Sent: Friday, July 12, 2003
Subject: "Claire Wears a Smock," a Cautionary Tale
So the big stadiums and arenas in the Portland area do this thing where nonprofit groups can work a concessions booth for a cut of the profits. It seems a little bit of a racket, since ALL the grunt workers are volunteers and I think we make like 8% of the profits. But that's still a lot of money if you do it enough. Anyway, my dad has become the Guy Friday to Nicole, the chirpy, cheerful twenty-something Mary Kay lady who is our church's new youth minister. (You are familiar with Mary Kay? It's like Avon. People go door to door selling makeup on commission. In the sixties top Mary Kay ladies got free pink Cadillacs. Oh, to live in that time . . . and be a top Mary Kay lady . . . with a driver's license . . .) Anyway, he and Nicole basically run all the youth ministry stuff and he signed himself--and his daughters--up for this fundraiser project at the new Clark County Fairgrounds Auditorium. Tonight was the Auditorium's first concert--John Mayer and the Counting Crows. Except THE COUNTING CROWS OPENED FOR JOHN MAYER. The Counting Crows, while not my fave of all time, are not what I think of as an opening act. I feel like for a band that's been around awhile--a band that USED to be headliners--to be demoted to opening act status, they must have lost several key members or have been a total flash-in-the-pan group. Like if Boy George opened for Madonna. Or the Pips without Gladys Knight opened for the Supremes without Diana Ross at some middle-of-nowhere Indian reservation casino. So I felt kind of bad for the Counting Crows, especially since John Mayer is like twelve and they probably see him as some weaselly little upstart. Anyhoo, so Dad and I went to work at the concert and I will list for you in bullet point form all the reasons it was a horrible evening--
--The dress code was tan pants and closed-toed shoes. Now, they lucked out because I haven't owned a pair of tan pants in about 6 years but I just bought a pair of very cute camel-colored slacks on sale for $20 so I did happen to meet that requirement. But the only closed-toed shoes that go with them are my mid-calf brown zip-up leather block heel boots, which are totally cute but a little uncomfortable when you're on your feet behind a window from 5 to 11:30 p.m. with only one 10-minute break.
--Also, we had to wear a smock. A SMOCK, Daniel. ME. In a SMOCK. A hideous tan polyester tan-and-black smock with the catering company's logo on it in enormous letters and they looked fine on the old guys but I'm sorry, anyone with boobs cannot wear a smock. All the girls were like, "Christ, we look heinous." Anticipating such a crisis, I took extra care with makeup, hair, and fabulous earrings, but still, I was like, "This is the ugliest shirt I've worn in the past two decades since my mid-80's fetish for polka dots." Blarg.
--It was the arena's absolute first-ever event, so EVERYONE--including the paid staff who should know what they're doing--was clueless. There were about 10 different people giving different directions about various policies until most of us were resorting to making shit up.
--Here is my job description: Stand behind counter. Smile gaily at approaching "guests" and take their order. Fetch their food, even if the came to me at the pizza window and asked for a Polish sausage which was at the snack section six windows down and I had to leave my till unattended to go get them their damn sausage. Calculate their totals--I prided myself on not having to use the calculator; I worked in retail for 2 years, I can give anyone change for anything under $50 in 5 seconds without a calculator. The trick is to turn it as quickly as possible into denominations of 5 and 10 and the rest is cake. Anyway, I was also at a counter that was serving beer, so I had to learn how to pull pints (well, not pints, 12-oz. plastic Portland Trailblazer cups of Bud Light, but still) so they weren't all foam, and get fussed at by people who didn't like the "one beer per person" policy. Hurrah.
--Immediately following this joyous 5 hours of food-selling fun came an hour of the even greater delight known as Throwing Away Massive Quantities of Untouched Food, Mostly Hamburgers and Slices of Pizza Turned Into Rubber Via Sitting Under the Heat Lamp, which was followed by the wonder of Everybody Sneaking Out Before Cleanup Started, and the piece de resistance of Having To Wash Piles of Grimy Fatty Pots and Pans Piled Practically To the Ceiling Because Nobody Else Would Do It and Dad Was Cleaning The Fryer. Oh, what a life. I came home spattered with grease--yuck--smelling like beer and garbage--double yuck--and perfectly contented never to eat another hot dog again. This, I believe, is God's way of telling me that no financial straits I find myself in are dire enough to necessitate taking a job in fast food. I do not want to have to refer to beer-swilling, hot-dog-chomping assholes who yell at me for removing the top from their juice (I'm sorry, sir, I'm not allowed to give you the lid, I don't understand either and I think it's a ridiculous rule but the supervisor is right behind me) as "guests." I do not want to permanently smell of burger. I do not want to wear, or suffer others to wear, anything that could be construed as any kind of smock. If you take into account that I spent the morning at the dentist, and that all day I have been thinking about the fact that tomorrow I have to go to the funeral of a family friend (a kid younger than me who I went to school with) who was killed clearing a minefield in Iraq, it is hard to imagine having had a worse day.
Upside (and oh, what an upside): Nathan and I are SO back. I had written him this looooong letter about two weeks ago--his e-mail's pretty limited and I like writing letters and he never gets mail, so I made a pretty envelope and used pretty stationery and wrote him this like 10-page letter that was basically like, "Okay, you hate confrontation, I hate confrontation, but our relationship is going to fall apart unless we start communicating, so here's what's going on and here's what I don't understand, and why do you not tell me what's going on in your life anymore?" and all that kind of stuff . . . not whiny like that sounded just now, but basically how I felt like we had been drifting apart and I didn't feel like I had any control over it and if something was wrong could we please talk about it and all that kind of stuff. And I kept thinking, it was an even 50/50 whether I would get the response I wanted, or whether having me bring it up would make him even MORE unwilling to discuss the problem. But he wrote me back--another 10 page letter--and he explained everything and apologized for not communicating and said he loved me and missed me and he was really sorry he'd been shutting me out and he just said all the right things and I was so happy I almost cried. I was so worried that we were going to be stuck where we are now, but the fact that he could look at the relationship and say, "I miss where we used to be, and we're where we are now because I shut you out, not because you're a bad person" made me feel a lot better. Not like I wanted him to say everything was his fault, but just so he would acknowledge that I couldn't do anything about the problem when he never told me what was wrong. But anyway, he told me everything and it's all worked out and I'm thrilled that he's so happy with his ministry work in Ohio and I can't wait to see him in two weeks. God, I miss that kid.
You know who else I miss? My wacko friend Daniel. How is he? Any more "Giant Sign!" or related goofy family stories? My family went to the beach for the 4th and played Loaded Questions. Catherine's boyfriend--Allen from the Peace Corp who was in Uzbekistan and Morocco before they sent all the Americans home after 9/11; very nice, very sarcastic and funny, thinks I'm hilarious--and Christopher's girlfriend--Amy, leggy blonde with slight ditz tendencies but a very healthy sense of humor and a very good influence on Christopher--both proved to be adept novices at Willett Loaded Questions. I have high hopes for them both as future Willetts. Oddly, Allen is the only person in or associated with my family to show any sensitivity to the fact that I was the only single kid in a group full of couples (well, Colin's single obviously, being 12 years old. We hung out a lot). Catherine and Christopher have never asked me if I felt weird tagging along with them as a 5th wheel (question: why 5th wheel, when you're the 3rd person? I've heard people say 3rd wheel, but you need a 3rd wheel so that doesn't make sense), and most of the time I don't, or if I do I make an excuse but don't go. But Allen kept asking Catherine, "Are you sure Claire's all right with this? Ask Claire if she minds." I thought it was either A) very considerate, or B) a sign that I give off "I-Hate-Couples" vibes all unawares. I'm hoping it's A.
In the past few weeks I somehow keep accidentally ending up in conversations about my parents' wedding. My mom and I would be talking about some celebrity wedding we saw on TV, or my dad and I were talking about how he looked for jobs right out of college, and it's like all roads lead to the Willett/Laskowski wedding. Partly it's because their anniversary was this week so they've got it on the brain, but I find it fascinating. I'm discovering all kinds of stuff I never knew about my parents as hard-headed, rebellious youngsters. For example, who knew that the cause of the slightly difficult relationship between Mom and Grandma stemmed largely from the fact that my mother paid for her own wedding? She paid for everything with her own savings to keep her mom from being able to wield any influence over the dress (which Grandma wanted to make herself), the cake (which Grandma wanted to make herself), the location (which Grandma wanted to be the Hilton Hotel because Grandfather worked there and they would have done it for free), the date (which Grandma wanted to be much later because of some old Polish custom she fabricated about the kids getting married in order of birth, and Mom's older brother Mike was engaged but not married yet). And on and on. It's very interesting to me that maybe my mom is as ballsy (some say bitchy, I say ballsy) as she is because she spent so much of her young adult life puttin her foot down to her own, passive-aggressive mother of the Feminine Wiles School of Getting People To Do Stuff For You. Which my mom has never bought into. I really love the idea of my mom, who is such the perfect Catholic socialite/hostess, as a smart-assed rebellious "career girl" who saved up money as a career counselor at the prison to pay for her own wedding to a long-haired liberal-arts-school hippie like my dad. And that then they became Bob and Suzy Homemaker. I find this thrilling. It explains a lot--like why my mom never really freaked out about Catherine's and Christopher's and my various rebellious phases. Though let's face it, my rebellion never got much worse than dyeing my hair black and having occasional snits. Anyway, I am fascinated by the seemingly endless streams of dysfunction swirling around the Willett and Laskowski clans, and every new fact I learn serves to convince me that both my parents were the ones in their families who came out the best. Dad has the angry divorced sister who dated drug dealers through most of high school and college and now has passed on her cynical, unpleasant life outlook to her incredibly bitchy daughter who is out to get my mom. Mom says, I will see your angry divorced sister, and raise you one deadbeat brother who stole $10,000 from Grandma and defaulted on 2 loans co-signed by my parents; to which Dad replies, I will see your thieving brother, and raise you one brother who did tons of drugs in college and is now a judge in Washington who refuses to speak to his family because he has "borrowed" thousands of dollars over the years which he denies ever having borrowed and if you ask him, he comes from a totally unsupportive family and had to pull himself up to success by his bootstraps. To which Mom replies . . . well, you get the drift. And yet my parents are not only reasonably normal, but very happy and successful. Who'd have thought?
And, SCENE.
Bedtime. Let's talk later. When are you going to come visit me and meet my much-ballyhooed family? I'd love it if you could come sometime in early August when we do the Claire/Colin joint birthday extravaganza because then you could meet the entire clan. You might become the only Whittie besides Eli to hear stories from Uncle Norman about "when I used to work on the farm with them Negroes," or the only Whittie EVER besides me to hear Grandma Melita's theory that alien spacecraft submerged in the ocean are causing global warming. (I get so much delight and entertainment out of these people . . .) Anyway, as soon as we have the party date I'll let you know, because I think only another person who thinks families are hilarious will appreciate my clan for their true humor value. Evan and Charlie love them to pieces, while Eli, Tylor, and Nathan find them a little overwhelming. Shannon always did too. Shannon is from a very small,very quiet, very civilized family whose main outlet is sports. I am from a huge, noisy, chaotic family whose main outlets are food and drink, nagging, sarcasm, and throwing Almond Roca at each other. (You can see where Shannon would have trouble.) But oh, they are delightful and you will love them.
Okay, bedtime for real. Talk to you later! I want to hear everything that's going on with you--how did your skits with Carla go? Were you Australian as per my earlier request? How is your summer thus far? Can't wait to hear from you!
Paper-Mache and Lupines,
Claire
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