By Butch Freedman
Working Man—Part 2 – A continuation of a previous post (See below for link to Part 1)
I didn’t think too much about the upcoming job in that week before I was to begin the “Whole Worlds Food” training program. Kept busy with my writing and with going for long bike rides and hiking in Forest Park. I had recently quit smoking (for the third time) and was trying to stay active so I wouldn’t think about how much I needed a smoke. I had started up again after my divorce. Not because I was broken up about the split — that was a good thing — but because I then felt free to do whatever the hell I wanted to, like the guy who gets out of jail, and wants to do all the dumb things that got him there in the first place. Yeah, I can be a total idiot at times. Lots of times.
But I was also still the primary parent for my younger daughter, who had just started high school. I needed to be a decent role model for her, so gave up the noxious nicotine and was trying hard to stay healthy. Not just for her, but for myself. I needed to feel whole and strong and, you know, okay with myself. I was watching my diet too—cutting out sugar and fast food. I had gotten back into cooking. My daughter liked the meals I made for us every evening, heavy on salads and seafood, with the occasional buttery pasta dish. We talked a lot during our meals—openly. She told me about school and how sometimes she felt awkward and didn’t know how to make friends in this new all-girls Catholic school. “Yeah, kids can be mean,” I told her. “But you’ll figure it out.”
“I hope so.” she said. Then asked me about how I was feeling. I liked that my kid could ask me that.
“I’m okay, kind of nervous about this new job.”
“The supermarket thing?”
“Yeah, I don’t think they call it that anymore. Now it’s ‘life-style experience’ or ‘community meeting place’. But it’s still just a damn grocery store.”
Our conversations felt good, not strained like when we were pretending to be a happy family. I was thinking I might be okay. Maybe I was turning a corner. Learning how to finally be an adult. Maybe.
I couldn’t sleep the night before I was to show up for my initial day of training. I imagined learning how to run a cash register or stock shelves, or pick out rotten tomatoes. I remembered some of that from a summer job I had at a grocery store in my old neighborhood back East. I hadn’t liked it very much, but my parents were big on “learning responsibility” so we all had to have summer jobs and then save the money we made for college. I didn’t mind working; it was good to get out of the house. I wished, though, the job could be more interesting. When I told that to my mother, she said. “Work is not supposed to be fun.” I never could understand that. And all my later life right up until this very night as I tossed and turned, I had adhered to my desire and push to only do work that I had at least a fighting chance to enjoy. Now I was about to throw that dream away, and become a wage slave, a working man. And I was starting to hate myself for giving in.
I’d only had a few hours sleep when my alarm rang out. Still I felt okay, not even groggy. Maybe even happy—a weird thing for me to feel at 7am. I didn’t even make coffee, which I usually desperately needed to get going. But somehow in the midst of the fitful night I had come to a decision which allowed me to fall into a peaceful dream, something about rain clouds and the Jersey shore.
I reached for the phone and called the offices of Whole World Foods. It went to their answering machine. After the beep, I told that machine: “This is Butch Freedman. You all seem to know me as Robert, but nobody has called me that since, well, forever.” I was about to get into the story about how I came to be called Butch, but pulled up short on that. The answering machine did not care. “Anyway, I’ve decided that I won’t be coming in to the training program today. Actually I won’t be coming in ever. Sorry to have wasted your time. But It’s just not the right thing for me. Tell Mr. Martini hello. He seems like a decent guy.” Then that machine beeped to signal that I was done. I hung up then and realized I could breathe again. I laughed out loud, not at anything in particular, I just wanted to laugh. Then I stepped outside to have a smoke. “This is the last one,” I told myself.
