The Adult Years

 

My first job was working at a Calgary newspaper. It’s funny, because it was sort of my dream job when I was a teenager, but when I got it I found it to be quite a pain. I was working for a boss who was one of those bully types of bosses that nobody likes to work for. He had a home business of slaughtering cows, and constantly made comments to me about how I should be eating meat. He would bring in jerky and hamburgers, and I would politely decline. I wasn’t being a dick about it, I was being polite. He’d also order pizzas that were all meat just to spite me whenever the department would do a fantastic job and get rewarded with pizzas.

 

He would also make me feel like I was worthless, too. Anytime I tried to get ahead in the company was met with him stating to me that he didn’t think I was the “in charge” type. After a few years of going nowhere, I finally decided to get the hell out of there. I took the first job that came along, which wound up being in Camrose, Alberta, working for a Mom and Pop print shop.

 

Since I couldn’t find a place at all to rent in Camrose, I found a place in a small city close by called Wetaskiwin. I couldn’t believe how cheap the rent was there. For almost a third of the price a small one bedroom apartment that heated up to 35ºC every day for five months out of the year, I could live in a two bedroom townhouse. It was a great place, though the neighbours were drinkers, and it didn’t allow cats.

 

The day I moved there from Calgary was the very same day that George Harrison died. I heard the news on the radio as I was leaving Calgary. I remember crying out, “No! Poor George.” He was, after all, my favourite Beatle. I often wonder if that was almost an omen that bad news was going to come to me soon.

 

After I finally got settled in, feeling the freezing cold temperatures of the Central Alberta area, and one month after I started working there, I was laid off. Panic crept over me. I had just moved everything up here. What the Hell was I going to do now? After a day of crying, I checked the local paper and saw an ad for a part-time production staff. I immediately went over there and started working for three days in a week. I was still managing to pay my bills and rent and such, but not really making much more than that. I worked there for 10 months and applied to the Leduc local newspaper, as I received a tip from the person who went around to all the rural newspapers fixing any kind of problem they had with their computer systems, that they were looking for a full-time worker. I began working there.

 

During this time, a problem happened in my family. My father started going through a midlife crisis, and suddenly decided he didn’t want to be married to my mother anymore and wanted to be with someone he worked with instead. I think the problems were really about control, as us kids were all grown up and yet his money was still being heavily controlled by my mother. I’m going to tell you that during this time, I was completely on my mother’s side. I felt he was being too selfish, although I didn’t really know the power struggle that constantly happened between the two of them either. This year proved to be difficult for me as my mother would call me complaining about something he said, and I would try to tell her that maybe she was better off without him, only to have her cave and call him again and then call me, and repeat the cycle to infinity. They wound up moving back in together after not quite a year of separation, and apparently a lot of new rules. I still have a difficult time dealing with my father since then. We aren’t very close and are completely different types of people.