Prototype Issue
Missives from the Madhouse
Posted by pcaneday
"Look at the birds of the air...Are you not of more value than they?"
It’s a new day.
One rent payment. Two cars and insurance. Three people at home who rely on my paycheck. And I am unemployed for the first time in twenty years. You’re fired. Priceless. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Take the job in sales because it’s good money, a good future. Work hard here and maybe a bigger company will head hunt you, make you an offer you can’t refuse. Put in 20 years, and with some wise investments, retire before your 60th birthday, kids away in college, buy that RV and drive to every wine country in the U.S. and reintroduce yourself to the woman you married. “We’re making changes.” Salesman speak for, “it’s not you, it’s me.” I was never a salesperson anyway. Upon telling friends and family that I had been fired, I was surprised how many people told me that they never thought I was right for that sales job. Most were the same people that encouraged me to leave my last company for the sales job. Too nice for sales, was what most people said, including my former boss as he feigned remorse at my dismissal. Good salespeople are always selling something. So this is the first Monday in so many years that I find myself sitting at home without an office to get to. I am not racing out of the house by nine a.m. I am not fighting traffic. I am not looking for a parking place. I will not make fifty phone calls to strangers attempting to convince them that my product is better than my competitor’s. I will not miss something extremely cute that my three year old will do today. I will not miss the new word my one year old will say. I will not miss traffic or parking or a desk. Wait a minute. My daily routine usually consists of getting up when Emily, the one year old, drops blocks on the hardwood floor outside our bedroom. Mom has already gotten up to fetch her from her crib. A mother’s radar for the sounds of a waking child are only slightly more honed than a father’s ability to sleep through them. Start the coffee, get the paper, turn on Sesame Street and let the kids entertain themselves. When Elmo’s World comes on, that’s my cue to get in the shower. Dress, drain the last of the coffee, kiss the wife and kids, fall in line on Interstate 5 north into Burbank. Chloe, the three year old, climbs into my lap because her sister has just done the same. I thought we’d have a few years before sibling rivalry set in. Elmo’s World comes on and my body tenses with a desire to get up. Yet I remain seated. And even with the little love blossoms sitting on my lap, my heart sinks. For the first time since Friday, I now truly feel the weight of being unemployed. It hits me hard, and my stomach gives a flutter of anxiety. I must do something. I am compelled for my own good. Somewhere in the back of my mind I hear an employment counselor telling me to stay active, get busy, keep a routine. I tell my wife that I am going for a walk. I lace up the jogging shoes that have seen no asphalt in 5 years, pull on a fleece jacket, grab my favorite golf cap and hit the road. Movement is good. The blood is flowing. This is what I always loved about jogging: the meditation. Once the pace gets set, the mind is liberated from the body, free of earthly weight. And yet, when I jogged I never noticed just how tall the palm trees are that line our street in Atwater Village. Surely they are the tallest palm trees in all of Los Angeles. Has the front yard of that house always been landscaped in a southwest theme? I never would have thought that purple would have worked on a ranch home. The things you discover when you walk through a place rather than run. As I turn a corner I hear a commotion in the trees. More than a commotion, a cacophony. There is much ado in the trees. Chirps, peeps, calls and warbles. When my eyes adjust to the shades of green I see that the melee is caused by a squadron of small green birds. Some sort of parakeet or similar exotic breed. But there are hundreds, perhaps thousands. In the blink of an eye they dart from the tree as one to make assault upon a crow five times their individual size that has ventured too close. Their united call makes the sound of a thousand glass marbles colliding. In perfect formation they chase the crow around the tree, screaming. Their flight is precise and graceful. Awestruck, I think how foreign and how beautiful these little flyers appear in this setting. Eventually the crow gives up and finds another roost and the green birds reclaim their tree with victorious cheers. Now, I am no bird expert, but you would have a hard time convincing me that these little green birds are a native species. I imagine that somehow, years back, one escaped its captor before they had chance to clip its wings. Eventually another managed to flee as well. They met in a big tree in a bigger city and did what comes natural to birds after flying and soiling my car. Before long a colony exploded in the trees of our neighborhood, a tribe that fled persecution and entrapment. Well, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. A s I head north along the L.A. river bike path, I am bordered on one side by a concrete river flowing south and the metallic river of I-5 flowing north. The cars stream onward, and I wonder where my place in them would have been today. They all have someplace to go, a desk to sit at, a paycheck to collect, a boss to make wealthier. My jaw tenses and I feel a twinge of pain near my ears. I am grinding my teeth, a nasty habit I picked up while in sales. One time I told a fellow salesperson about this and he told me that he’d experienced this for years. In fact, he was about to have surgery to correct the damage done over the years from this. “Welcome to sales,” he said through a clenched smile. I realize that I am thinking about last Friday, my unceremonious and surprise dismissal with six months left on my unwritten contract. Now I have first hand knowledge proving the need to get it in writing. Oh well, be positive, unclench your jaw, relax your fists and open up to the world around you. Find your peace. Farther on I spy a penny on the ground. Now I have made it a habit over the years that I do not pick up pennies I find on the ground for luck. My feeling has been that I have it pretty good and am not in want of much more. But today I pick it up. I rub it a little then drop it back to the ground a few steps later. After all, the adage never said anything about keeping the penny in order to get your day’s worth of good luck. Now it is available for some other needy soul to see and pick up. Things to do: apply for unemployment insurance, update resume, research health insurance for the family, call “friends” to see about work. I pass back into my neighborhood and now I see just how many houses that are being sold or remodeled. This is not an expensive part of town. Mostly modest older ranch homes, bungalows and craftsman houses. This is alarming evidence of the lunatic housing price increases that have swept the city over the last four years. Families that have lived in these homes for years, generations, have quadrupled their investment and are now selling or adding on. My wife and I, renting now, have got to get into this game before it gets insane. That thought is but a few seconds across my mind when it hits me hard. First, housing prices have already gotten insane. Second, exactly what occupation should I state on the mortgage application? Back on my street I say a short prayer heading home: God, it’s me again. I know, I know. I never call, I never write. But I heard somewhere that you provide for those in need. Something about if the birds in the air are fed, and how much more you must love us. Well, if you’re offering, I’m taking. And I promise to stay in touch this time…really. A thousand emerald colored parakeets fly overhead screaming with delight and freedom. I can’t believe that someone let an exotic bird loose in L.A.
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