Desperation is an old and dear friend of mine.
I too will share my tales of desperation, as they are many.

Once upon a time I was a racetrack groom, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere. This was during a time when I was having a conflict of wills with my parents- they wanted me to go into electronics so I would always have a trade doing TV repairs (pffft, riiight- but as this was in the early 1980s it was still being done), whereas I knew that this was an extremely bad fit for me- so I was not talking to them and was determined with the stubbornness of a teenager to make it on my own, no matter the cost to my health or sanity. The result was that I spent two weeks living on $10 while doing fairly heavy physical work- moving hay bales, shoveling stalls, all the sort of nastiness a groom must do as part of his job.

So what did I live on? Not very goddam much. I was living a fair distance away and relying on others for transport, so in the morning when I got to the track I would buy a cup of battery-acid coffee that tasted much like what I removed daily from the stalls, and a single donut. At lunch time it was more coffee and a candy bar. And when I got home? Kraft macaroni & cheese with a can of tuna mixed in. It tasted okay, but the smell! Gah! Cheese and tuna mingled- I’ll let you make your own fanny jokes about that one.

I’m 5’ 11” tall. When I graduated high school I weighed 155 lbs. By the time I was receiving money again, I had lost about 20 lbs. I looked as though I had just emerged from Auschwitz. But by damn, I supported myself that entire summer.

Skip forward a couple of years. I’m no longer in school, so I’m making my living as a dishwasher. Still no car, but now I’m in Rochester, NY and there are buses I can take each day. During the winter this is especially harsh, as the sub-freezing winds would turn my still-wet hair into ice on my head as I waited for the bus, but what the hell- I was still supporting myself. Barely, of course- I got one meal at the restaurant, so that was my big meal of the day- but I still had enough left for Genesee Cream Ale on occasion. (They advertised that it was brewed with the waters of the Genesee River, as though this were a good thing. Imagine a brew advertising that it was made from the waters of the Thames or the Yangtze or the Ganges, and you’ll understand why this was a bitter joke to us locals.)

I usually worked the day shift, but was occasionally called upon to help out when a major act came though- we had Joan Jett (ugly and smelled like Lexol and sardines), Cyndi Lauper just before she got famous (she puked all over the place. Guess who got to clean it up?), the drummer from Journey (talk about an arrogant twat who had no reason to be!)- and when I worked these shows usually someone would give me a lift across town at the end of the night.

Except for the night we had a blizzard. No one was willing to drive me, and I was a good ten miles away at 2:00 in the morning. So I did the only thing I could- I started walking along the expressway, hoping for a passing car. (I had done this before and gotten home just fine, but not during a fucking blizzard.) Needless to say, there was no one out, so I resigned myself to a very long and cold walk.

Just then a terrible racket started behind me, which turned out to be a tow truck dragging a tractor trailer (a lorry, for you Brits). I stuck out my thumb, but of course the driver wasn’t going to slow down for a kid in a blizzard. I cursed him mentally for a moment, before I realized that he was going slowly enough that I could run and catch hold of the truck. So I ran and grabbed at the handles that close the back door on the trailer and jumped up on the iron bar under the bumper, congratulating myself on my cleverness.

Only one little problem, which I’m sure you’ve spotted by now.

I was uneasily contemplating taking my chances with diving off and rolling- he was only going about 30 mph, so I wouldn’t be hurt too badly- when I realized that he was slowing to get off at an exit ramp. Even better- it was my exit! Score! So when he got to the end of the ramp and stopped I hopped off and strolled past the cab, giving a cheery wave to the driver as I did so. The expression on his face was priceless.

I’ll post more stories in a little bit when I’ve had time to think about it…
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 16 Nov 2007, 21:16, Reply)