?”  I was vaguely aware of this.  She shrugged.  “That’s all I’m doing.  I’m hoping to get a real job somewhere, like at the new Papa John’s, maybe.”

“Ugh,” I said, patting my stomach.  “That’s the last thing I need right now – a hook up for free pizza.”  We shared a laugh at my quickly thought out joke to cover up something that I was now deeply, newly insecure about.  I couldn't help but note that my laugh now sounded disconcertingly... jolly.

“Hey!” she said.  “You should buy tickets from me!  There’s some kind of circus thing in town this week.  It's a shitty show though.”

I chuckled.  "Wow, well, you sure do know how to sell a guy..."

She shrugged.  "Just being honest.  Still, it'd be fun to make fun of it."

God I loved this girl.  “Excellent point.  I'll get my whole family to buy tickets from you.”  She promised to bring the tickets the next day, and as class started, the thought dawned on me:  Ah, shit.  I totally forgot to ask my parents.  Oh well.

***

  “I think you’re just here because of Ewww-wiiiiin,” my little brother taunted.  

I shook, startled.  I was back at the rodeo circus.  “What?  Noway!” I said.  “That’s ridiculous!  Gawd!  Would it kill this family to be exposed to a little culture?”  Almost as if on cue, a midget cowboy emerged from a barrel in front of my sister, firing fake pistols into the air, which provoked a hellish screech of terror… from my mom, oddly enough, who happens to have a fear, even a near Captain Ahab-like hatred, of midgets so intense that, were her chest a cannon, she would have fired her heart at the little man.  I have no idea what traumatic childhood event involving little people made my mom this way, but I'd like to think it involved being ceremoniously escorted out of an eccentric chocolate factory to a delightful, moralizing song after having broken one of the rules.  I really would.  

The Midget Cowboy attempted to nimbly leap out of the barrel, only to have the spurs on his comically over-sized boots catch the lip, making him splash onto the floor the kind of grace one could only expect from a dwarf dressed as a cowboy.  Even though this was clearly not a planned out pratfall, which meant there was every chance the midget could have been hurt, the crowd erupted in applause, as if a trick has been performed (at last!), and I thought I saw my mom pump a fist in the air.  

The Midget Cowboy quickly recovered, briefly gave a thumbs’ up to a crowd he had mistakenly assumed were concerned for his welfare, and continued on with “the act”, which amounted to the toothless cowboy attempting to lasso the midget cowboy – presumably because they were mortal enemies, but I wasn’t following the story very closely.  Eventually, after a far too drawn out chase, the Toothless Cowboy hogtied the Midget Cowboy, and stood victorious, strangely making the “Cheeseburger in Paradise” playing in the background suddenly seem very triumphant.

***

After we filed out of the showroom, Erin was at the merchandise table outside to greet us.

“Did you guys have fun?”  She asked, her incredible smile completely wiping away the stain of that awful show.

“Oh yeah!” I said with the enthusiasm normally reserved for when the waitress at a Red Lobster asks if I’m ready for more Cheddar Bay Biscuits.  “It was amazing...”

She rolled her eyes.  “Come on.  It was shitty.”

“...amazingly shitty,” I pretended to finish.  “I was going to say that.  What a shitty, shitty show.  Shitty. ”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you,” she said, excited.  “I got a job at the new Papa John’s in town!”

“Wonderful!” I said.  “Congratulations!”  

“I also met this amazing guy who works there named Jake,” she said in that breathless tone many girls have whenever they talk about someone they are infatuated with.

“Yep, yep, yep, sure was a… shitty show… ” I continued, as if not hearing her, while my heart made a THUMP-thump-THUUUMP beat, much like the music in Mortal Kombat when a “Fatality” is performed.

And so it begins…

II.               My Last, Best Hope…

I was reclined in my bed, head in my hand, eating Doritos and watching a new episode of Babylon 5, the show that I was obsessed with at the time.  If one were to make a timeline of my life, it could either be chronicled by whatever video game system was popular or whatever show I was obsessed with.  This current era I'm writing about are "The Babylon 5 Era", whereas before it was the "Mystery Science Theater 3000 Era", and right after it is "The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Era" (good times).  Babylon 5 was a sci-fi show about a space station that was originally built to serve as a sort of interstellar United Nations, but instead becomes the front line in a war against a race of powerful aliens simply called “the Shadows”.  The special effects were cheesy even by 90s TV standards.  You know the special effects in a show are bad when it beats out Star Fox 64 by just a nudge.  

When I first discovered the show, it was relegated to syndication and its future was uncertain.  However, TNT eventually picked it up, renewed it for one more season, and even ordered a series of made-for-TV movies of… questionable… quality.  Still, new episodes of Babylon 5 were an event rivaled in magnitude only by when the Sci-Fi Channel picked up Mystery Science Theater 3000 the previous era... er, I mean year.

I was having trouble enjoying the episode, though, because I was depressed about Erin’s new boyfriend.  No, no, not new boyfriend, not yet... right now he's just a guy.... a guy that she happens to like.  Admittedly, I had taken my sweet-ass time asking her out, or making my feelings known.  In a feeble attempt to make my feelings plain, I had drawn her portrait and given it to her.  I had felt like that was surely enough to get the point across, but it wasn’t.  She thanked me for the drawing, gave me a big hug, and that was that.  Unfortunately, this became a pattern of mine when it came to girls I liked - instead of just being honest and direct, I'd draw their portrait and hope that suffices.  Spoiler alert:  it never does.

I also did over-the-top things, such as walking up next to Erin after class, looping my arm around her's, and having her walk me to my locker.  She'd laugh and just go with it.  When we would reach my locker, I'd playfully stuff a couple dollars into her hand for her "services".  Camouflaged in the guise of goofing off, though it may have been, I assumed it was clear that I was into her.  I certainly wasn't asking any other girl in school to escort me to my locker.  I'd steal snacks from the cafeteria and present them to her, much like a cat leaves a mouse head on the porch as an offering to its human masters.  I did anything, and everything, but simply ask her to go out with me.  I reckon I couldn't bare the chance she'd reject me.


It's perfectly normal for a teenage boy to be afraid to confess feelings he may have for someone, but I couldn't help but feel like my fear ran deeper.

***

I woke up in my bed.  I was restless.  I still get that way whenever I have too much on my mind, especially if it’s female related.

I needed to tell her.  I couldn’t let her run away with this other guy and not ever know.  The most frustrating aspect of the whole thing was that I couldn’t think of a way to tell her that didn’t come off as… well, a desperate attempt to prevent her from running off with another guy.  Every scenario in my head went along much like Lloyd Christmas awkwardly confessing his love to Mary in Dumb and Dumber, except my scenario ended with me hugging her legs, weeping an imprint of my face into her pants, while screeching, “I love you, I love you, I love you!”  No matter how I sliced it, this couldn’t end well.

The next night, as I sadly poked around my dinner, my parents announced that we were going on a trip to Florida later in the summer.  I rolled my eyes. We always went to Florida, and what’s worse, we always stayed at a condo in Fort Meyers, which I hated because it felt like a retirement community.  Every time I went to the pool there, I halfway expected to see the old people from Cocoon swimming in it, and the giant, turd-like alien pods settled at the bottom.  I always had skin that burned easily, as well, no matter how many of layers of sunscreen I slathered on, so going to Florida for me was like Superman going spelunking in a Kryptonite cave. 

The only part of the trip that made me remotely excited was that we were going to both Disney World and Universal Studios.  I had been to the former once before, and despite my dad’s tendency to bum rush us through it as fast as he could, managed to enjoy it.  I had never been to Universal Studios, though, and my love of movies successfully cracked through the dense layer of teen angst enough for me to be at least remotely excited about the prospect. 

As the night came to a close, I played a little Final Fantasy VII on the Playstation I managed to buy from a pawn shop.  My brother already owned a Playstation, but we constantly fought over it, and I simply couldn't stand being at his mercy anymore.  Final Fantasy VII is a role-playing game where you play as a group of rebels fighting against an evil, corporate empire hellbent at depleting the world's resources in order to turn a tidy profit.  After a few zigs and zags, the story becomes much more epic, with enough memorable characters and incredible plot twists to leave an indelible impression in my young, developing mind.  I was at the part in the game where the group of heroes go to a luxurious casino/amusement park called The Golden Saucer.  They all take a moment to go their separate ways and relax before continuing their quest to save the world.  At one point, the main character, a stoic soldier with a mysterious past named Cloud, is invited out to the amusement park by one of his female companions named Tifa, who is an old friend of his from childhood.  The two of them embark on a number of activities before ending the “date” on an incredibly romantic Gondola lift ride over the entire casino.  As fireworks go off in the air all around them, Tifa uses this opportunity to try and confess her feelings to Cloud, but ultimately chickens out.  It’s a poignant scene, made all the more so by the beautiful music that accompanies it.

Honest to god, I was so moved by the scene, my eyes welled up.  People tend to get the impression that I'm a crude and rather crass person, when in reality, I'm a giant softy and a hopeless romantic.  How much so, you ask?  Well... I kind of teared up at the end of The 5th Element when Bruce Willis had to kiss Mila Jovovich to save the world.  After I turned off the game, I fell into bed, and drifted off into the pink, smokey haze of amorous fantasy, where I envisioned Erin and I on that gondola ride over the Golden Saucer casino...

I sat up.  Disney World!

What better place on Earth to take Erin so that I may confess my feelings!  The sheer romantic grandeur of the environment would destroy all of her defenses, and like a broken dam, her true feelings for me would gush out, overwhelming and drowning any residual feelings for Jake she might have had up till then.  By the time she came back from this trip, she wouldn’t even remember the scoundrel’s name!  This could work!  It had to work!


First, though, I had to ask her...

***

Funny... if I had considered asking Erin out on a normal date, I would have reeled in horror at the thought, yet somehow it was all too easy to ask her to frigging Florida.  Don't ask me how my mind works - finding that out is the whole point behind writing this book!

The two of us were in Chemistry together that year, giving me ample time to goof off with her, while also completely neglecting to pay attention to class or finish my work.  I’m still not sure how I managed to pass that class except to say that it’s just another example of the fine academic standards of Russellville High School.  For nearly a week, I had been feverishly going over how I was going to bring up Florida to her in a casual, cool way that didn’t betray the nervousness I actually felt.  I had promised myself to ask her about it by Friday, and it was the zero hour.  After the bell tolled to end the day, I carefully pulled Erin to an isolated corner of the classroom while saying, “Um, I… I have something to tell you…”  My stomach felt like a dryer with a particularly disgruntled mongoose trapped inside.  “I… that is… my family and I… are going to Florida.”  I coughed a dry heave.  

"Are you going to be okay?" Erin asked in concern.

“Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it," I said, waving it away.  "I was thinking, if you were interested, uh, that maybe you would like to… come along?”

In my head, this played out a series of different ways.  Worst case scenario, Erin would grab the nearest beaker full of acid and throw it into my eyes while saying, “Never speak to me again, you weird creep!”  Then she would walk away in an indignant huff, leaving me writhing in pain on the floor, while screaming, “Agh!  She blinded me with science!  Aargh!”  

In the best case scenario, she wrapped her arms around me, showering me with kisses, and declaring her undying love for me, before we both walked out of the classroom to the sound of wedding bells, all of my friends throwing confetti, and commenting to each other, “Wow, that Craig is one lucky asshole.”  What I got was not as melodramatic as any of those options.  It was actually incredibly mundane.

“Meh, I’d love to, but I don’t think I could afford it.”

Pop.  Huh.  I hadn’t considered this.  What a lame turn of events this was.  I had almost preferred the acid scenario to this sad state of affairs.  Curiously emboldened that the idea was wholly rejected outright, I decided that I wasn’t going to let a little thing like reality stop me now.  “Bah, don’t worry about it.  I’ll pay for the whole thing!” I declared, with my stupid finger pointing in the air.  Who the fuck are you, the Great Gatsby all of a sudden? I heard my dad's voice say, even though my real dad would never know the literary reference.

“Really?  You can afford that?”

I shrugged nonchalantly. “Pfft, of course…” …not, I finished in my brain.  "I mean, I just bought a Playstation.  I'm loaded."

She thought for a moment.  “Well, in that case, why the hell not?  Count me in!  Are your parents cool with it?”

I waved the question away dismissively.  “Oh, my parents are thrilled with it!  I love... they love it when you’re around!”  She gave me a hug, and a waved goodbye to her, a big shit-eating grin on my face.  However, the whole time I was thinking, Shit… I totally forgot to ask my parents.

III.            Great Scott!

My dad was lying on the couch, watching golf, and idly rolling a piece of Scotch tape in his fingers, one of his more bizarre habits, one lazy Sunday morning.  “Who’s winning” I asked, pretending to care.

“Kenny Perry is doing pretty good, although he's behind a few strokes…” he began.

“That’s awesome, hey; can Erin come with us to Florida?”

Dad looked up and his voice became very nasally, as it tends to do when he's annoyed.  “Aaaah, excuse me?  Uuuh, I don't think so.  This trip is family time – family time!”

“What if I pay her way?”

Dad lay back down.  “Oh.  Go ask your mother.”  In my family, the phrase, “Go ask your mother” was understood to mean:  “It’s fine by me, but I want plausible deniability.”  In the adverse, when mom said, “Go ask your father.”  It simply meant:  “No.”

For example:

Me:  “Hey mom, can I get an Oatmeal Pie?”

Mom:  “Ask you father.”

Me:  “Ah, gawd, I guess I’ll just starve then!”

My mom was laying out back on the deck, trying to get in as much sun that she could before summer was officially over.  I asked her the same question I asked dad.

“I think it’d be great to have her along.” She said.  “But if you’re going to save up money like that, you’re going to have to start now.  You need to call your uncle Scott, and see if he can put you to work.”
 

***

Uncle Scott is my mom’s youngest brother.  He was about 12-years-old when I was born and would often come over to play with me.  My first vivid memory of him was as a lanky kid sporting the Luke Skywalker haircut and an R2-D2 shaped briefcase full of Star Wars action figures.  He'd open his treasure trove of action figures, with every character from the movies imaginable, and ask who I wanted to be.  Having a propensity for being drawn to shiny things as a kid, I was irresistibly drawn to the golden C-3PO figure.  "Uh, are you sure you don't want Luke Skywalker, or Han Solo, or Darth Vader?"  Scott would try to entice, not knowing how to explain to a 5-year-old that C-3PO is the lamest character one could chose to be next to Wicket the Ewok.  I would stubbornly insist on the C-3PO, as clearly, in my young mind, he was the coolest looking character of the entire bunch.

We'd go out to the front yard and gather up sticks to build a crude Imperial base, which Scott would take far too much time and effort to build correctly, which was perhaps an omen of sorts to his future career in construction.  "Can we play with the toys now?"  I'd ask for the sixth time.

"No," he'd reply, face sweating as he continued furiously digging a wide hole.  "We have to build a proper foundation first, or this base won't amount to anything!  Anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time!"

After he'd finally finish crafting the most unnecessarily elaborate Imperial stick base ever, complete with a pulley-system for elevators, we'd pose the action figure Stormtroopers and Imperial officers in the base.  "Now for the fun part," Scott would say with a mischievous grin as he'd pull out Black Cat fire crackers and a lighter.  As I'd swoop in with a toy X-Wing fighter, Scott would feed me "coordinates" where to strike, where he'd be waiting to set off a firecracker.  After my X-Wing strafed the base, Scott would light the firecracker, and blow it up.  At that point, my mom would come flying out of the house in a hysterical frenzy.  If there’s one thing that frightens my mom as much as midgets, it’s fireworks.  I can't help but wonder if she's ever had nightmares of a midget chasing her with sparklers in each hand.  Anyway, Scott would just laugh at her and give me a high five.


***

Throughout my childhood, Scott used to take me on many outdoor excursions, such as fishing or playing basketball.  He was merciless when it came to playings sports with my brother and I.  Most adults take it easy on kids when they're playing a sport which they could easily trounce them in - not so with Scott.  When he played us in basketball, he played to win, even if that meant calling fouls that, as a kid, you could never imagine actually exist.  "Foul!" he'd call out, pointing a finger at my feet.  "Traveling!  I get the ball!"  He'd then proceed to take the ball and practically dunk it in my little brother's face.  "Yeah!  That's game!  Eat it!"  The excessive pride he took in defeating two kids with no chance of winning was almost worthy of being studied by psychologists.  


The great thing about Scott was he was just as willing, if not more so, to do nerdy things like watch movies or play video games.  In fact, it was Scott who first introduced me to the wonders of the Atari 2600.  I was to spend the weekend with my mom's parents, which, to my brother and I, felt like being sent to the Phantom Zone (the dimensional void that Kryptonian criminals were sent to in Superman).  My grandparents lived in Elizabethtown, which was like a giant sensory deprivation chamber in the form of a town.  There was very little to do in Elizabethtown when I was a kid.  Whenever I'd ask them if we could go to the mall or rent a movie, it was always met with my grandma saying, "Why do that when there's so much to do around here?"  She'd then continue sitting at the dining room table, quietly staring at the wall, while my grandfather napped in the living room, while the clock ticked to mark each painfully boring second of the experience.  Even television was no refuge - it was almost as if all of my favorite shows would takes breaks or cease to exist within the borders of Elizabethtown. 

These exercises in living in quiet despair would be mercifully broken by Scott and, sometimes, my other uncle Mark.  Scott would show up, usually with some form of entertainment cradled under his arm, whether it be fishing poles or, in this instance, an Atari.  I'll never forget how relieved I was to escape the ticking clock in the living room and replace it with the sound of Pac-Man munching on square pellets as he evaded ghosts.  If he didn't bring home video games, he'd bring hom movies like Willow or Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn.  As one could no doubt surmise by this point, Scott was very much into the world of the geeky.  He loved Star Trek and Star Wars with equal fervor, and would often make it his mission to make sure this passion rubbed off on me, which of course it eventually did.

Scott always seemed to carry a breezy, care free, and cocksure attitude about the direction his life was going, that both my brother and I would try to emulate in our adult lives.  Even after meeting his wife, April, it didn’t take the edge off his confidence or his ability to have fun.  So many other males I looked up to in my life seemed to become hollowed out husks of their former selves the moment they got involved with a woman... which might go a long way in explaining my issues with women today.  In fact, I remembered my Uncle Eddie in much the same light as Scott, until he met his wife Amanda.  Suddenly, Eddie didn't have time for me anymore, and proceeded to engage in a relationship that would eventually turn into a whirlwind of drama that would devastate nearly every facet of his life. 

Scott, on the other-hand, seemed to only get stronger because of his relationship with April.  By observing his behavior with April, I discovered that, if one can just find the right person, then a relationship could be incredibly beneficial to one's life, instead of a destructive force.  The problem, as I would come to find in my later years, is being able to discern what kind of behavior is encouraged by the person I find myself infatuated with:  behaviors of self-destruction or of self-improvement.  Although Scott was ever the self-improver before meeting April, his relationship with April seemed to encourage this trait further.  One time, while I was in high school, he gave me advice when it came to women:  “Craig, the kind of girl you need to get is the kind you can feel like yourself around.”  He certainly didn’t have any problem being himself around April.  Among Scott’s repertoire of antics to mess with April was how he would playfully swerve the car he was driving in a zig-zag, pretending that he’d lost control of it, causing her to freak out and slap him on the arm, while yelling, "Stop it, Scott!"  While I was laughing in the backseat, she’d spend the rest of the drive in icy silence, arms crossed, staring out the passenger side window, while Scott would try to chip away at the ice by playing songs she liked, such as “The Sign” by Ace of Base.  Right when she’d start to finally warm back up, he’d do it again.  

The kind of girl you need is someone you can feel like yourself around.  Scott's advice would buzz in my head like a hive of bees whenever I was around Erin.  At the time, I could truly see a future where I was in a relationship with Erin much like Scott and April.

***

Scott hung out with me well into his college days, letting me spend the weekend with him at his fraternity house (which was NOTHING like Revenge of the Nerds, much to my disappointment).  Scott wasn’t all fun and games though – if there’s one thing he taught me, it’s that you have to pay to play.  We’d hang out all weekend, eat pizza, rent movies and video games, all of that good stuff, but for all of this, I had to clean his kitchen… when I got older, it eventually turned into mowing his lawn… and when I get even older, it eventually turned into cleaning his cars.  I never bitched or moaned too much, because I couldn't help but feel like it was fair.  Plus, it was difficult to complain when he’d frequently take my brother and I out to buy the kind of new shoes my parents wouldn’t dare spend money on.  If it weren’t for him, I’d be doomed to wear Wal-Mart brand shoes throughout most of my formative years in high school (a fate that, unfortunately, I didn't entirely avoid...).

Since I knew him, Scott was always driven, and most of his motivation came from the desire to get as far away from his past as possible.  My mom’s family lived in relative poverty for many years, mostly due to my grandfather’s alcoholism and, therefor, inability to hold down a decent job.  My grandfather Wayne was an intelligent, charming man who could talk his way into, or out of, practically anything.  His way with words extended to an ability to write so well that he was given an award by the Governor of Kentucky for his poetry.  The tragedy of my grandfather's story, though, is that all of his potential for providing a better life for himself and his children was wasted away by his alcoholism.  I believe that, to this day, Scott’s primary motivation for success is to accomplish what his father couldn't: be a supportive, providing father and husband.  More than ever, I'm sure he probably desires a pat on the back from Wayne to acknowledge his many accomplishments - a pat on the back that will never come.

Scott’s ambition eventually led him to start his own contracting business.  With the help of a wealthy friend and mentor, whose mansion he used to house-sit (if such a term could be properly applied to a gigantic mansion), Scott started building houses and apartments for sale or lease.  It wasn’t long before he was living in those houses, and it wasn’t long after that he was living in the very mansion he used to mansion-sit (nah, “house-sit” rolls off the tongue better).  When I realized that I needed money, or at least, more money than my parents were willing to cough up for doing dishes every night, my mom suggested to Scott that I start working for him.  I was about 14 or 15-years-old at the time, and not old enough to get a real job, so Scott kept up with my hours in his head, and paid me in cash, kind of like a migrant worker. 

While Scott still retained some of that fun-loving attitude he’d had since the days of blowing up Stormtroopers, all of that was gone when it came down to business.  During work hours, his attitude became distant, cold, and he had little patience for incompetence.  He had two strict principles he expected everyone to adhere to, with no exception:  “Anything worth doing is worth doing right the first time” and “Work smarter, not harder”.  Oh, and one more: "Overtime?  Fuck you!"  I’d often imagine him arriving at a work site with these commandments inscribed on two tablets of stone like Moses coming down from Mt. Sinai.  I also imagined him smashing the tablets with great fury if he caught someone not following his decrees to the letter.  Scott tended exhibit the tact of Steve Jobs whenever he was dissatisfied with the quality of someone's work, which is to say, he lacked tact entirely.  There's nothing quite as demeaning as having someone unexpectedly snatch a broom from your hand and show you the basic art of sweeping out an apartment, as if you weren't a fully grown human who has done such basic menial tasks before.

I began working for him on weekends and on vacation weeks.  Since he lived 30 miles away in Bowling Green, where I’d later go to college, I would usually just stay the night with him on the days I worked.  I remember my first day of work well.  We were driving in his truck to the site, and I was nervously patting a Star Wars book on my lap.  He glimpsed at it from the corner of his eye. “What’s with the book, Craig?”

“Huh?” I looked at the book, as if surprised it was there.  “Oh!  Uh… you know, I have it in case things are slow and there’s not much to do, I guess.”

Scott laughed in disbelief.  “Don’t worry; there will be plenty to do.  You might as well leave the book in my truck.”

It was a gloomy, gray, cold autumn day, and we pulled up to the site, which was still a wasteland of mud and stones.  “I want you to take the wheelbarrow in the bed of the truck, and go dig up all of those rocks you see out there.”

I chuckled.  “Yeah, right, good one – now what do you want me to do, for real?”

He just looked at me.
 

Next thing I knew, I was ankle deep in muck, picking up rocks like one of the filthy peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  “God, this sucks,” I was panting, while alternating each hand under one of my armpits to keep them warm.  “This sucks a whole mess of dicks.”  Pick up rocks?  What am I, Fred fucking Flintstone?
 

Once noon came, Scott pulled up and lowered his window.  “Lunch time!”

“Yabba, dabba, doo!”  I’d scream, while hobbling over to his truck with my boots that, by this point, were so caked in mud they seemed five times their actual size.

“Here you go,” he’d hand me a bag of Wendy’s and a drink.  “Get back to work when you’re finished.”  The window rolled up, and he was gone.

I looked at my bag, and then looked out at vista of rocks that, I swear, weren’t there before, but must have worked their way to the surface to laugh at the futile, Sisyphean task ahead of me.  The only word I could think of was the word that had been repeating in my head since the moment Scott dropped me off:  “Shit.”

Despite sucky times like that, and the rather annoying habit he would later develop of wagging his finger at me for not going to church, we’re still pretty close. Scott’s influence in my life is probably the main reason I have managed to successfully live on my own as an adult without getting evicted or ending up on welfare.  He ingrained not only a work ethic that I don’t think I could get rid of if I wanted to, but I also learned to appreciate the pride of earning things in life by virtue of my own blood, sweat, tears, and, well, more blood.  As he began having a family, his priorities naturally shifted to being a father instead of being an uncle, but he has always been there when I needed him, despite his misgivings on the destination of my soul.

Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I had begun looking up to Scott like the older brother I never had.  Being the oldest kid isn’t easy.  There’s a lot of pressure to succeed in life, or become a living cautionary tale for the rest of your siblings.  You are the one who has to lead your siblings out of the trenches and into the No Man’s Land that is life, and as such, you are the one who usually catches the first wave of bullets or steps on the first landmine.  As you lye writhing on the ground, trying to keep the shattered remnants of your life from spilling out of your belly like so many guts, your siblings quietly tip-toe over your pitiful form, hoping not to make the same mistakes you did.  

It’s not all doom and gloom, though, because sometimes even the oldest child has someone who will pick them up, suture their wounds, and teach them why they fucked up and how not to make the same mistakes.  Parents are supposed to do this to a certain degree, but once a child hits their teens, their parents’ word on life becomes less authoritative and they need someone else to pick up the slack.  Ultimately, that’s what Uncle Scott was in my life.

I must digress though – let’s get back to me sitting in a vast field of mud and rocks, pathetically eating a burger.  So this is a job.  I thought.  I don’t care for it.  But, for her, it’ll be worth it, oh yes, it’ll be worth it.

***

This isn’t worth it! I thought, as I lay down the heavy roll of sod, with the sun beating my back like a particularly grouchy slave driver.  I had been working for Scott on the occasional weekend, and on nearly every holiday break, all throughout the school year.  I was saving all of my money, for the most part, although I would break and buy the occasional video game (hey, Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda:  Ocarina of Time both came out that year – I couldn’t resist).  The work I did varied from simple tasks, like sweeping an entire street with a push broom, to rebuilding collapsed retaining walls, to laying sod.  I prefer looking back on this time almost like a training montage from a 80s martial arts film:

It was the beginning of spring, and the sun was just hot enough to make the already grueling work even more difficult.  The entire process of laying sod feels like a cruel punishment from the gods of Greek myth:  first, you cut out squares the size of a doormat from a healthy patch of grass with a sod cutter machine, which looks like a lawnmower on steroids.  Then you roll up the patch of grass, or sod, like a carpet (mud, worms, and all) before loading it onto a flatbed truck, where it then gets transported to a barren yard of dirt, to be laid out like a jigsaw puzzle in a Salvador Dali painting.  By the way, each patch of grass weighs about fifty pounds.  

While I rolled up sod in the hot sun, getting caked in mud from head-to-toe, the only thing that counterbalanced utter despair was a picture of Erin I kept in my wallet from Freshman year.  This is who I'm doing it for.  I'd repeat like a mantra in my head as I'd lift another roll of sod.  I would be lying if I said that getting to see her in a bathing suit wasn’t another primary motivator.

***

Before I knew it, Sophomore of high school year flew by, and summer vacation was upon us.  I got Erin to sign my yearbook, which she ended up taking a whole page to do:

Craig,

Well, it's been one long-ass year.  I'm so glad it's over!  Just think, no more labs!  I've had a blast in Chemistry.  You made it a whole lot easier.  Thanks for letting me have money all the time.  I will walk you to your locker anytime.  Ha!  Ha!  If you go to the trailer park this summer just remember:  be strong.  Don't eat the food.  And never answer the door.  You never know who it could be.  Have fun this summer, and behave yourself.  You know my # so keep in touch, "K".  Oh yea, don't wreck.  Your going have to get a car so you give me a ride to school and we can chill together.  Love ya.  Erin. 

The complete omission of the upcoming trip should have served as warning, but I was much too enamored with the warm tone of her letter which, in my mind, seemed very promising.  Erin's mention of "the trailer park" were in reference to the weekends I'd spend at my dad's parents', who had recently moved from their spacious house in the country to a shady trailer park.  Within a year of living there, the trailer next to theirs exploded because of a meth lab inside.  Erin found the stories about my weekends with the grandparents highly entertaining, as evidenced by the letter she wrote to me before one such weekend:

*For the sake of accuracy, all grammatical and spelling errors have been included, even though it makes the English major inside me want to cry.

To a poor, poor, man.

Have a nice time at the good old trailer park.  Don't have to much fun with your grandma and behave, because I know how you get when you get around old women.  And don't lock yourself in the bathroom for long periods of time, because its bad for your health.  I wouldn't recommend eating anything that comes from a trailer, but if it's clean you can make an acception.  I recommend lots of movies, go to the store and get mass junk food, and what ever you don't DON'T THINK NASTY THOUGHTS!  Because they will only tease you.  So if you listen to my advise you'll be A, okay.  Good luck. Erin

It was abundantly clear to me that I couldn't have chosen a better person to accompany me on this trip.  It was an amazing feeling to make something happen that, at one point in time, seemed not only impossible, but wholly ridiculous!  Screw taking Erin out on a date...

I was taking her to Florida.

TO BE CONCLUDED…