{"id":14804,"date":"2018-08-01T00:40:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-01T05:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/?p=14804"},"modified":"2018-08-01T09:12:46","modified_gmt":"2018-08-01T14:12:46","slug":"the-manager-talks-about-getting-engaged","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/14804","title":{"rendered":"The manager talks about getting engaged"},"content":{"rendered":"

I think I\u2019m ready,<\/em> he says. What was it like for you? Did you
\n<\/em>do anything special? <\/em>The story is, yes, it was, in fact, special,
\nbut not because of any particular planning, or creative
\nproposal-ing. It was spontaneous and, actually, I don\u2019t
\nwant to talk about it. Despite all my admonitions
\nto students about vanquishing vagueness, it\u2019s not
\na story I like to share. It involves Santa Cruz and sea lions
\nand a tall bearded man playing bag-pipes in the midst
\nof a mournful fog, and that\u2019s all I\u2019m going to say.
\nThe story is for me and for Karen and, maybe, one day
\nfor our children. I hold it tight to my chest and I want
\nto keep it like that, an heirloom.<\/p>\n

Except, it\u2019s nearing five a.m. when he asks,
\nand I\u2019m mopping the floor. Sort of.\u00a0 It\u2019s been
\na long, unnerving night, ice and snow and roads
\nthat want to bite, and he\u2019s counting money
\nin the register and accomplishing other mysterious
\npaperwork-related functions \u2013 I think I made
\nabout $105 in tips, add on the 54 cents per mile
\nand the $5.25 an hour salary and I\u2019m around 180
\nbucks for eleven hours, not horrible \u2013 but the floor
\nsneers daunting and salty and the water in the mop-
\nbucket already swims swampy, so I\u2019m swishing back
\nand forth as quickly as I can but the truth is the world\u2019s
\nnot a whole lot cleaner and my arms and upper back feel
\nlike I just survived six minutes of wrestling against a State
\nChamp, so I\u2019m half-tempted to tell the story just to cheer
\nmy own damn self up.<\/p>\n

A university professor earlier tipped five dollars
\non a ninety-seven dollar bill, and he also declined
\nto meet me at the door in the midst of the snowiest
\nbluster. Sent down a student clearly unprepared
\nto schlep seven pizzas (including one gluten-free)
\nupstairs to the classroom, so I did it for him, an extra
\nten minutes of my time while another customer\u2019s
\ndelivery camped in the car, and I don\u2019t know what
\nkind of class it was, possibly marketing, something
\nin the how-to-make-money-by-lying-to-people genre.
\nAbout thirty undergrads inhabited the classroom, each
\nlikely capable of chipping in a buck, though none offered,
\nand I considered making a public announcement exposing
\ntheir instructor as a 6% tipper after he asked me a bunch
\nof bullshit questions like do I get sick of pizza and does
\nmy car smell like pizza and so much of me wanted to say,
\nlisten up, students, the dude here who\u2019s grading your papers,
\n<\/em>or more likely, foisting that job onto a graduate assistant who
\n<\/em>gets paid little more than expired lettuce, is trying to make nice
\n<\/em>with me, act like he recognizes the complexity of my humanity,
\n<\/em>but he just tipped 5 bucks on a 97-dollar bill and you do the math,
\n<\/em>that adds up to an asshole at the extreme tail of the bell curve
\n<\/em>and I got two kids I\u2019m not putting to bed right now, not helping
\n<\/em>with their homework, not standing next to in the washroom
\n<\/em>as they floss and brush their teeth and I still got nine hours
\n<\/em>to go on this shift, then it\u2019s sleep two hours and snap my sorry ass
\n<\/em>awake for my son\u2019s hockey game, so if you learn one lesson this semester \u2013
\n<\/em>how about it\u2019s every person who\u2019s ever served you anything, fed
\n<\/em>you or cooked for you, or refilled your coffee or refolded a sweater
\n<\/em>you left in a heap after fingering through the bargain rack \u2013 every
\n<\/em>damn one of them might have a magical story comprised of sea lions
\n<\/em>and bagpipes and mournful fog they hold close to their chests?<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t say any of that and I feel smaller for it. I want to be
\nthat fiery teacher I once was, unafraid of losing his job, unwilling
\nto compromise a principled belief or stand in muted silence
\nwhen an explosion\u2019s brewing in his throat and the manager\u2019s
\nlooking up from his register, his own shoulders looking like
\npumpkins three weeks after Halloween, deflated and nibbled
\napart by squirrels, and I push the mop harder, try now to make
\nthe floor Cinderella-sparkle, for we who close the store at five a.m.
\nmust be our own fairy godmothers, our own Prince Charmings,
\nthere is no one else in this moment for us, no one thinking of us
\nbut us, and I polish that floor so it shines like a glass slipper
\nand the bark of sea lions lurches upward from hundreds
\nof feet below the craggy cliffs and it roars onto my tongue,
\nactually, <\/em>I say, special doesn\u2019t begin to describe. It was in Santa Cruz
\n<\/em>and we were on this bluff and the wind had that kind of chill like somebody
\n<\/em>pressing fingernails into the hollow of your back so I gave her my sweatshirt.
\n<\/em>It was royal blue with, for some reason, the number 88 sewn onto the front
\n<\/em>on a white patch, and we could hear some guy playing bagpipes, sending
\n<\/em>his screeching prayer into the mist and down below on the beach sea lions\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

down below on the beach \u2026 and she looked at me \u2026 and we
\n<\/em>could hear\u2026 and she started nodding her head and I said
\n<\/em>what are you saying yes to? What are you saying yes to?<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

But I already knew.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jeff Kass<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I think I\u2019m ready, he says. What was it like for you? Did you do anything special? The story is, yes, it was, in fact, special, but not because of any particular planning, or creative proposal-ing. It was spontaneous and, actually, I don\u2019t want to talk about it. Despite all my admonitions to students about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1704,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[57],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-3QM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1704"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14805,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804\/revisions\/14805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}