KRU: If I should forget thee, my Rockingham! On Mister Doug and the company picnic.

Things had got hairy when I worked at the Rockingham Division.  They were talking about "uniquely qualified to work the other side of the street" and there were moles for other departments and all kinds of shady stuff.  One of the supervisors was always trying to take my lunch away from me.

But I hid it under my leg.

 

Up there, so close to the Canadian border, I was surprised by the quality of the food.  I knew about the maple abundance, but I was having other stuff, like church hotdogs, fried porkchops, and some of the best adapted Chinese, Americanized Chinese, I think I'd ever had.

My company handler would get really agitated about shrimp.  He would insist, "no shrimp".

Darnell wouldn't wear hearing protection in the server room, because he was just a balls-out kind of guy, but the technique worked for him, and his productivity remained among the best in the division.

Mister Doug transferred me pretty good once it was clear I was at the end of my rope there; he was good about that, like an iron-on patch for a tee shirt, he just got it did when the situation crystallized into a situation that was not suitable for anyone, either me or the company, nor his corporate climber prospects.  So only at the point where it benefitted all parties involved, did he pull the dipswitch on that.

Mister Doug on the other hand, did not always do, despite my lousy rhetoric, what was best for his career, and only best for his purpose.  It was a little d democrat thing, a kind of propitious turn for everyone that he was in it for.

There was a picnic when we opened the new office up there, and all the clerical personnel came, and it was like, Keystone Cops or something, people tripping over themselves to make a good impression on Mister Doug.  There was one, a recent mother, who lamented sadly, "but he's not my Daddy."

And I was like, "no, but keep manifesting.  Speak your reality into being.  Speak your dream into being."

We had the whole thing going, and you know, big tent, and all.  We had a screen set up for When A Stranger Calls Back.  While we were watching that, the clerical people came up to me, and I thought, that maybe to two or three of them, I was like Axel Rose or Stephen Tyler, pure rock star because of my haphazard forays through company business.

They may have envied or idolized me, but that thought saddened me, for all the pure thought I put into the stuff that was crossing their desks.  It wasn't "garbage in, garbage out", but a matter of garbage reproducing itself.  But it was so odd an experience, one putting me in a bag, the other trying to reach in my bag, one wanting to use it as a vomit bag.

Kirvonnen has cassettes of Classic Rock A-Sides in his "truck that time forgot".

I mean, did that young adminstrative assistant want Mister Doug to be her Dad?  He had invited me to ride his motorcycle.  And wild horses couldn't have dragged me kicking and screaming to that.  Not that he wasn't one of the most interesting people I've ever known, and helaciously skilled at storytelling.  His genius was all casual wear, instead of wing tips or pocket protectors.

Anyway, near the end of the movie, there was a wind storm.  He was hanging on to his wife, because the wind had caught hold of her skirt tails, and she, after some trying to no avail, was pulled into the air, deposited somewhere in the diaspora between Gibson, Dobbins Heights, Ellerbe, and some have pictures as far away as Aberdeen, proving positive she really got flung around, tossed this way and that, through the air.

Mister Doug don't get flapped, but the truth?  Heavy is the head, you know.