EWA In Stanley’s mind, work was life

EWA In Stanley’s mind, work was life

EWA 206Prof.

L. Wilson435 Oneida Hallx3928aDamn it, was about all that Stanley could think. It was his first day at work at Holiday Lanes Family Recreation Center, and he was so stoned that he forgot to take his shower. He was running fifteen minutes late and hell, nothing but red traffic lights.Stanley was wondering why in the hell he had taken a third job, but then he realized that the money was more important than the aggravation, and that he would never have accepted this job if his friend Kyle had not asked him. Looking aloof, Stanley drove on.

Stanley was aloof for many reasons. Even as Stanley entered the parking lot of his new employer, he thought that this was probably the worst mistake that he could have made. Stanley already was employed as a cashier at Butchered Prices town market, and constructed buildings for a general contractor. As a sum of all this, Stanley’s life sucked. He worked from dusk until dawn, stopping only to smoke a cigarette or a joint, (although Stan felt he smoked too much of both.) With this third job now beginning, his prospects seemed nothing but grim. In Stanley’s mind, work was life and life was hard, so this is how work must be.

He hated this thought, and therefore his own existence, which was his mind-set as he entered the doors of Holiday Lanes Family Recreation Center.Once inside, Stanley immediately asked the small, sheepish figure behind the shoe rental counter where Kyle was, and was given the response “Dunno.” Dunno, What an asshole, Stanley thought to himself. Giving up all hope on the worthless shoe rental man, Stanley decided to go to the manager’s office, hoping to see his new boss and therefore finding Kyle. Again, his presumptions were wrong. The manager’s door was locked and a note attached to it: Gone fishing..

.You’ll never find me. Stanley found this particularly annoying, but was determined to get somewhere. He saw a sign on the door behind the lanes Employees Only, and decided to proceed, since he now had employee status. As he entered the rear of the bowling alley, he noticed two paramedics run by with a stretcher.

Stanley presumed, naturally, that the events to come could bear nothing better than a bad connotation. Proceeding farther into the corridor, Stanley saw his new boss Mike, who had his name written in large white letters above the word Staff on his shirt, had fallen into the pin-chasing machine and amputated his legs. Mike, who owned the bowling alley with his wife Donna, was in St. Mary’s intensive care unit. Prosthetic limbs were quite helpful, but Mike was still in need of months of physical therapy. He and Donna spent all of their time in the hospital together. Kyle and Stan began to run the bowling alley, with another man named Pat.

Pat was a college drop-out, about 24 years of age. His only flaws were that he needed to get laid, quit drinking, and quit gambling, because at work, he had the maturity of an infant. Kyle, who was always complaining about how overworked he was, and how hard he worked while being overworked, began to relax. Most of the working days were spent joking around between the employees, and committing such acts of stupidity that many of the customers bitched. Stanley felt right at home.

With the new circumstances that had arisen, Stanley began to wonder how he was getting paid for working at Holiday Lanes. He had nothing but fun there, and the work was not even that hard. He would cook things that were done in 6 minutes at the most, and clean up quickly after the order, so he had alot of free time. If he was really bored, he would help Kyle and Pat put bumpers on the lanes to prevent young children from getting “gutter-balls,” which always made young customers happy. Stan would frequently eat more food than the customers bought, and since it didn’t show up on the register, Mike and Donna were losing money. Stan also stole money from the register The “No Sale” button was set so that the drawer would open upon pressing it, no questions asked, no record of how many “No-Sales.

” Stan would simply put customers money in the drawer, write their order down, and count his drawer out to $200.00 each night. He would simply look at the closing report, take the cash from count out, pay the closing report to the safe, and magically have $100.00 to spend for free. At the time, free food, free money, and paycheck at the end of the week was a dream-come-true for Stan.It was the end of the summer, and Stan was working full blast at his three jobs. Sometimes as much as sixty hours a week.

The only bitch about all of this was that he was working at three different locations, so he got zero overtime. Looking at Kyle who worked 50 hours at Holiday Lanes, and 20 at his other job, made Stan very envious. Kyle was Stan’s best friend however, so he did not get too jealous. He simply wondered when all of the physical labor and working for a living would end.6 Stan’s friends were just as bored as he was. Most of them didn’t work, and the main pastime that seemed most amusing to all was smoking weed.

If you asked Stan or any one of them, they would say that no addictions are associated with marijuana, and that they certainly were not addicted. The truth, on the other hand, was far the opposite. These people would spend $500.00 a week between the four of them on marijuana, and smoke it like it was their lifeline. Most borrowed money from their parents, others spend most or all of their paychecks on marijuana. As far as any of them were concerned, some of their best investments in life had been weed purchases.

Stan was not as enthusiastic about marijuana, but he certainly played his role in the scheme of things. He found it utterly amazing that all of the money that he made, all of those hard earned dollars, all of that stolen cash, all went into a green plant that he ignited, inhaled, and made him feel king of funny. Stan found it not just humorous, but fun, and was usually stoned whenever his eyes were open. In the midst of hard work and clouds of smoke, Stan’s life was about to radically change.; It was about early November, Halloween had just past, and Stan was approaching his twenty-first birthday. All this meant to him really was that he didn’t have to drive a friend to the store to buy beer. It was too late for college, he failed out two years ago, so all he had was his weed and his work.

His car was shitty, his friends were flunking out of school left and right, and he hadn’t got laid in two years. He was praying that he would win the lottery, be offered a better job somewhere, just anything that would improve his social and economic standing. Fate only indicated that nothing would happen very soon.

One day while working at Butchered Prices, Stan felt lucky and bought a lottery ticket, one of those scratch off ones. Stan almost pissed himself when he saw that he won twenty dollars, and immediately called his drug dealer. He again almost pissed himself to find him home and in business. Stan punched-out of work, got in his car, and tore-ass to Ronnie McDavis’s house.When Stan arrived at Ronnie’s house, he saw the wonderful beast of a dog that Ronnie and his grotesquely fat wife Angela raised. The dos was about as obese as Angela was, but with more manners. Stan knocked on the door, and heard the infamous, rude, “Come the fuck in!” Ronnie was a drug dealer.

Nothing more, sometimes less. He had his arm and hip blown up in Vietnam, but recovered very well. The doctors replaced his shattered bones with metal ones, which proved to be much stronger. Ron was a very muscular, thin man, and the operations made him loose none of his physique. He was usually seen with no shirt on, mostly on a roller under the frame of a car, performing repairs. He always had pot though. This day, Stan needed a large amount, more than usual, since he was getting some for a friend.

A quarter pound to be exact. The street price for that is quite high, usually around $300.00, but Ron sold them for $275.00. Stan put in his request, was given careful service, and proceeded to head home.As he pulled out of Ronnie’s driveway, he proceeded to fill his pipe with marijuana. After doing so, he hit the gas and lit the pipe.

Suddenly, a large pile of burning embers fell out of his pipe and onto the crotch area of his pants. He quickly tried to smush and brush the burning red coal off of his pants, and momentarily took his eyes off of the road. The road was particularly wet, so when Stan finally realized that while he was solving the burning family jewels problem he had veered into the deep shoulder. He tried to pull himself back onto the road to avoid crashing into a ditch, but the slippery pavement and wet mud caused his car to begin to “fishtail.” He panicked and hit the brakes, which sent the car spinning in circles off the road, into the trees, and down a hill before coming to rest in a riverbed.

bWhen Stan woke up in the hospital, he was very groggy, like he had been drugged. He inspected his body, to find that he was basically unhurt. He looked around the room, and noticed his parents, his sister, and two police officers. His parents, glad to see Stan awake, rushed to his side, and hugged him. They whispered into his ear that the police had found his car after seeing the path of rubble through the trees where he crashed. They also found the pot. His parents kissed him, wished him luck, and left the room.

The police officers approached Stan, placed him under arrest for felony charges for possession of two, one-eighth pound bags of marijuana, with the intent to distribute. When Stan’s doctors released him, he would immediately be jailed, and put on trial.Stan was not very pleased. Not only was he in jail, but he didn’t have the bond money so that he could at least be home until his trial. His parents didn’t have it either.

Some of the people that were in the correctional facility with Stan were scary fuckers. People that appeared to be the horrid portrait of the rapist homosexual that will purposely drop his soap. Stan kept himself low- key at all times, trying not to be noticed, heard, or especially felt. As Stan thought to himself, he realized that this was no surprising event, since things had been going so well for so long, something had to fuck-up sooner or later. The fuck-up was far from being done, as Stan would soon see.

Stan was racist. He admitted it freely. In the first high school he went to, there was one black kid that everyone called “Chu,” who transferred schools after one year. His entire hometown was racist. Stan was in the worst position he could have been in, since half of the prison members were black.

Stan found himself in deep trouble one day when a black inmate approached him at meal time, and started giving him shit. Being a bold individual, Stan began to throw racist slurs at the black man, and throw his meal-tray at him. It hit him directly in the face, which obviously pissed him off. The black man sprung across the table, punched Stan directly in the face breaking his nose, and began to literally kick the shit out of Stan. Many of the black inmates began to help the first, and Stan was getting crushed. After about twenty seconds, he had sustained a broken nose from the first black man, a broken arm from being slammed into the floor and kicked repeatedly, and multiple facial fractures.

The blood was gushing from his eyes, so he could hardly see. In a final act of stupidity, Stan screamed “FUCKING NIGGERS,” and was immediately punched in the throat, his trachea and esophagus crushed. He died minutes later.’Stan awoke. He was naked. He was pale. He had a very intense headache and multiple bruises all over his body.

Worse than this, he had no idea where the hell he was. There were no walls, no furniture, no people, no houses, no sky, no floor, nothing but blue. He would walk, but with no floor, he didn’t appear to get anywhere. He jumped, but didn’t seem to gain height.

He had no frames of reference. He had no one to talk to, or even ask what the hell was going on. There was no time, no clock, no sun to even differentiate night from day.

He was very clueless as to if he were in heaven or in hell (his instincts chose the latter.)Even if this were heaven, it was hell to Stan.He was not floating, because he could feel his weight on the bottom of his feet, but his equilibrium was becoming very fucked up. He began to feel queazy, dizzy, and eventually like he was going to pass out. Everything turned white, he fell down onto the translucent, blue surface. His skin began to burn.

He stopped breathing, and without oxygen, his brain exploded. His last vision was nothing. A quiet, black nothing which enveloped his consciousness and eventually shut his brain down. The scary part of this all was that Stan could see all of this happening: his flesh falling off, his skin burning, all of it. He was watching his own decent into hell. He accomplished nothing in his life, no good job, no good wife, no good house or car. It wasn’t even from the weed.

It was because he didn’t care. These days, does anyone?