MY LAST DAY

I wasn’t sure how I would spend my last day at work.  Given, this was a job I’d had for nearly three years.  Serious security, health benefits, the works.  Not exactly what I’d wanted to do with my life, but “better then digging a ditch,” as my grandfather used to say.  So, I debated on even coming in for my last day, but opted to do it out of loyalty, I guess.  Who knows?  If I ever need a recommendation from those guys, the one thing they couldn’t say about me was “He cut out on us early.”  But in my own way, I wanted to rebel on this last day.  Something slight, but with enough of an edge so that those around me knew I as actually putting some thought in rebelling.  I recalled how my manager at Musicland back in the late ‘80s spent his entire last day playing a looped tape of Johnny Paycheck’s immortal “Take This Job and Shove It.”  He spent most of the day smiling in that way that four year olds do when they’re secretly shitting their pants.  But this guy was 45, still living with his mother.  He was in charge of our classical music section, for God’s sake.  This was the extent of his rebellion.  For me, I didn’t want to go that route.  I wanted something more jarring.  So, I spent the day talking like one of the Martians from “Mars Attacks.”  

“Sam, did you go to the post office yet?”
“Mah!  Mah-mah!”
“Is that a ‘no?’”
“MAH!  Mah, mah-MAH!”

I think if I hadn’t quit that day, I still would’ve done it.



-SLL