When I was very young, my career aspirations changed on a weekly basis. One week I wanted to be a horsetrainer, the next I wanted to be a ballet dancer, and then I wanted to be a horse-trainer by day and a ballet dancer by night. As I grew older, though, my goals became much more specific.
When I was 11, my dream was to be a veterinarian. But not just any veterinarian. I would be a veterinarian who lived on an abandoned schoolbus in a Walmart parking lot. My reasoning here was that I would save so much money on living costs that I would be ridiculously rich. I didn't have any plans on what to do with this money. I supposed I would eventually set up my own vet clinic ON the bus.
When I was 12, I yearned for adventure. My dream was to drive away some day without telling anyone where I was going. No one would ever be able to find me! I could do whatever I wanted! I could become a vet and live secretly on a bus and then take all the money I saved and go rock climbing in Colorado during the summers like in Vertical Limit (but, since I would be climbing alone, I wouldn't have to risk being devastated by watching members of my family fall to their dooms). I don't know why being untraceable was such an important part of my plan, but for some reason it was. I didn't realize that this plan could possibly be upsetting to any of my loved ones until the day I waxed poetic about my Disappearing off the Face of the Earth plan to my sister and she became inexplicably upset by this and told me to please warn her before I vanished. In fact, she didn't want me to vanish at all! I was confused, but sincerely promised (with my fingers crosed behind my back) to not disappear as soon as I graduated from highschool. Clearly she did not understand the point of that adventure. I'm not sure I understand the point of it anymore either, actually.
When I was 17, my plans took a turn for the plain and fairly normative. I found out that Yale, Harvard, and Princeton are all needs-blind schools. This means that if your family makes under a certain income, they cover the costs of your schooling. In some cases they even pay for you to fly down to visit your family every few months. I wanted in on this sweet all-expenses-paid action. So my dream became to attend an Ivy League. We all know how THAT turned out*.
When I went to Dal, my goal was to become a cultured, contributing member of society, who went out to art shows and attended protests all the time. I would become a member of the vibrant Halifax music scene. I was even going to be part of a hypothetical underground band called the 50% Off Toasters***. I spent the next two years eating low-quality, high-starch foods, fighting over whose responsibility it was to recycle the tuna cans, and procrastinating from writing essays on Romantic Poetry. My greatest aspiration became to stay out of the rain as much as possible.
Now, my career goals are much more realistic. All I want is to be an award-winning children's book author who owns a farm that is part dog-sanctuary and part cupcake-war grounds (you know, like a paintball range, except with cupcakes). You know that myth that parents are supposed to tell their children when they have to have the dog put down, the one where the dog is actually being sent to a great big farm somewhere where the dog will be far happier and will be able to spend the rest of his days running around chasing rabbits and having his belly scratched by the farmers' loving children? My farm will make that a reality (the belly-scratching children are optional)! And I will support my dog sanctuary with a combination of my book sales and admission sales to the cupcake-war shooting range. It's gonna be great.****
*interesting side-story: after I was rejected by all three universities, had gotten over my disappointment and stopped caring, I met a particularly heinous breed of aspiring Ivy-Leaguer at a birthday party. I did not like that man. He flirted with me until he found out I had applied to, been rejected by, and then given up on the Ivy Leagues. Butwhy? Why would you give up on your goal? He wondered, to which I shrugged. Meh. He immediately turned his attention to the girl sitting next to me (who was, unfortunately, a good friend of mine), and ended up dating her for an excessively long amount of time instead. By the time he ran off to Harvard, I was in the middle of constructing some sort of liquification-ray gun in order to dispose of him with ease**. If my target hadn't transferred countries, I could have submitted my new (and proven to be fully working) invention to Harvard (or maybe MIT). I would have been a shoo-in! But then I would have ended up being stuck in a class with an even more excessive amount of similar Ivy League snobs. Dodged a major bullet on that one.
**I kid, I kid. Disposing of a liquified human being is surprisingly difficult, actually.
***The posters for our shows would look like fliers for kitchen appliance sales. Only our loyal fans would be able to interpret these posters and actually track us down. We were gonna be so underground.
****I actually know someone whose sister has a cow sanctuary. No joke. She adopts old cows and takes care of them so they can die a peaceful, natural death on her farm. And she supports her endeavour by selling miniature houses called Possum Huts and Cowches: Couches in the shapes of cows (and with each Cowch is included a free hand-made rat!!!). If she can support cows through the sales of $500 life-sized cow pillows, I can support adandoned dogs through cupcake war sales.
Showing posts with label cupcake war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cupcake war. Show all posts
Friday, November 26, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Your Saltines Are MINE!!!!
For several months, there has been a package of saltine crackers sitting in the fridge at my place of work. Why anyone would put crackers in the fridge is beyond me. I mean, how could anyone leave a package of saltine crackers uneaten for so long that they would need to be refridgerated to keep them from going bad?
Generally, when there are strange things in the fridge, I assume that my boss put them there. For instance, there's a pre-packaged salad, still in its vacuum-sealed wrapping, slowly liquifying in the corner; there is one random beer that's been sitting in the back of the fridge for over a year now; and there's a thing that I can only assume is pea soup. I assume that all of these items are Rodney's, and he has decided to add it to his fun study in food decay, and that I should leave it there until it turns all sorts of fun colours. For some reason, though, this package of crackers struck me as an un-Rodneyish item to put in the fridge. He just doesn't seem like the saltine type of guy. I had also on several occasions seen my manager, Melissa, eating saltines, so I always assumed they were hers. And so these saltines stayed in the back of the fridge. And I lusted after them.
Then, the most magnificent thing happened. Melissa quit*. Melissa quit, and she left her crackers behind. This being the first day I worked at the store since Melissa quit, I was very excited to see those saltines were still sitting in the fridge. I managed to restrain myself for the first 9 hours of my shift. Eventually, the need to secretly consume my ex-manager's food overcame my desire to maintain my professional bearing in the workplace. I devoured half of the package, just like that.
As soon as I began eating the crackers, I was overcome with fear that these hadn't actually been Melissa's crackers. What if they had been Rodney's crackers? Would he ever actually notice they were missing? What if they were Sierra's? Or Alex's? I was stealing someone else's food. That is a major work-place sin! How would the owner of the saltines retalliate? Would this result in a workplace war? I was afraid. Would this war involve an all-out cupcake-flinging fight**? My fear was quickly replaced with excitement. How many of these crackers would I have to eat in order to provoke their owner into starting a bakery food fight with me? I finished the package. And then, just as I placed the last delicious saltine cracker in my mouth, I noticed some felt-pen writing on the bottom of the package. It said "Melissa". And just like that, my sudden intense dream of having a cupcake war had to be downsized to the original, smaller dream of eating all of Melissa's saltine crackers.
*Understand that Melissa was the glue that held this store together. One of her most impressive feats was the way she transformed the bakery office from something resembling the space beneath your average fratboy's couch cushions, to something actually resembling an office. There is only one reason why Melissa quitting would be exciting, and that is the reason outlined in this post.
**If I am allowed to go on a multi-topic monologue for long enough, I will always eventually end it with my dream of having a cupcake war. For some reason, I have never been able to articulate the idea of the cupcake war well enough to get my listeners anywhere near as interested in it as I am. It's like the time I was allowed to play with the 100-pound box of sparkles and could only talk about sparkles for days afterwards and no one cared. Who doesn't get excited about sparkles? Who doesn't get excited about having tiny balls of cake coated in colourful icings flung at them? Picture La Tomatina, except with cupcakes instead of tomatoes: a blur of beautiful, rainbow icings and chunks of chocolate cake. People coated head to foot in cocoa powder and sprinkles. People swimming in puddles of melting vanilla icing. Why are you not excited about this?
Generally, when there are strange things in the fridge, I assume that my boss put them there. For instance, there's a pre-packaged salad, still in its vacuum-sealed wrapping, slowly liquifying in the corner; there is one random beer that's been sitting in the back of the fridge for over a year now; and there's a thing that I can only assume is pea soup. I assume that all of these items are Rodney's, and he has decided to add it to his fun study in food decay, and that I should leave it there until it turns all sorts of fun colours. For some reason, though, this package of crackers struck me as an un-Rodneyish item to put in the fridge. He just doesn't seem like the saltine type of guy. I had also on several occasions seen my manager, Melissa, eating saltines, so I always assumed they were hers. And so these saltines stayed in the back of the fridge. And I lusted after them.
Then, the most magnificent thing happened. Melissa quit*. Melissa quit, and she left her crackers behind. This being the first day I worked at the store since Melissa quit, I was very excited to see those saltines were still sitting in the fridge. I managed to restrain myself for the first 9 hours of my shift. Eventually, the need to secretly consume my ex-manager's food overcame my desire to maintain my professional bearing in the workplace. I devoured half of the package, just like that.
As soon as I began eating the crackers, I was overcome with fear that these hadn't actually been Melissa's crackers. What if they had been Rodney's crackers? Would he ever actually notice they were missing? What if they were Sierra's? Or Alex's? I was stealing someone else's food. That is a major work-place sin! How would the owner of the saltines retalliate? Would this result in a workplace war? I was afraid. Would this war involve an all-out cupcake-flinging fight**? My fear was quickly replaced with excitement. How many of these crackers would I have to eat in order to provoke their owner into starting a bakery food fight with me? I finished the package. And then, just as I placed the last delicious saltine cracker in my mouth, I noticed some felt-pen writing on the bottom of the package. It said "Melissa". And just like that, my sudden intense dream of having a cupcake war had to be downsized to the original, smaller dream of eating all of Melissa's saltine crackers.
*Understand that Melissa was the glue that held this store together. One of her most impressive feats was the way she transformed the bakery office from something resembling the space beneath your average fratboy's couch cushions, to something actually resembling an office. There is only one reason why Melissa quitting would be exciting, and that is the reason outlined in this post.
**If I am allowed to go on a multi-topic monologue for long enough, I will always eventually end it with my dream of having a cupcake war. For some reason, I have never been able to articulate the idea of the cupcake war well enough to get my listeners anywhere near as interested in it as I am. It's like the time I was allowed to play with the 100-pound box of sparkles and could only talk about sparkles for days afterwards and no one cared. Who doesn't get excited about sparkles? Who doesn't get excited about having tiny balls of cake coated in colourful icings flung at them? Picture La Tomatina, except with cupcakes instead of tomatoes: a blur of beautiful, rainbow icings and chunks of chocolate cake. People coated head to foot in cocoa powder and sprinkles. People swimming in puddles of melting vanilla icing. Why are you not excited about this?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)