Colossus
I intended this post for yesterday, but by the time I got around to it, I decided I would prefer to be in bed instead. LJ-Cut for length.
It is nice to be the strong one. In school I was weak, fat, the one always picked last. It played a huge role in my overwhelming desire for more power. But for the past few months (much more so towards the middle/end of May onward) I have been working out. Gaining strength. Catching up on all the time that I've wasted.
Helping my grandmother move an hour away and yardsale the rest helped tremendously in this, as my grandmother is a tough as nails old warhorse who kept all my grandfather's shop tools, equipment, and the metric assload of odds and ends that someone, some time, may have wanted to use (and often did). Then I got into doing chores for my grandmother. Things were rolling along nicely.
But then I got my job at the new Super Walmart, and it seemed like easy coasting. Working in hardware, I wouldn't have to do hardly any physical labor at all. During my two weeks of training at an older store, this was confirmed by the men I worked with. It seemed as though my crusade for physical fitness had been wasted...
But then, I was conscripted. The toy department was ripping out all it summer pool stuff and inserting Back to School crap instead, and to do this, they needed someone to install the shelves. Those shelves are evil. Not simply heavy, not simply made of steel, they have sharp edges that would clip you or richochet back when you try to hammer the shelf in with a rubber mallet. They have bent tabs that you would have to work open with your fingers, and the only way to get the more annoying shelves in by yourself would be to leverage your elbow against the shelf below it. Torturous work.
Well, torturous for everyone else. The team quickly dwindled away during the two hours I was doing this until it was only me and one other man. Then he left to help another department. I was alone--and yet I did all their work, every last shelf, and was done five minutes before I needed to leave for the night.
It was on the coattails of this that I went into the second phase of my new employment: Setting up the new Walmart. I will describe the details of this ongoing experience later, but let me suffice it to say that it was one of the best feelings in my life when I lumbered out of that store like a juggernaut--unwinded and still strong--nine hours later as everyone else crawled. I had done twice the work, taken the hardest jobs, and did more heavy lifting than any five of the 'normal' employees (not counting the elderly or the infirm) combined. I felt invincible. I had never truly known the feeling of being counted among 'the strong'.
The next day (after taking the time to stretch both when I got home the previous day and the next morning before leaving), I was fit and ready to go at it again as most other people groaned and crawled into the store, weak and sore from the day before. Though the elation from the previous day had faded, it was an immense relief to know that the previous day had not been a fluke; that all my energy had not been expended, and I was still ready to tackle the most challenging of tasks.
Nevermind that 90% of the work my team did today was pointless and could have been avoided with a single trained architect and a laser level. Nevermind that Walmart's cruelty towards the elderly drives me to rage. Nevermind that well-meaning but untrained managers have made this chore infinitely more difficult than it needed to be. Nevermind all that. Today I was a colossus, and that's all that matters to me.
It is nice to be the strong one. In school I was weak, fat, the one always picked last. It played a huge role in my overwhelming desire for more power. But for the past few months (much more so towards the middle/end of May onward) I have been working out. Gaining strength. Catching up on all the time that I've wasted.
Helping my grandmother move an hour away and yardsale the rest helped tremendously in this, as my grandmother is a tough as nails old warhorse who kept all my grandfather's shop tools, equipment, and the metric assload of odds and ends that someone, some time, may have wanted to use (and often did). Then I got into doing chores for my grandmother. Things were rolling along nicely.
But then I got my job at the new Super Walmart, and it seemed like easy coasting. Working in hardware, I wouldn't have to do hardly any physical labor at all. During my two weeks of training at an older store, this was confirmed by the men I worked with. It seemed as though my crusade for physical fitness had been wasted...
But then, I was conscripted. The toy department was ripping out all it summer pool stuff and inserting Back to School crap instead, and to do this, they needed someone to install the shelves. Those shelves are evil. Not simply heavy, not simply made of steel, they have sharp edges that would clip you or richochet back when you try to hammer the shelf in with a rubber mallet. They have bent tabs that you would have to work open with your fingers, and the only way to get the more annoying shelves in by yourself would be to leverage your elbow against the shelf below it. Torturous work.
Well, torturous for everyone else. The team quickly dwindled away during the two hours I was doing this until it was only me and one other man. Then he left to help another department. I was alone--and yet I did all their work, every last shelf, and was done five minutes before I needed to leave for the night.
It was on the coattails of this that I went into the second phase of my new employment: Setting up the new Walmart. I will describe the details of this ongoing experience later, but let me suffice it to say that it was one of the best feelings in my life when I lumbered out of that store like a juggernaut--unwinded and still strong--nine hours later as everyone else crawled. I had done twice the work, taken the hardest jobs, and did more heavy lifting than any five of the 'normal' employees (not counting the elderly or the infirm) combined. I felt invincible. I had never truly known the feeling of being counted among 'the strong'.
The next day (after taking the time to stretch both when I got home the previous day and the next morning before leaving), I was fit and ready to go at it again as most other people groaned and crawled into the store, weak and sore from the day before. Though the elation from the previous day had faded, it was an immense relief to know that the previous day had not been a fluke; that all my energy had not been expended, and I was still ready to tackle the most challenging of tasks.
Nevermind that 90% of the work my team did today was pointless and could have been avoided with a single trained architect and a laser level. Nevermind that Walmart's cruelty towards the elderly drives me to rage. Nevermind that well-meaning but untrained managers have made this chore infinitely more difficult than it needed to be. Nevermind all that. Today I was a colossus, and that's all that matters to me.