Dumbest Reason I Was Ever Fired

You know, in my life, I've had quite a few jobs. Some were good. Some were bad. And from most of them, I was unceremoniously "let go" for one reason or another. Most of the time, it was something absolutely stupid, or I messed up in some way that they just sacked me over. However, for no reason in particular today, my mind wandered to what I consider to be one of the dumbest reasons I was ever fired.

For the Queen's sanity, I will note that my present job in not in the remotest bit of jeopardy.

Anyway, at the time in question, I had applied for a job via a temp agency and landed me a not half bad data entry position. At the time, it was a pretty decent job, so I was content enough to have gotten it. On my second day there, some kind of discussion started over jobs and such, and however the discussion got there, I remarked that there has to be a reason to fire you. Employers can't just up and fire you for no reason.

To prove they certainly could, they up and fired me for no reason. Seriously. The person from the temp agency asked what happened, and I told her about the discussion, and she said that as a temp, they could decide not to keep and basically fire me on a whim. So they did. Just to prove a point.

Obviously, the take away from this experience was never tell your employer what they can or can't do. They'll show you exactly just how much power they possess. I suppose it didn't help that I'd only been there a day when that discussion happened.

I promise you it never happened again. That's for sure.

Flint Ridge

So in the spirit of recalling memories, I have one from the distant past. Well, really, this is more of an overview because this place was a sort of family tradition for years that just stopped at some point. I'm talking about a place on Highway 412 in Oklahoma called Flint Ridge.

It is my understanding that my parents managed to get in on the ground level in this place when it first came into being, and as property owners, we went up there over the summer and camped out, hiked on trails, and cooked over an open fire. They had pools, mini-golf, canoeing (which I did not like at the time), paddleboats, horseback riding, and I'm sure some other stuff that I don't recall. I recall it being fun to go. We looked forward to it.

Thinking about it now, I don't really know any of the details because it is a parents' job to keep the world fun for the child and disguise whatever else goes into life for a time. As such, I do not know if there were any costs or anything else associated with doing anything, but I don't think there was since I figure I would have heard of something over the several years when we went.

I also don't know why we stopped going. My knee jerk reaction is to say it was the birth of my sister, but I can quickly disprove that since I have a photo of us there in my Facebook albums when she was two and I was fourteen. Hence, the only logical explanation is that something within the family situation changed to disallow our going there. I ponder the time period following the last time I can confirm we went, and I don't have any idea.

As I picture the mini-golf course in my head and smile at the memory, I recall some conversation my parents had over Flint Ridge and something changing there. Perhaps they raised the rates or started charging for the services that were included for all those years. It happens, especially when a place gets big enough. Whatever it was, it was significant.

But many summers of my youth were spent there doing outdoorsy things.

What do I recall the most at this time? Something stupid, naturally. That would be canoeing down the Illinois River, but not the calm, easy ride that one might think of when one might ponder a canoe trip. Oh, heck no.

I recall being very young and screaming every time the canoe hit the rock bed of the river. I recall being scared out of my wits during the entire ride as my parents deftly navigated every obstacle the river offered from that low level where the canoe had to be dragged over those rocks to ensuring they got around tree branches in the water to making sure the canoe did not capsize at underwater obstacles we bumped into. At every turn, my poor parents had to deal with two frantic, screaming children who thought for sure they were going to die at any moment - life jackets or not. Unlike the time where Sassy Pants screaming bloody murder at the carnival rides but loved every moment, we were very happy when the multi-hour canoe ride was over and we were not interested in doing it again.

Of course they made us do it again the next year, but we still hated it.

In retrospect, it was probably fun, and I wish I had tried to enjoy it more, but little kids don't understand those sorts of things. The canoe was made of a heavy metal, was very buoyant and stable, and there was no chance of it being punctured or tipping over, so every fear was completely unfounded. That doesn't even include two loving people who would sacrifice themselves for the pair of screaming brats.

I occasionally think of Flint Ridge, and even asked about it once. I don't recall what my mother said about it though. I get so distracted sometimes. But it was a memory and experience that made me who I am.

Near Misses

Driving is dangerous. It's got to be one of the most dangerous things that people do on a daily basis, but fortunately, since we do it so much, we are good at avoiding trouble with it. Unfortunately, since we do it so much, we tend to get too comfortable doing it, and get sloppy. This leads to accidents. Avoiding an accident takes a combination of quick thinking and some very fortuitous circumstances. Every one of these incidents could have ended very, very badly if not for both my ability to swerve and the sheer dumb luck that a) no one was in my way when I swerved, and b) there was somewhere to swerve to.

My first near miss was on the highway between Oklahoma and Colorado. I was cruising down the road fiddling with my music (was listening to CDs through the radio cassette player like many people in 1994 or 5, I don't recall which), and up ahead, I noted, there was a car stopped by the side of the road. No big deal. Fiddled with the music a little more, looked back up, and now the car is on the road directly in front of me, and I'm closing fast! They were on the shoulder completely stopped only seconds before, and apparently in the time it took for me to look to my CD player and back to the road, they'd popped their car in drive and got themselves on the road going 0 to 60 in 4.6 minutes. I swerved and shot past them wondering if they even knew I was there. And then went back to switching CDs.

The second was in 1996 when I was driving in mid-town Tulsa with Allison's toady little friend, Hedy (see the right column for name explanations). I think I had taken her to give plasma or something, and we were coming back. We were behind a motorcycle just cruising along at a brisk 35 mile an hour pace when I notice the motorcycle is completely stopped. No brake lights. No turn signal. No nothing. Hedy shields her face, and I swerve to the other lane very narrowly missing them. My Camaro would have survived the impact just fine, but the pair on the cycle would have been killed or at least very seriously injured. Our hearts racing, Hedy and I spoke a little more easily for a time having lived through that one together.

I have to guess on when these next three happened, since I am not entirely sure of the timing. All three were after the Queen and I were married, but during the time of the 1992 Probe, which would be between 1999 and 2003, I believe. I'm kind of fuzzy as to when the Probe died its unfortunate death by lack of oil. If you are low of oil, put some in. Don't be like "I'll just be sure to get an oil change soon for three weeks." This has been a public service announcement.

My wife's family has gone to Roaring River, Missouri for years. They have campers out there and everything. So, it would stand to reason that once we were married that we would be spending some time out there, and I know the path from my house to that area very well now as well as how to get to the Walmart in Cassville. Yay. Anyway, while we were on one of those little jaunts in the Probe, I was momentarily distracted by something. I looked up and there was a car looking to make themselves a left hand turn, but having no luck doing so. There was no way I could stop in time, and since they weren't turning left, I sure wasn't going into that lane. Fortunately, this two-laned road had a shoulder, so off I go, passing a stopped car on a two-laned road at 35 on the shoulder. It doesn't get more illegal than that (it does, I know, but go with it, ok?) Better a little illegal than a big accident though.

This one was not remotely my fault. It is actually the only one where I was neither goofing off nor distracted. If I were distracted, there would have been a wreck. No, I was driving this Blue Lincoln the Queen had brought into our marriage (she likes Lincolns) while she was driving the Probe (I don't recall why though), and I was on one of the four-laned roads that make up mid-town Tulsa. I saw a car stopped at the top of a hill, so I changed lanes to pass it. As I approach the location of this car, another car pops out of the neighborhood right there, apparently sees me, and stops directly in front of me! I'm in this blue tank looking to make a jackknife of some aluminum luxury vehicle. Oh, I would have been fine, but they would be toast. you know what I did. I swerved. But you also already know I could not swerve into the other lane going my way because there is a car there. No, I swerved into the oncoming traffic lanes, narrowly missing that car. But my fun wasn't over. There was a car in that lane too, so I ended up in the outside lane of the wrong side of the road. As soon as that car passed me, probably freaking out with a slew of choice words, I got myself back into the right lane, and breathed a sigh of relief as I waited for my heart to slow back down to normal. That was my scariest one, but not my weirdest.

The weirdest one makes me really believe there is a God out there who does whatever the heck he wants. It was in Broken Arrow when I was driving down 91st between Main and Elm. I know it was in this area because I remember it vividly (which means I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure). It was before they had added the extra lanes, so I know it was only a two lane road at the time. I don't recall what distracted me, but I looked up, and there's that car in front of me, stopped. I did what I always do. I swerved onto the shoulder to recklessly pass the vehicle and went on with my life with a slightly accelerated heartbeat. Here's the thing. When driving down that road later, I noticed that there is no shoulder. Not even a little one. There's just grass. Grass and street signs. I've wondered for years where exactly I swerved around that car, and I don't know. They've since four-laned the road, but I still have no idea where I would have gone.

These like this and the actual accidents I've had illustrate to me the difference between teens and adults in driving. We all started out driving like idiots, but through our experiences, we learn that driving is extremely dangerous, and we figure out how to do it so we are not a danger to ourselves and others. Prior to all of this, I drove like an invincible maniac, but after these experiences, I understand why older people drive a little slower and have fewer accidents. Because they've already done it.

Drive safe everyone.

Motor Vehicular Accidents

Yesterday, I alluded to some times where I had some near misses in a car, and I figure it would be worthwhile to recollect those as well. Why not? But before I get to those, I figure I'll cover when I actually experienced an accident. It's worth noting, however, that in none of those incidents did I have an "accident." My pants remained unsoiled.

In my life, I've had what amounts to four actual accidents with damage. The first was in 1994 when I got my first car. It was a Subaru Justy and I was driving in a snowstorm in Colorado. I had no reason to be out in the whether. I was young and stupid and just wanted to drive in it. I could rank this as one of the times I could have been killed, but not in the accident. It happened when I was returning to the barracks (I was in the Army at the time), and instead of going straight, I decided to follow some guy. Well, when we went to stop, he slid off the road, and I slid right into him. Dented the front of my car. The dent remained till I traded it in.

In 1996, I was driving the Justy's replacement, a 1986 Camaro. It was cool. Cruising down the highway in the middle of the night when WHAM! I had no idea what happened, but the car buffeted all over the place, and before I know it I'm limping to the side of the road. There are no other cars around me that were hit. I had two passengers and they didn't know what happened either. After a time, we learned (from the wrecker guy who picked my car up) that logs had been falling off the back of a truck or something, and I was the second car he had towed for this reason. I further learned that when I hit said log (which was about the size of the car's wheel), it was flung into the other lane, and someone else had hit it too. The Camaro was totaled.

Number three was not until the end of 2006 in a 1996 Lincoln. Nice car. I was late for work, and this was the job where I was being hounded about my attendance. One more lateness, and I was toast. I charged out of the house as fast as possible without the time to get everyone else up so the Queen could keep the car (we only had the one at the time). She said she'd call a friend who could help them get around that day. I am really bad about red lights. I don't know why, but when I drive, I hit a lot of red lights. That day, I could not afford red lights, so as I was approaching an intersection, the light went yellow. I went a little faster and made the yellow light. No crime committed there. I passed in front of the QuikTrip that has since moved, and I saw him coming a split second before he hit. A truck came out of the QT parking lot and I swerved, but not enough. He slammed into the back of my car and the poor thing just shut down as I coasted to the side of the road. I forgot about the reset switch in the trunk till later. It was his fault, and his insurance was the one to take it, but the Lincoln was totaled. The hit bent the frame.

The last was, I think, the end of 2010 or beginning of 2011. We'd had another one of those horrific ice/snow storms, and we were almost through it. I was driving to work in the 2002 Impala, which was the nicer of our two vehicles at the time, since the other option was a 1986 Lincoln (aka a tank). Wish I'd driven the tank. I was sitting second at a stop light facing north when someone else turned south onto the five laned road I was sitting on. He hit an icy patch and slid across all of the lanes to smack into the front of me. If I had the foresight, I could have avoided his slow approach by just backing up. There was no one behind me. He crumpled the bumper, but the car was driveable. Because the roads were icy, the police were on "slick streets" mode which means they only respond to injury accidents, and neither of us were even vehicularly incapacitated. I ended up dealing with the guy's brother who paid to have the car fixed, and it was back on the road. Could have been timed better since I had eye surgery at exactly the same time as the fixing of the car meaning the Queen had to drive me home in the old Lincoln which was large and unwieldy in that hospital's parking garage.

That's all my actual accidents. I suppose I've been lucky in that I haven't had many, but I've come really close more than once.

Those were the hits, so tomorrow, I guess I'll cover the misses.

Underground Fear

I was a stupid, skinny little kid once. My mother used to say I needed a belt to hold up my slims and that was true. I could rip through more food then than I can now, that's for sure. The thing with kids is that their greatest strength is their greatest weakness, and that characteristic is ignorance. Ignorance isn't a bad thing, by any means. It just means you do not know about something, and when I think about things that are scary, I remember some of my stupidity, and consider how lucky I am that by the grace of God, I survived into adulthood.

There is one thing is particular that whenever I think about it, I am filled with the greatest fear that it could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. I have had many near-death experiences, but most of them were here and gone in a flash. I can tell of four potentially fatal car accidents that I escaped without a scratch on my fender. One of those makes me shiver every time I think about how badly it could have ended, yet this incident takes them all in my mind.

My father worked for the City of Tulsa the majority of his life, and is retiring this year. He is looking forward to it. Through those years, my parents occasionally had only one car, so we'd go with mom to pick him up from work during those times. At one place the city put him, there was a ditch just off to one side of the property and off this ditch was a storm drain culvert. I was what you might call a city spelunker in that there was nothing more tempting to me than a concrete culvert large enough to accommodate what frame I had as a youth, and being so small, I could get into a lot of them.

So I crawled in and there was plenty of room. After a little ways, the culvert got a little smaller in that they used a smaller diameter pipe for it. It was still large enough for me, so I kept going. Now, to be clear, I never went into one of these things unless I could see the other end. I never crawled into the dark. This opened up into a large area just under the parking lot and I could even see out the top. This is where the fear factor of my imagination kicks in.

While I was standing in this open space looking around, I looked back at the path that brought me there. It looked tiny. If I had seen that end before I started, I would never have crawled into that drain to begin with, and for a split second, I panicked, wondering how I was going to get out. That hole was partially buried in the asphalt on the flooring of the opening I was in, so the hole was slightly blocked. Sure the top looked like it was removable, and since my father worked on a city crew, four of those guys gathered around the "lid" could pop that sucker right off.

I reasoned at the time, however, that I had crawled into this hole, and I should reasonably be able to crawl right back out of it. So I did. No harm. No foul. I not only did it that time, but several more times over the many weeks we had to pick my dad up from there. Every time, I wondered how I managed to crawled through that gap, and every time, I crawled back out.

It's the memory of that hole that scares me. What I have now that I didn't have then was a whole lot of knowledge and experience regarding holes in the ground. I know how they get there. I know what goes through them. I know that if you got stuck in one, you were in some serious trouble. What makes this one a bit scarier was the second hole. There was another opening from this box in the ground that went further on into the culvert cave system, and I just might have been able to crawl through it. Thing is, I never tried. I looked down that dark tunnel and saw nothing, and I decided against it.

The what-if's crop up in my head. What if I had gone further? What if I had crawled back into that exit wrong and got stuck? What if I had just got through it the first time out of luck? What if I got my arm caught under me in that tight fit, and couldn't move? What if I got stuck and it started raining?

I've had many scary things happen within the course of my life, but for some reason, this one stands out more than anything else. If I were to guess the reason why, it's probably because nothing scary actually happened, but like the monster you never see, it's the probability of scariness that increases the fear factor. So many things could have happened that didn't. I count my blessings and move forward.

Magic 2013

I believe I've mentioned Games with Gold before, and I've diligently at least purchased every single title (whether I've actually downloaded/played it yet or not). So far, they've been an ok mix of things I've known about and other things I'd not considered, but this month, they've got me.

Stepping into the wayback machine, you may be aware that from 1993-95, I was in the U.S. Army Band as a trombone player (MOS Specialty 02E), and while I was in, I got hooked on a collectible card game called Magic: The Gathering. I played the crap out of this game and spent a ton of money on it. Thing is, Wizards of the Coast wasn't the recipient of most of my money. Instead, it was other players and card shops who got my hard earned cash because I wanted to get the coolest and rarest cards to complete my dream decks. My claim to fame was the ultimate discard deck that took down just about everyone it touched (except that one guy who played protection from black, though he conceded the first round when I made him discard his key card). Ah, those were the days.

Since then, I discarded every Magic card I owned (with the exception of some I placed in a binder as mementos such as a complete set of the Revised (otherwise known as the 3rd) Edition), declaring it far too expensive to play any longer. Time passed, but as time tends to do, old memories fade and sometimes, old friends come back. It worked for Doctor Who when I revisited that old friend a few years back, and now, Magic is back when it came up as a freebie in Games With Gold. I downloaded it and immediately set my completion percentage back 20 achievements (25 with the DLC I'll probably spring for).

The first thing it asked was how much Magic you've played: None, a little, or a lot. Well, I played a lot from 1994-1997, but none since, so I said a little. Overnight, I remembered how to play, learned the new terminology, and picked up 9 achievements. I've been pretty handily stomping the computer, and I'll have to take on those "beat a player on xBox Live" achievements here eventually. I figure I'll beat the campaigns and other "versus the computer" stuff first, and then hit up other players. Should be fun, and I'm kind of excited by the prospect. Since this is a free game to all Gold players, there should also be a ton of people out there playing it.

Where does that leave me on the original card game? Well, back in the day, the game was sold in starter decks of 60 cards and booster packs of 15. "Starter deck" is really a misnomer, since while you can play a game with a starter deck, it would be a royal mess of an attempt since the cards and lands are completely random. I've learned that modern magic is sold in intro decks, which are a complete pre-built decks that are immediately playable and require no real deck-building skill to just start. That was what always got people in the beginning. How do I start? How do I build a deck? Now that I have a zillion cards, what do I do with them?

Deck-building is a skill acquired through trial and error. You throw a bunch of like-minded cards together and hope for the best. When you're playing and find a card you hate staring back at you, you toss it and put in something else. The goal is to get a collection where you always have a card you like in your hand. Wizards of the Coast took care of that first, most difficult, step of the like-minded cards, and from there, it's up to you to change them out to make it your own.

Will I play the card game again? I'm tempted. I figured out while playing this computer version that I went about it the wrong way all those years ago. I obsessed over buying the best cards without playing the game for the fun factor and collecting whatever happened to be in the packs you can buy. Granted, I grabbed my share of random mixes, and oh yes, I bought entire boxes of boosters, but I was going for quantity as well as those precious rares instead of just using what I had on-hand to just play. If I went into playing again, I'd probably grab a couple pre-made decks of new cards, pick up some bulk randoms (Amazon has them in droves - 1000 cards for $20 and that sort of thing), and then set myself a periodic spending limit to not surpass for whatever else I wanted.

Who would I play? Same people I play all my other games with. Got the Princesses, the Queen, and the Engineer at the very least. I have my own CCG that I've been developing, and I know I'll need to take it into the world to show off, so having another game to tote with me to fit in would be useful. This is all musings at present, and I'm just playing the Xbox version for the moment, but the future is out there.

Haircuts

My hair's getting fairly long at this point, and the Queen is beyond hinting at me needing a cut. That's not a trim; that's a cut. It is cold, so maybe I can use that as an excuse. One part of me likes the hair cut because I do have a smidge of vanity about me, but another part doesn't really care and would rather do something more beneficial with my time. I thought back to my history of haircuts (yeah, what a boring topic, right?), and while my overall hair cropping hasn't varied that much, I have had some interesting cuts in the past. 

Growing up, my mother always cut mine and my brother's hair. She just used your basic electric clippers with an attachment for what amounts to a buzz cut over the summer. During the winter, she would use scissors and cut my bangs and over the ears and up to the hairline in the back with no layering action at all. It looked like your basic bowl cut, though no bowl was involved. When I got older, I continued with that same basic cut, but in a barber shop where they layered it, but I still combed my hair straight down all over (as evidenced by my senior picture with holds to the same basic haircut I had in my kindergarden picture). 

Now, there was one time when I was in those 'tween years where a stylist got a little adventurous on my hair and thought it would be cool to really style me up good. She trimmed it up about the same way they always did, but then proceeded to style it up and gel it into place so it looked like a Disney teeny bopper. How long did this style last? We went grocery shopping right after this cut, and outside the store, I did my best to mess my hair up real good, since I preferred it that way (if I remembered the comb my hair before school, that was a good day -- actually I'm still that way, though I remember more consistently now). I spent quite a bit of time that night washing all the goop out of my hair.

Naturally, I can't go through this without mentioning the Army cut. Yeah, I've seen myself completely bald. It's not a pretty sight. A lot of people out there have a nice dome to their head. It's perfectly round and you could chop them at the neck, and use them for a bowling ball. Those are the people who shave their heads and take a razor to them to keep them short and shiny. My noggin is not so nice.

I will be the first to admit that I've bumped my head a few times in my life. I clearly remember falling backward off a ledge about three and a half to four feet off the ground and landing on my head. I was subsequently yelled at by the bus driver who saw it happen for holding up his route when I did jump right up and run to the bus which was pulling up. But I landed right on my head and had a pretty good knot for awhile.

Anyway, it's kind of hard to explain what the deal is with my head. I have what amounts to a dent across the forward center of the top of my head, so from front to back, my head come up over the forehead, it dips down, goes back up to the crown, the crown of my head has a bit of a crater to it, and then it comes back out of the crater and down the back. It's not as extreme as it sounds, but that's how it looks to me. Makes me wonder sometimes how I managed to get a non-dome-shaped dome.

While I was in the military, I got what's referred to as a "high and tight" during my time in AIT. This is basically a short cut across the top of the head (covering my deformed brain cavity, restoring my head to a normal look), but almost no hair on the sides. In the latter days of AIT, and onto Fort Carson, I changed it to a "low and tight" which is the same basic idea as the high, but you have more hair on the sides that fades quickly as it moves down. It is a military cut that stays within the 2 inch rule of Army haircuts. My hair grows really quickly, and I did not get it cut weekly, so it grew long enough fairly often for me to do something with it, and I started combing it to the side to keep it out of my eyes (as 2 inches shouldn't go into your eyes, right?). Ok, so the band was a tad lenient on hair cuts, but they still required it cut.

I kept the side look for awhile once I left the military, but I got a little weary of trying to control it. I dislike dealing with any kind of styling, since I have better things to do (in my own little world). When I did go in for a haircut, I told them (and I still do) "about a quarter of the way down the forehead, off the ears, up to the hairline in the back, and even it out all over." This description has yielded a world of difference between hair cutters.

I say hair cutters because it's hard to classify these people as they all want to be something different, and that's the most general term I have. I have had barbers, hair stylists, cosmotologists, and hair professionals on my knot, so they all get lumped into "hair cutter." Teach them to not settle on one standard name.

Well, it was within a year of being out of the Army that I found the hair style that I maintain to this day. I use the word style very loosely because I really don't do anything to it but comb it back and then let it dry. My hair appears to have a natural part to it...right down the middle. I mean, perfectly down the middle. So my hair parts itself without any help from me, and my overgrown bangs fall to either side of my face allowing me to go even longer without a haircut than I could in high school. Haha!

Now, I will admit that this does make the Queen crazy. You see, my hair continues to grow very full and it does this quickly, so when I don't cut it for awhile, I have one thick head of hair that gets harder and harder to control, and while to an extent, I don't care, I do have to maintain the status quo of the business world meaning I can't look like a total hobo. However, I think I've got more hair than most of my office does, and I suspect that's not entirely their choices, if you follow me.

Anyway, I'll probably end up chopping my hair off again sometime soon, but I figured I'd share a little hair history for the sake of sharing. Now you know that when it comes to styling my head, I do as little work as possible.