When you are in school you can’t wait to be done, to no longer go through the last half of summer knowing you’re just heading right back to some educational institution, I know I thought that way.
Without school to anchor it though summer begins to become a word similar to fall or winter. It’s a change in temperature and an alarmingly high rate of men who shouldn’t have their shirts off walking around public streets. It’s a time when you’ll get more invites to lay in a tent in the middle of nowhere for the sheer sake of doing just that… but ultimately it’s no different then the other seasons.
This loss of summer as an event, something you countdown to, celebrate, cherish… the mere fact I can look back and miss all this, well it must mean I am starting to get old.
I suppose the one thing I really don’t miss about summers off is the part-time job hunt. Every June as the school year was winding down and I was starting to remember what life was like without trying to figure out the meaning behind a Shakespearian soliloquy and then stretch this half hearted understanding into at least two paragraphs of an essay my father would hit me with it.
“I am not trying to nag you but…” he’d start dragging out the but, letting it follow with a silence, giving me time to think of what it is he could be asking me to do. Was my room clean? Did I have some homework I forgot about that he somehow stumbled upon? Did I owe him money for some reason?
“…don’t you think…” another pause, this time to make me drop the check list of things he could be on me for, this time to give me time to start working up a defense for whatever he may be preparing to get on me for.
“…it’s time to start looking for a summer job?” Somehow I never saw this one coming.
I’d be left turning my wheels.
“Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah. But no, not uh… not yet, I still have some more homework to do and my room is a disaster.”
I’m not sure if this was part of his game plan but suddenly I couldn’t help myself from listing off things I didn’t want to do and volunteering to do them.
“Derek, you don’t want to leave it too late. Remember what happened last year.” This sentence too was a stock quote, one he could use summer after summer.
What can I say? I had some bad luck when it came to summer jobs.
A few years back when I was home in
After weeks of sending resumes out online, faxing, and going door to door to any store that had not already hired me and learnt I was not destined for retail I got a call, well a voicemail to be more exact.
He had a thick Eastern European accent, and a phone that made him sound a little tinny.
“Hello I am calling for Derek Robertson to see if you would be able to come in for a job interview for missile ship.”
Yes! Awesome, I had made it to the interview round, now just a few cheesy “what’s my biggest fault? I guess that I work to hard” and I’d move on to the Showcase Showdown.
My celebration was cut short.
Where was this guy from? I replayed the message.
“Hello I am calling for Derek Robertson to see if you would be able to come in for a job interview for missile ship.”
I stood there dumbfounded, looking at the phone as if it was pulling my leg. As if that recorded voice who informs you to hang up and try your call again was going to come on the line and say “sorry Derek, just screwing with you. Here’s the actual message.”
This did not happen.
But what was a missile ship? And why did they want to hire me? In my hast to apply to any job I saw online, no matter my qualifications, had I somehow offered up my service to some sort of gunship?
I slowly started inviting people over to gather around and listen to my message, to make sure I wasn’t just misunderstanding this man.
Each person heard missile ship.
Was I being recruited by some foreign navy? This may not be a question you would ever in your lifetime ask yourself, but this was my first thought. Was I going to be shipped out to
I sat in my dining room contemplating this, wondering if my experience working in a warehouse or gas station had qualified me for military duty. Wondering if maybe my years of volunteering as a baseball coach had shown enough leadership to get me recruited by some far off and (if they really did want to recruit me) backward nation.
Finally I decided to call the number the man had left me in the voicemail.
“Hello this is Derek, just returning your call about a job interview.”
“Ah yes, yes, yes, Derek.” He said in his best Boris and Natasha impression.
“When can you come in for an interview Derek? I think you live kind of far away, hopefully getting here is no problem?”
I said it would be no problem, beginning to contemplate how many stopovers it’d take to get to
“What um, what like, you know, how… um, I guess basically… what sort of tasks would be involved in this job?”
I tried to figure out how to get to the bottom of all this, preferably before I was sliding on a Ukrainian navy uniform.
“
This wasn’t making it sound any less likely I’d be saluting the Estonian flag soon.
“What sort of training?”
“Huh?”
“Like what are you training me to do?”
I waited for the inevitable “kill capitalist scum,” but it never came.
“What do we do? Do you not know missile ship?” The man laughed.
“Yes I know, I just don’t know, what to expect I guess.”
“It’s missile ship! Missile ship! Mr. Ship.”
Mr. Ship? I let this slide as a slip up due to accent.
“I’m sorry I just don’t know what to expect, I don’t know what I am getting myself into and I am feeling a little uncomfortable,” I said.
“Look Derek, maybe you just aren’t right for Mr. Sub.”
“Wait, what?”
A click came on the other end of the phone.
“Mr. Sub? Mr. Sub? Were you talking about the submarine sandwich Mr. Sub?”
It was too late.
Once again I had ensured my dad would have at least one reason to say, “remember what happened last year?”
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