3
During the last two months of my Senior year of High School, a hair
started to sprout out of a cheek. After a few weeks of this single
hair growing there, the store owner walked up to me and silently
handed me a disposable razor. I accepted it as the message was
received, that it was time to start shaving... The
one hair. A
couple months later I was visiting Colorado for my last temporary
summer visit and, as I hadn't brought the razor with me in my
luggage, I used the same method my mother did and plucked out the
five hairs I now had growing on my face. By the
following Fall, when I returned to New England and started working at
the grocery store full-time, I took up shaving full-time as well for
the handful of whiskers I'd developed.
After my permanent move to Colorado, effectively between jobs, I
decided to let my beard grow and see what would come of it. Being
around my birthday month, mother wanted me to tag along on another
long drive up to visit my sister at the Wyoming/Montana border. I
really didn't want to, but I concluded I really couldn't say no.
As my sister's father-in-law had died in the intervening years, my
sister had moved into her husband's parents' home as his mother had
found a new, smaller place, for herself in town. When mother and I
arrived, as there weren't enough guest bedrooms, I was assigned a
roll away bed in the unfinished basement. I actually liked this
setting as it allowed me to sleep late in the morning, as there was
no natural light to wake me, and read my science fiction books by the
light of a provided lamp. I remember very little else about this
trip other than being in the basement for the few days we were up
there. On the drive back my mother pleaded with me to shave given
how terrible my beard looked!
Checking in the bathroom mirror once we got back, I found that rather
than having a beard, all my face produced was a smattering of hairs
widely spaced. The best looking bit was a 'Soul Patch' under my
lower lip, about an eighth inch wide and not much longer. The
closest thing to a 'beard' I had was a scruffy patch under my jaw.
As my brothers had mustaches in their years after High School, I
decided to shave all but the upper lip and see what developed. If it
hadn't been for the scruffy bit under the chin, I might have just
turned to plucking it. After a few years, no one had noticed my
'mustache' as they assumed it was just the shadow of my large nose
above. So I started shaving there as well and lose the shadow. My
'beard' never filled in more than that and I discovered I didn't have
to shave more than once every four days as people didn't start to
notice until day five.
I had sent a two thousand dollar check to Colorado ahead of me for my
mother to deposit into a bank account under my name before I moved
out. One thousand dollars I brought with me as travelers checks and
another five hundred as cash on hand for the drive out. As I hadn't
needed the travelers checks, I found I could simply deposit them into
the bank account mother had set up for me, but she had another
idea.
During an employment gap between the grocery store turned deli and
finding a job at the hospital, my mother had borrowed some money from
my not as older brother in the Air Force. As he had been single and
didn't need much of his paycheck as he lived on base, his savings had
been piling up and thus he was able to help out mother during that
time. While she had gradually paid him back during the preceding
year and a half since she'd gotten the hospital job, she still owed
him about a thousand dollars.
As my not as older brother had let her know he was going to get
married to someone he met in the Air Force, mom decided she should
pay him off in a lump sum as well as send him money for a wedding
present. And my fifteen hundred dollars was the right amount!
Could I instead cash in the traveler's checks and loan her
one thousand dollars so she could pay off my not as older brother?
Then she'd use the remaining five hundred dollars as the wedding
present from 'her & me' and pay me back half of that as well,
later. Always wanting to be helpful, I thought, Why,
not?
As Al, of the local software start-up company, had gotten an
invitation to visit the local big name computer company nearby, he
asked if I'd like to come along...? Absolutely! The previous
year, my mother had a boyfriend who worked there and I thought I
might be able to get my foot in the door through him this year, but
mother had since dumped him as, she explained, ''He was the same
height as your father and I decided I couldn't deal with that
again.'' So much for romance, I guessed and wondered how I'd get
into a good computer job once I got to Colorado. But with this
invite to join Al on his visit, I perked up as we arrived at one of
their overflow facilities, they had grown so big they no longer
fit into a single complex, and we got the tour with someone Al
knew. It was a sprawling single floor with a mix of mainframe and
mid-range machines housed in air conditioned rooms nestled between
blocks of work cubicles. It was sort of like I had expected to see,
still, I found myself impressed as what I had imaged
ahead of time was actually now surrounding me. At the end of the
tour, his friend asked if we had any more questions and then handed
Al and me job applications to take home.
Getting back I was thrilled as my great plan of saving-up my money
for a year, then moving out to Colorado to get a computer job by Fall
was running right on schedule. All I had to do was fill in the
application where I would note 'my degree', 'field of expertise', and
check a box saying 'I could pass a physical examination' as part of
being hired...
Not having a degree would be problematic, but as I had quickly
impressed Al with my skills, I thought I could get passed that. I
didn't know what the official title of my field of expertise would be
and wondered if I could just put 'Computer Programming' as my answer.
But could I pass a physical examination? I didn't
think so given my 'situation' and had even given up on entering any
military service because of it.
I didn't bother send in my application and even though Al did and
had a year of working at the start-up under his belt, I soon heard
from him that they wouldn't consider him without a degree either.
Working at a big computer corporation wasn't going to be in either
of our futures.
Toward the end of Nineteen Eighty-Three, jobless and living off my
savings, my bank balance had dropped in half and was soon being eaten
up by undisclosed bank fees. When I asked what those were about, the
bank explained that there was a 'maintenance fee' for having a
balance below a thousand dollars. That was news to me as I had never
encountered such a fee with my original bank account in New England
but that's just how they did business in Colorado.
Finding this out, now five months after mom had borrowed the money
from me to pay-off my not as older brother, I went to her and asked
when she might start making payments toward the twelve hundred and
fifty dollars she owed me? She paused, then explained to me that I
had been privileged growing-up with her during those four years at
the apartment town, with just her and me and having the large
bedroom for myself. She had been thinking about it recently and, in
retrospect, she realized that I actually owed her that
money and so she wouldn't be paying any of it back...
I protested in shock, but what could I do? With my savings
dwindling, and no job prospects on the horizon, I
couldn't very well move out.
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