Ahoy, my floppy eared matey

I was working in a theme restaurant; pirate themed, I suppose. It was on a ship but it wasn’t on water or anything. The main dining area was on the main deck (I don’t really know pirate terms, so forgive me) but there was also a small dining room in an elevated part (crows nest? I don’t know).

Anyway, I arrived for my day shift and went up to the upper dining room—I’m just going to call it the crows nest, I don’t know—and my tables started filling up. It was also the middle of a shift change, so I had to take over tables from the other server but I couldn’t find her and I had absolutely no idea what was going on. What followed was a typical waitress dream; customers moved around, they changed their orders, I lost tickets, some of them wanted to order food, ALL of them were angry and I didn’t have time to ring anything in. It was chaos.

Finally I started to get drinks rung up but I couldn’t go down to the deck to get them because I kept getting sat. The other server ran upstairs with a tray full of drinks and just left them on the stairs so I had no idea what was what. I got most of them passed out when I looked over and saw some man with a leaf blower blowing sand and sawdust off the floor…and right into the drinks that were still sitting on the stairs. I was pissed.

I should describe what this man looked like because it could be significant or just entertaining. He was a little bit older than me, late 30’s or 40’s. He was wearing a green polo shirt and he had the biggest ears ever. They weren’t like big old man ears, they were like beagle ears; really long and floppy, the left one was longer than the right. It was weird.

So I followed this guy into the basement (?) of the ship, cussing and screaming all the way. I even threw a couple of drinks at him; I was so angry that he had made my hard time even harder by messing up my drinks. I tried to explain how bad he screwed me up but he just kept saying, “get another one, I don’t care, I don’t care”. After I yelled at him a bit I felt sort of bad; I knew it was an over reaction. I tried to apologize but he wouldn’t hear it. Now he was mad at me for being a bitch. I wanted him to understand my reaction and forgive me but he wouldn’t listen, even with those big ol’ ears he wouldn’t hear me.

He said, “Why don’t you just go shopping? You just come in here with all your new stuff it doesn’t matter if you work or not”
I was enraged. I said, “How dare you talk to me like you get it? I don’t have anything! I can’t shop! I don’t have any money; you don’t know what you’re talking about! You don’t know anything about me!”

We went back and forth for a while until I finally decided it was pointless and I went back to the dining room to wait on my tables. I ran back up to the main deck and as I ran around the corner I almost crashed into a family coming down the ramp. One of the little boys (11, maybe) took my picture as I turned the corner. I was startled and I screamed. I looked at the picture and it was pretty good so I asked him if he would email it to me. He said yes and I took off running again.

I got to the bar where the other server was picking up drinks. She said, “I hope you know you’re waiting on all the ‘shrimp people’ tonight.” I said, “I hope you know I am leaving in about 15 minutes.”
I looked up at the clock and I realized it was a lot later than I had thought, it was 6:30 and I needed to pick up my son by 6:30…I was going to be late. On closer inspection I saw that the clock was blurry and it was actually 7:30.

I dropped all my stuff and raced out to my car. I was going to call the daycare on my way.
I ran across the street and I noticed a police car had been parked diagonally across it. I was getting into my car when a man got out of the police car. It was clear that he was going to be robbing the store nearby because he had a bandanna tied around his face. I mentally decided to call the police on my way to the daycare.

As I was driving away I felt a breeze. I looked over and saw that both passenger doors were open; someone had been in my car. I reached over and pulled the front door closed but there was nothing I could do about the back one. It didn’t look like they had taken anything, but the inside of my car was kind of disassembled.
Um…that’s it.

movin' on up

I was moving to an appartment. I was moving back home (although I live there now) from someplace else and I was looking for a place to live. I went to a bunch of really nice appartments and I didn't know how I was going to afford any of them. I was also concerned about storage but my aunt reminded me that my mom was close and she could keep some of my stuff if I didn't have room for it.

At least two of the buildings we went to had problems with the elevators. We would push a button and go past the floor. Sometimes it would stop at the right floor, but as soon as I took a step towards the door it would close and move again. This went on for a long time. We were trying to get off on the third floor but the elevator would only let us off on the fifth.

Finally we both got off on the fifth floor and took seperate elevators back down to the third floor. My aunt's seemed to work fine, but mine would not let me on.

In one building I was spending the night-sort of like a test drive, I suppose. I was laying in bed kind of half sleeping and I heard someone moving around in the alley below. I looked out the window and saw a man pulling a flute out of a case. He started playing it.

When he saw me watching him he motioned for me to come down. I didn't say anything but I nodded. I put on a jacket and a hat and I started down the stairs.

Since I didn't really live there I didn't know exactly how to get to the alley. After a lot of searching I finally realized that the only way was to go through the basement of my biulding and the one next door. I had to go through a series of tunnels and I had to climb and crawl in some spots. Finally I made it out there, where I was joined by a friend of mine.

My friend said he was there to make sure I was OK, he didn't hang out with us, he just sat a few yards away and watched.

The man I was going down to meet had also been joined by a few friends. I asked him if there was a better way to get to the alley from the building. He said that there was only one way (the long way I went) and that pretty soon they would be closing it off because there was some kind of construction being done to the second building. I wouldn't be able to come back.