I'm Just Saying

The summer before my senior year in college, I came home, sick to death of school. I got a part-time job at a hip-at-the-time little bakery/eatery who made their own beer (remember when that sounded like a good idea?). I worked as a bakery cashier. In the matter of a few months, my pleated Duckhead shorts (part of the required uniform) went from the slung-low-on-my-hips kind to the wedged-up-my-butt in the back with inflated puff pleats and gaping pockets in the front, cutting me in half at the waist kind. I continued to wear them nonetheless. When denial serves free cream-cheese bearclaws, it can be a delightful place. 



One day, the general manager stopped by the bakery, crossed his short arms on the top of the pastry case, and gave me his important look. I could tell he was standing on his tippy toes in an effort to see over his forearms because he was wobbling slightly. On the other side of the case, I stood on a rectangular wooden box that ran the length of the case and added a good eight inches to my height. You needed to be able to reach over and hand a customer their selection without your arm smudging up the glass. Or, as I liked to think, you needed to be able to look down at customers, literally as well as figuratively, for their lack of willpower over simple sugars. 


“Hey, Bakery Babe?” Instantly I cut to a scene in my mind of me reaching over and pressing down on his head until his tip toes gave way to his heels, and I could no longer see him. But instead, I just swallowed the Heath Bar cookie half I’d just broken off and shoved into my mouth seconds before he walked up (we were allowed to eat the broken cookies, so I broke them often).

He was a blonde guy with a northern accent and a name I can’t remember. I do happen, though, to remember the name I secretly gave to the angry pimple he permanently hosted on his chin, Zoe. (There was something pubescently girl about it.) Each time he scolded me for not correctly consolidating the bakery shelves, I’d envision myself snapping on a bakery glove, reaching over and pinching hold of Zoe. He might try to pull back, but I’d have a choke hold on her. 



“Legs and Squirt” (his nicknames for Angela and Chandler) “are headed back to Sewanee,” he said. Hearing the word Squirt, of course, caused me to slip into my Zoe fantasy for a second, but I quickly recovered. I felt the exciting sense of change coming my way. And I wasn’t going to miss it. “So you want to move up to server?” He asked raising his brow.



“Sure, that totally works because I’ve decided” (like right this second) “to take next semester off,” I said as I scraped crumbs from the corners of my mouth with my pinky nail. As he toddled away in his own pair of too-tight khakis, I floated about in a strange place of pleasure. I am taking next semester off. They can’t make me go back. I was officially a plump college drop out, with neglected roots and sticky tennis shoes that made smacking noises.

For once it was nice not care about the have-to. I would finish school soon enough. There was no choice there, I knew that. But I was going to take the fall semester off. I’d get it all back together after the holidays and be back in form by Jan-term. For now, though, I was going to let it all go—at least for a while. With this thought, I released my abs and let my new paunch see the world for the first time. Normally a binding waistband would have sent me into an obsessive, one-Frosted-Mini-Wheat-a-day diet. But this was the new me, at least for a while.

I felt like I had started a new chapter. The part of the story where the heroine spirals into some sort of disgusting, addictive or slutty behavior and the reader panics wondering how she’ll ever pull it together. But for me, it was a journey I looked forward to. Because I knew I could write the next chapter. Perhaps I’d go back to teaching aerobics, join a roller blade hockey team, or take up mountain biking and meet some rough-n-tumble boy with big hands and a great laugh on the trail. But for now, my role as a foul mouthed, beer swilling, French fry snatching waitress was, well, fun.



Once I became a fully trained server, I was surprised at how patient all the managers and other servers were with me and my complete lack of experience, organization, balance, memory, comprehension, ability to read my own scribble or work a touch screen, as well as my general indifference toward customers. It was a laid-back place and most of my superiors did bong hits in the basement before shifts so my inadequacies seemed to coast just below the blip screen. And to make things even more amazingly wonderful, my friend Sally—a fellow ex-bakery cashier and cookie breaker—was promoted to server at the same time. She too was taking some time off from college. Now, the others just referred to me as one of the tards as opposed to the tard. (Their word, not mine.)



Sally and I were never scheduled for the same shift for obvious reasons, but we’d trade shifts with people at the last second so we could work together, and get bloated-er at the bar after work on pints, bread and olive oil and cold French fries. I knew how good life was, and I did not take one second of this for granted.



One Saturday lunch shift, Sally tripped over nothing and dumped a cocktail tray carrying seven pints of beer into her chest. Her white golf shirt was now a wet clingy translucent yellow sheath revealing her big pointy granny bra. (She had packed her cookie weight onto her bosom.) I ran from the other side of the dining room to help her pick up the broken glass, and we laugh and laughed. Unable to compose ourselves, we were asked (told) to clock out and go home early. Which translated to us as “pretend to clock out (you can always say you didn’t know how later), dry off Sally’s shirt under the ladies’ room hand-dryer and go next door to the taco place and eat three baskets of chips and two bowls of cheese dip.”

Over on-the-rocks, extra-salt margaritas, we had another irrepressible giggle fit when Sally stopped crunching her chips, paused for a thoughtful moment and announced that if she sat still enough she could smell her own hair. We’d been out late the night before watching a band, again, and neither of us had showered that morning before our shift, again. This little chunk of life was worth savoring. Hygiene could wait.



Way too soon, it was time to return to school and finish up in one calendar year. That was the limit my father put on the rest of my college life. So I quickly shed a few emergency pounds on my parents’ treadmill, found a cute little studio apartment near campus, and said goodbye to my Danny Devito look-a-like boyfriend (only shorter, not funny and not nearly as good looking) whose name I can’t remember, and headed back to my life, leaving my lushy waitressing days in my wake.


I moved into my new place, painted the walls in deep earth tones to the sounds of Big Head Todd and started my classes with a fresh eager perspective. My hair had back its shine, and I could fit back into my favorite jeans. I don’t know about the Duckheads, I threw them away as part of some revival ritual, and because I couldn’t get out the stale lager smell or ketchup stains. 



My new chapter was being written, and it was one full of hope and optimism. It felt good in a different kind of way. A fresh, healthy way. That is, until the day I was checking the job section for an aerobic instructor gig, I came across an ad that read: “New Outback Steak House opening soon on Eastern Bypass. Experienced servers wanted.”