6/2/2010 Nobody Likes a Whinebaby

*Shuffles in and blows nose, flops on couch*
Oh Mr. Blog,
How cruel is it that I love to teach
but seem allergic to my little customers?
Every time I sub
I get sick. How I admire full time teachers.They seem to have antibodies
built up against all the little germ-spreaders.
Must be nice.
I'm so glad you are here.
I'm bored and tired and lonely and sick again/still.
I can talk to you about it and you don't care.
You are paid to listen to whatever drivel
my little mouth dispenses.
This is the place to whine
or crow
or what? All points in between?
I had a life-changing experience in 1979
when I was a substitute mail carrier out of Bitter Lake
Post Office. I'll bet I have spent more years
of my life lost and trying to find addresses
than any other person in America.
Five years.
It was dark and rainy and
that wet cold that only Seattle has.
The kind of chill that gets right
inside of your bones
so that you wish someone would skin you
and plop your bones in a big pot of water
over a bonfire to
warm them up
and then pop them back inside your body.
So I had never delivered mail on
Greenwood Avenue in Seattle before.
I had come to work with a cold
and any postal worker can tell you this:
If you show up, you have to work.
If you can't work, stay home
but be prepared to drag yourself
to the doctor no matter how awful
you feel because the supervisors
believe/trust no one.
You have to have a note from the doctor
or you can get fired.
So I came in a at ten AM to carry swings
and was sent out to deliver Greenwood Avenue
from 105th NE to 110th NE and one block
East and West on both sides.
It got dark at four, which is common in Seattle
in the winter, but I kept slogging along
trying to locate the mailboxes
of the apartment buildings.
Most people don't know or care
that postal workers have to find them at some point.
I mean, if someone was having a heart attack
you'd hope there were a bunch of indicator signs
on the road below long driveways or house numbers
that weren't covered up by bushes...
I was aching from my head to toe
and wishing I was dead when I heard a
cheerful voice behind me.
"Hey Gretchen, how are you?"
It was the delightful, sunny
curly red-haired Bobby Geiger,
who had come to look me up
to help me finish the swings.
I looked at him and started crying,
"Oh Bobby, I'm sick and tired and can't find
the mailboxes in the dark."
He looked at me and said,
"NOBODY LIKES A WHINEBABY, GRETCHEN."
The impact was instant and profound.
I would NEVER be a whinebaby again!
So ever since that fateful night, Mr. Blog,
I have made a conscious effort not to
be a whinebaby Mr. Blog, because
NOBODY LIKES A WHINEBABY!