OK, OK, with the beauty of Facebook, I’ve been able to re-connect with people that I haven’t seen in years…like 20 or more years. Which is great – like a reunion (after all, I missed my 20th), but the problem is catching up with people. I mean, everyone asks “So…what have you been doing for the past 20 years?”
Well…let me tell you...think back to April of '94. After I completed my undergraduate degree, I was lucky enough to land a job with a trading company in Amsterdam, Holland. "This is great!" I thought. I was going to earn some money and see some of Europe at the same time. So I made a plan of where some my friends were and how I could get to them, put belongings into storage and then to Connecticut and drop off my cat with my parents. Now if you look on a map you can see that the distance between Detroit and Connecticut is not that close (about 14-16 hours driving) and driving with a cat in the car isn't something I would recommend doing for fun. I say this because before we (the cat and I) left Detroit, the cat got loose in the car and urinated on the front seat. So the entire car trip smelled like cat urine and for those of you who have never owned a cat….I thought I was going to expiate! Then, me being the careful navigator that I am, I got lost in New Jersey which added an extra three to four hours onto the trip in the litter box on wheels.
So now I'm ready to go. I spent a couple of days with my parents, I was rested, I had my tickets (including a Eurail ticket). I was ready to work. My parents drove me to the airport in Boston and about five minutes after they dropped me off I hear over the loud speaker that my plane has been canceled (oh come on!), BUT another much earlier flight was going to Amsterdam and that some of us could get standby if we were lucky. I was lucky (well…lucky-ish).
I got the very last row of seats in the very back of the plane where all the smokers sit (this was before the “no smoking on flights” rule). The problem is that I don't smoke, but I figured since I had a whole row of seats to myself to stretch out and enjoy, I might as well make the best of it. After eight hours of coughing and wheezing later I was in Amsterdam (and ready for to be outfitted for an iron-lung).
HOLLAND
After a day or two of rest it was time to start work. Because, I worked for a shipping company that handled cargo coming and going from Amsterdam, I was put on the labor crew and my actual “job” was basically to do whatever the foreman told me to do. "Fair enough” I thought after all I just want to work I really don't care what I do. Plus, I was able to work with people from all over the world: France, Morocco, New Zealand, Chile, England, the Philippines, and of course Holland. Working with such an international community made following orders and basic communication more of a challenge, but this was going to be fun.
The other thing to remember is that all my coworkers had been doing this for awhile and so were well built and strong. I on the other hand am not well-built or strong. In fact, I am the complete opposite. So needless to say, they weren't too impressed when they saw that I came to help them. But the important thing is to be a team player so I tried fit in with the group and showed them that I was going to work just as hard as they were and could pull my own weight. In fact, the third day I was there, they actually needed someone of my size to help them. We were pushing cargo on a plane and the tray the cargo was on, slipped off the track that is on the plane. We pushed and pulled at that tray until we were exhausted. Then a bright idea came to the foreman, he needed someone (well, me) to get between the side of the plane and the cargo and push the cargo sideways while the rest of the stronger men pushed it back. A great plan and simple too (the great one's usually are). So I wedge myself in place and it was tight even for me. We pushed and pushed and finally it began to move! Now remember I am WEDGED between the plan and the cargo so when they were pushing the cargo (which you can't stop once it starts moving), I wasn't able to get out of the way in time and not only twisted my ankle 360 degrees (because of the tight fit), then had it trap under and ran over by two tons of cargo!
I can't imagine the expression on my face when my coworkers came over and asked me if I was all right. Of course, because I was trying so hard to be like one of them, I answered (holding back the tears) in a deep and manly voice as I could muster
"Me? Oh I'm fine. No problem what so ever!"
Of course, what I was thinking was "Oh Mommy! The PAIN!!! When does the hurting stop! Please won't somebody be kind enough and kill me now to end this suffering!! “I’m just going to go the warehouse now and check…some…things…” and hobbled off whimpering.
I couldn't believe it, my first week there and I almost break my foot! In fact, I don’t know how I didn’t break my foot. I wished I had though, because it would have been a good excuse to go rest in the hospital. Instead, I could walk, but I couldn’t let on to this so like the old adage “just walk it off, just walk it off!” I went into the warehouse and pretended to be taking inventory (as though I could see anything through the pain and tears welling up in my eyes) until my boss came over to me and told me that he was short of help that day and asked if I would mind working a couple extra hours. And before I knew it I heard
"Sure, I don't mind at all."
What?! Who said that?!! It couldn’t have been me. I mean, what I really wanted to do was go to the hospital and hope that they would give me enough drugs and pain killers to numb me from my neck down, but instead I volunteered for a couple more hours of physical labor like a trained monkey! “Tell him you hurt your foot!” my foot and brain screamed to my mouth, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t show defeat (or “de foot”) I ended up working 14 hours that day. Normally I wouldn't have minded, but because I did I had to wear a brace on my foot for the next two weeks.
As an interesting side note, the day I took off my foot brace I went on a little excursion into downtown Amsterdam and as I exited the tram, I tripped in the train tracks and hurt the SAME FOOT! Yet, I digress.
So even with my foot brace I continued to work and help around the company doing whatever needed to be done. The problem I suppose is that I had absolutely no experience with this sort of work and so when the foreman came to me and asked me if I could help load with the forklift I had to make a quick decision.
”Sure, I'd love to. No problem."
What? There was that voice again! I had never driven or worked a forklift before or even had the vaguest clue of how it worked. But I didn't want anyone else to know this and wanted to be as helpful as I possibly could. Unfortunately, my little facade was soon discovered. I suppose it was when I was uncontrollably roaring around the warehouse at high speed, almost running down my coworkers, and screaming like some had set my hair on fire that gave them the first hint of my lack of experience. Needless to say it was a while before they decided to put me on that job again and I was moved to the mechanics garage to help there.
Ahh...the garage! Now there's another place where I have….absolutely no expertise. Another secret soon discovered. One day, my boss came to me and asked if I could re-finish the inside of one of the cars that brings out the cargo to the plane. This meant that I had to re-insulate the vehicle and re-paint the inside. "What do I look like? some chimp?" I thought "Of course, I can do this. In fact, here's a job that anyone can do. I can't mess this up." And so I spent two days on re-insulating that car; measuring and cutting it to perfection and then I spent another two days cleaning and painting the entire inside. I mean it was a work of art what I did to it, using a fine brush to get every little detail perfect and just as I was finishing the last strokes of my "handiwork" my boss came over to see how I was doing
"How's it coming?”
"Fantastic! I've just finished and it's all ready"
I stood back to let him see my "handiwork", my labor of love that I put blood, sweat and tears into, my baby. And as I stood there with an expression on my face that can best be described as that of a cat who just brought its’ master a dead mouse; thinking "Look what I've done for you", I noticed a very odd, yet strangely familiar expression on his face. His appearance was that of a master of stupid cat just dropped a dead mouse at his feet.
"My God! What have you done?"
"Uh...I…I….pardon?
"What did you paint the inside of this car with?!"
"The...uh...paint that I…uh…found in the cabinet"
"This isn't paint, this is TAR!!!!!"
DOH! In my defense, I was told just to grab the can that was in the closet
"You're going to have to wait days for this to dry and then strip it and re-paint it again."
Sooo….guess what I was doing two days later.
But I didn't spend all my time getting into trouble. For a period of time I was actually helpful to them, but in areas that I was comfortable in....dealing with people. When there were truck drivers from France and Italy they would come to the garage for directions and usually I was the only one who could communicate with them and tell them what to do and where to go. Eventually Russian and Eastern European pilots came and after talking to them for awhile they gave me a free tour of one of the largest aircraft ever built. I'm not really excited about aircraft, but I have to admit this was pretty impressive.
Soon work became slow and all the equipment needed to be re-painted and since I did such a good job with the inside of the car…Actually, they needed me for this job because I was the smallest person around and was able to crawl into the engines and clean them out by hand. While a simple task, it was pretty terrifying because I was always afraid that some worker would need that piece of equipment and drive it onto the airstrip forgetting that I was in the engine and not pay attention to my blood curdling screams as he drove it away. The worst part about this particular job was that the weather was incredibly hot that year. In fact, it was the hottest summer ever recorded in the history of Holland! This made working outside in a jumpsuit and painting for a hours every day less and less fun. By the end of the first week of painting I spent most of the time cursing and swearing outside in the hellish heat scraping rust, getting paint in my eyes and hair, and sweating off kilograms by the hour.
After some time, I finished all the equipment and was put back in the warehouse. Eventually someone taught me how to use the forklift and had me heaving cargo like regular. It was in the warehouse that once again my size and stature came into importance. Since I could climb up the pile of cargo like a monkey, they found it easier to throw it up to me and have me stack it immediately and then tie it all down. This worked out great until my foreman forgot me (I assume he forgot) and jumped into the jeep to drive the cargo out of the warehouse. Now what you must know is that the cargo is piled so high that it barely clears the warehouse door, but with my body standing on top, it won't clear (my body that is). It was like being in a movie; if I jumped off the moving cargo I would break every bone in my body, but if I stayed still I would be knocked off and break every bone as well. Decisions, decisions. So like in any great adventure movie lied as flat as I could against the cargo and as I passed under the door I felt the top of it scrape against my back.
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