Made public for reading.
I hadn't really intended to be working my way through school, putting 35 hours a week in at THE STORE when I turned 23. No one had mentioned, when trying to educate me about the perks of higher education, that these perks came at the cost of not only tuition but the majority of your young adulthood. By this point in my life, I had intended to have my career, a few cats and maybe a boyfriend. Well, at least the first two had seemed plausible when I was eighteen. But no, as it turned out, I currently only have the cats at 23. And no social life, whatsoever, between class and work.
But yeah, besides the fact that life didn't exactly pan out as planned, things aren't so bad. I love school; all the facts, figures and numbers in my business classes fascinate me - for some odd reason, since I know that's a sick fascination. And work? Physically and mentally exhausting, but fuck, I love that too. Someone on THE STORE's hiring committee must've thought it would be hilarious to stick all five-foot-nothing and female bit of me in Sporting Goods. At first, this put me off. I mean, I didn't know left from right when it came to basketballs and hockey sticks and golf clubs and hunting equipment and fish bait... or anything else we sold, for that matter. I didn't play sports; I played word games and Guitar Hero. I was skilled in both sarcasm and scrabble. The first four or five times an old man decked out in head-to-toe camo said, "Sweetie, what are you doing down here?" I wanted to quit. But once it happened about a dozen times, this stopped bothering me, and my biting remarks become the best sporting skill to possess when dealing with condescending old men.
In two years, I've learned a lot of new shit. I can recommend the right knife you need to kill basically any animal you name (with the exception of humans, ‘cause I have a funny feeling that‘s illegal). I can also explain the ins and outs of any kind of trail camera, and fit little kids for skates. I've learned about things in different departments I cover, too. I'm perfectly qualified to mix paint for you, and if you need a fish, I'll grab the net and you'll have your little Bubbles or Nemo or other stereotypically named new pet in a matter of seconds..
I've also learned that if something unexpected and potentially catastrophic happens, Sporting Goods looks like a pretty friggin' good place to be. I mean, we're survival in a neat packet of however many square feet of the massive THE STORE in my city. Sleeping bags, flashlights, emergency blankets, camping supplies, hunting knives, pellet guns. The only thing we don't have is food, but with all that survival equipment, you could definitely just wander over to the grocery department.
My inner (but barely concealed, really) nerd had read a few too many Stephen King novels and watched a few too many zombie movies as a teenager - and their messages weren't lost on me. No matter where I was, from school to the mall, I fantasized about pandemics, mysterious fog rolling in, and reanimated corpses thirsting for our Braaaaaaaaaaaaaains! taking over town. If things were too bad on the outside - well, you'd better get used to things on the inside. How well were places fortified? Would we have the right weaponry to deal with the worst (a/k/a zombies)? And what about velociraptors? I saw that movie, those things are fucking vicious.
Unfortunately, my twenty-one-year-old self still was secretly wishing for a zombie apocalypse to happen. I knew I'd be prepared; I'd read every survival guide for every super-natural emergency possible (though for some reason the bookstore had them in the Humor section). So it was no surprise that I spent my first shift at THE STORE scouting out the set-up versus emergency scenario, to see how adequate the place was. By the end of the day, I knew that I was in the right place if anything happened. Sporting Goods was boring to me in every way I could possibly think of - except one. Emergency survival? This place was getting an A+ from me, golf clubs and all.
After that, I didn't think about zombies or werewolves any more. There was no need to. I thought more about school, and I’m pulling in really good grades in all of my courses. And I’m still working at THE STORE, in my beloved Sporting Goods. I don’t really talk to anyone in school, but I have coworkers who put up with my filthy mouth and vulgar jokes, and never say anything about how “unladylike” I’m being. Which suits me wonderfully, thank you very much.
The holidays were coming up, and extended hours were starting. I had eagerly applied for a position on the backshift. I’d been denied the previous year, but this year I was told there was an opening for me. I’d be working midnight til 8AM, hanging out in Sporting Goods and making overtime pay for school and Christmas gifts. I was stoked; I knew there were hardly any customers in the store after ten or eleven PM, and the extra money was much-needed. After a few shifts, I realized the only real downside was how lonely it got.
There was barely half the staff that would be working during the day and evening. It was a Thursday night (Friday morning, I guess) and there were 17 of us in the entire store. Footsteps practically echoed, and I probably could’ve stripped naked and sat on the counter the entire night and no one would’ve wandered by to notice. This particular night, we miraculously hadn’t had a single customer since about twelve thirty.
It was 3AM when my cell phone started behaving strangely. I’d been texting a few of my high school friends who’d moved after graduation, when my phone refused to send any more messages. Normally, this would happen when I’d forgotten to pay my bill, and I’d get an error message saying the service wasn’t available or some bullshit. But this time, I’d hit “send”, my phone would beep two or three times, and then go dead. When I’d boot it back up, I’d have messages from my friends, asking why I wasn’t replying, was work busy, are you made at me? I’d type, “no, my phone is being ridic”, but when I’d try to send the text, it would just do the same thing again. After fighting with it for twenty minutes, I finally said, “Eff this noise,” and tossed my phone in the drawer by my till. I could hear it beeping every few seconds, reminding me that people were indeed trying to contact me at this hour of the morning and were concerned about my lack of response. I heaved a sigh as I looked for something else to occupy my time.
The department was completely spotless. I’d groomed it over and got everything in it’s place about twenty minutes in to each of my graveyard shifts thus far, and tonight had been no exception. However, had I known my cell phone was going to fuck off and die, I would’ve done things much more slowly, and a little bit at a time, so I’d have something to do the rest of my shift. This had been the first night when the store had been completely empty (aside from us 17, hard-working and terribly dedicated employees). Every hockey stick was sitting at its perfect angle, and every fishing rod was in the right place. I literally had nothing to do. Visiting the fish seemed like a wonderful idea, so I headed down to Pets. All I wanted to do was chuck one of the little 50 cent goldfish in pirahnna tank to see what would happen, and now seemed like the best time. .