A job, a job, thank the stars for a job!

As I wrote earlier, I have a job! Not working for more than five months, I have gone through several stages from relief to depression to sloth to bored off my tush. When you find yourself blocking out four hours of TV mid-day (2 PM Beverly Hills 90210, 3 PM Oprah, 4 PM Dr. Phil, shut up, it’s a freak show!, 5 PM Gilmore Girls) then you know you need to get out of the house. Plus, my retired father is going through a Navy kick which means being told the navy nickname for everything under the sun. I can’t remember any of them, but I can tell you Navy men like their nicknames raunchy with a side of macho.

Dad’s trip down memory lane also means lots of cheesy old Navy-centric movies, with Lee Majors and the ilk, whoses romantic nature gets my dad a’sentimentalizing. During these movies he sits around, and in between naps, tells anyone in earshot about Navy life. “What kind of sailors are these guys?” he asks to no one in particular. And mind you, my father isn’t a tattooed covered crusty seaman. He’s a college graduate who loves classical music, history, listens to NPR and cries like a little girl at the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (“Why’d they have to kill off Anya? She was my favorite.”) Yet, he laughs like a hyena at drunken sailor jokes and will occasionally salute the TV when “Anchors Away” starts playing. He knows he’s being obnoxious, but just can’t help himself. This, like that extra molar behind my upper left wisdom tooth, is something I inherited from my father.

And here’s the clicker, he didn’t even like the Navy! He talks about how fascist it was and how he had to take orders from idiots. I guess it’s like high school, the further away you get from it, the better it seems. You remember the bad times as fondly as you remember the good. That’s what I like about getting older, the crazy voices mellow out to quiet whispers always telling me to look for more. Telling me to look to the past, accept who I am and go on with my life. Telling me not to get stuck.