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By Pat Fule Random Thoughts

It’s kind of odd for a former high school PE/English teacher/coach to not like watching sports on TV. However, that is a true statement, and unless a local pro team has made playoffs, I rarely watch – with the exception of the CFL and NFL. I will watch those games and lately, I’ve been wondering (musing, if you will) about jobs. Watching the NFL, I always wonder how a person got one particular job. The guy or gal whose job it is to spray water in the mouths of huge behemoths has to be a unique individual. You’re basically “on call” through the whole game – fill the bottles, find the players coming off, spray just enough water to keep them happy, or get waved off by them when they’re mad. Do they say thanks for the water? Do they nod, shake their heads or just grunt? It got me thinking of some job experiences I’ve had, long ago.
My very first job was as a Calgary Herald paper boy. I took pride in my job, hustled after school to load the papers, hoisted the heavy burden on my frail 13-year-old shoulders, and trudged around my neighbourhood. It was this job where I first discovered that I love slapstick humour. It was a bitterly cold night, and I was walking warily on the icy road to the farthest house on my route. That’s when it happened – an older woman (she was probably in her 30s, because everyone looks old to a 13-year-old) was carrying her groceries from her car, headed to her driveway. She slipped in an oddly acrobatic way. Her stepping foot caught nothing but ice, and she shot up in the air, her arms still loaded temporarily with the bags. Poor lady, no time to brace for impact and she landed on her back while the groceries launched into the frosty air. I now know I should have raced down there to see if she was OK, but my teenaged body was doubled over with laughter. I cried tears, which seemed to freeze pretty fast, but I did check to see if she moved. She got up slowly and started to rummage for the grocery shrapnel. I ducked in a driveway, still laughing, to continue to deliver the news (I was a dedicated “Herald boy”). When I next looked, she was gone. I figured she either limped into the house or she’d become an angel. I know you’re silently judging me, but hey, I was just a kid.
The next two summers I worked as a dishwasher in a gas station restaurant, with no real earth-shattering experiences, except getting yelled at by the older high school waitresses, for not being as fast as they wanted with the plates and cutlery. I also thought it was pretty crappy of them to be making out with their boyfriend visitors while I was working my butt off to get caught up.
Then I worked at a bottle depot as one of those guys who take in the bottles, count them up, get yelled at (again) if the customer thought he should have $1,000 for his bottles instead of the $29.50 my math came up with. Our bottle depot in Canmore was a Quonset-style building with a large front deck, where the customers would back up and unload their “treasures.”
One day turned out to be an easy one, as we had to shut down for a while. You see, while I was loading a bunch of cartons of bottles and cans onto a cart, I looked over at something I saw over my left shoulder. There, ambling toward me, and not too far away, was a very large, very furry black bear! I stood still for a bit, maybe longer than I should have, and then I slowly backed into the Quonset and closed the doors. Do you know what happened in 1975 when a kid calls Fish and Wildlife and the RCMP to report that there’s a big bear at the bottle depot? You’re right – nothing! No one raced out, no one even drove slowly over. My boss, a kind of crazy lady named Karen, thought I should go out and clear the deck of all the beer and pop cans on carts, because the smells were “probably attracting the bear.” She was usually pretty cool as a boss, so I asked her: “You do know I’m making $2 bucks an hour, right?” I did not have to go see Smoky after all. Smoky the Bear stuck around for a couple of hours, which cut down my shift, and then we watched him slowly amble away, looking back once. If I could’ve spoken “bear,” I would’ve thanked him for giving me a two-hour break!
When I turned 16, my friend Dave and I got jobs as janitors at the Banff Centre. My mom was a chambermaid and my dad was also a janitor there, but at a different building than me. It was a scorching hot day, and our new boss, Maurice, called Dave and me over about an hour and a half before quitting time. He said that he needed us to “take these two buckets of hot water and vinegar over to the new gallery.” Dave and I must’ve looked confused, because he told us the building had just been opened, and he needed us to use razor blades with our vinegar-water and scrape off all the paint flecks on the art studio’s windows. We quickly agreed, but when we were out of earshot, we did grumble about the heat and this task. Once we arrived at the studio deck, we understood just why Maurice sent us there. There behind the large studio windows was a row of nude female models being sketched. When you’re a 16-year-old boy and this happens, you start to believe in miracles! I thought we were pretty subtle about doing our job, but the Japanese instructor came out twice to ask us if we were sure we worked there. When we arrived back at the office at quitting time, Maurice greeted us with a huge smile. He asked if we “managed to get it all done?” I’m sure Dave and I must’ve been blushing, but this was definitely a “Dear Diary” moment!
(Random Thoughts is a slice of life humorous column that appears in the Strathmore Times, written by long-time resident, current mayor, husband, father and grandfather – Pat Fule. He is also a former town councillor, high school teacher and coach. If you would like to get in touch with Pat, you can send him an e-mail at Pat.fule@shaw.ca)