AWOL Apparel

It has happened to all of us. You fall in love with a particular piece of clothing only to one day realize you have no idea where it is or what happened to it. To quote Warden Samuel Norton from The Shawshank Redemption, it just “up and vanished like a fart in the wind!” This has happened to me too many times to count, but there are three t-shirts of which I was particularly fond that are AWOL to this day.

AWOL T-Shirt #1: Limited Edition Final Fantasy VII Promotional, c. 1997, missing since unknown date (pictured at right). I mentioned in a previous post that I received this shirt as a gift for pre-ordering Final Fantasy VII. Displaying a huge video game character across my chest may have both exposed my geekiness and prevented me from getting any dates, but I loved this shirt nevertheless. I did some digging and saw that one of these shirts recently sold on eBay for $40.

AWOL T-Shirt #2: SparkNotes Promotional, c. 2000, missing since unknown date. Two years before SparkNotes was bought out by Barnes & Noble, the company gave away some 30,000 t-shirts in a promotional campaign. As a junior in high school and established internet nerd, I signed up to receive one of their shirts. It was navy blue with the SparkNotes logo on the front and on the back it said - here’s the kicker - “Taking the F out of ucking up.”

AWOL T-Shirt #3: Iowa Starbase Leadership Camp, c. 1995, missing since 2002. Apparently the Iowa STARBASE Leadership Camp (ISLC) doesn’t exist anymore (so says the omniscient Google). It was a camp sponsored by the Iowa Army National Guard for a hundred 5th grade students who demonstrated leadership traits. My class voted for me and so I got to attend Nerd Camp. I don’t remember much about the week except that I fell in love with another camper and we wrote each other letters for a while after camp was over. Anyway, I had my ISLC shirt forever… I clearly remember still wearing it freshman year of college even though it was a little snug and worn thin. I haven’t seen it since.

I know I am not the only one. Go ahead, tell me about your AWOL apparel.

Previous employment experience:

This past Monday I began the eleventh job I have ever had. I am working for two weeks (winter break) at a warehouse for Excell Marketing. It got me thinking about all the various jobs I have had over the years, so I sat down and wrote them down. Here, presented in reverse chronological order, is a list of my employment experience.

Excell Marketing: Warehouse worker, winter break 2006
Valley Church: Youth ministry intern, summer 2005 and 2006
Hidden Acres: Camp counselor, worship leader, summer 2004
Aéropostale: Retail, summer 2003
Luther College Theatre/Dance Dept.: Student worker, 2002-2007
Iowa State Fair (Admissions/Parking): Ticket seller/taker, gate captain, barricades, 2001-2004
Performance Display: Display assembler, summer 2001
Buca di Beppo: WA (Waiter’s Assistant), singer, 2000-2001
Wynnsong Theatre: Concessions, summer 2000
Burger King: Cashier, team leader/morning manager, on-and-off 1998-2003
Monsanto: Corn detassler, summer 1998

That’s eleven jobs in nine years, folks.

Best Job Award: Valley Church (even though I was hospitalized for part of it)
Worst Job Award: Performance Display

Retrovision

I just finished ordering Clarissa Explains It All: Season 1, an old Nickelodeon show and one of my favorites as I was growing up. Hopefully it will get here before the summer is over so I can watch it with the other interns.

Ordering the DVD put me in a reminiscent mood and got me thinking about all of the shows I used to watch on Nickelodeon. Here are a few that I used to watch all the time:

Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Salute Your Shorts, You Can’t Do That On Television, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Hey Dude (intro video), The Secret World of Alex Mac, Doug, David the Gnome, Wild and Crazy Kidz (theme song), Rocko’s Modern Life, The Elephant Show, Guts, and All That.

Am I forgetting any?

Update: Thanks for all the comments so far. I totally forgot about the following shows: Legends of the Hidden Temple, Ren & Stimpy, Double Dare, Ahh! Real Monsters, What Would You Do?, and Gak. Keep ‘em coming.

Blast from the past

In keeping with posting about things from my past, here are some pictures from way too long ago that I recently came upon.

See the original, full-sized photo here.

That’s me at about age five. My shirt says “It’s better in the Bahamas,” and it’s a souvenir my parents brought back from their vacation to the Bahamas. I’ll bet you can buy the exact shirt or something very similar at one of those trendy t-shirt stores. Apparently the person taking the picture was falling down at the time.

See the original, full-sized photo here.

I am very excited about Christmas. And sweatsuits. I am guessing this is age seven or eight. Interesting fact: I had the chair in the left part of the picture in my freshman dorm room. Late that year it literally fell apart, but it logged an admirable amount of years of reclining pleasure.

See the original, full-sized photo here.

It is obvious in this picture that a few years later I would listen to boy bands. I am holding my cat, Pepper, and wearing a little league sweatshirt. Probably twelve years old. Before puberty, my hair was blonde and straight, and I loved it when it was that long because I could jerk my head to the side to “get the hair out of my eyes”. And that was cool.

Comments welcome.

The Quiet Table

[The following is a non-fiction account of an experience from my past. Take the time to read it; you won’t regret it.]

There are some things that I have surely forgotten about elementary school. One thing that I will not forget, however, is the Quiet Table.

In the elementary school penal system, the Quiet Table was located just above a Time-Out and just below a detention. If someone was punished to sit at the Quiet Table, a clever acronym was used: Q.T. Thus, it was said that you “got a Q.T.”. Believe me, you didn’t want a Q.T. Why? Because the Q.T. was a table in the far corner of the lunchroom, and the rules said you had to get your lunch, sit down, and eat at the Q.T. all without saying a single word. Hence the name.

You also had to miss recess, all the while wallowing in your own self-pity and silence. There was usually at least one kid sitting at the Q.T., sometimes more, and there was always a teacher. The Q.T. teacher’s job was was fairly simple: make sure the inmates don’t speak. The teacher also made sure the kids didn’t turn around, because in addition to eating in silence, they were condemned to facing the wall. You weren’t allowed to see anyone at the Q.T., but everyone could see you. This was always a hot topic of conversation at the regular lunch tables. “Who’s at the Q.T. today?” “It looks like Lance.” “Again.”

Another thing that sucked about the Q.T. was the paperwork. After you finished your miserable, friend-less lunch, you were required to fill out (with the help of the teacher) a mustard-yellow sheet detailing why you ended up at the Q.T. This sheet was to be taken home, signed by a parent, and brought back to school. The sheet had questions like “What behavior led to the student receiving a Q.T.?” and “What will the student do to change this behavior?” and “How can we improve your stay at the Q.T.?” Okay, that last one wasn’t there, but if it had, I would have vehemently lobbied for a la carte reinstatement.

In addition to having you verbal communication privileges revoked, you weren’t allowed a second helping of whatever was on that day’s lunch menu. A la carte = second helping. You had to raise your hand just after the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in the morning so that that lunch room could amply prepare for your gluttonous indulgence. Getting a Q.T. on chicken nugget day or pizza day was equatable to pooping your pants in class. It was to be avoided at all costs.

If you receieved 3 Q.T.s — God forbid — it meant that you had earned some special award, like spending the entire day with the principal. The principal, Mr. Hart, was a man of at least 100 years of age who worked at McDonald’s on the weekends. I’m not sure if he knew that this undermined his authority or not. I mean, two days ago, he was dropping hashbrowns (he worked mornings) and taking my order, and today he expects me to treat him as my superior? Well, I probably did obey, because 3 Q.T.s was a serious offense, and who knew what punishment came after spending a day with Principal McMuffin.

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