| OCR Text |
Show All the Variables & Other Love Stories 122 Eventually Greta goes back to sleep, pulling a double shift she won't get paid for. I lie wide awake, terrified I might dream about filling out another job application. Sometime during the night I get up to surf the internet and learn that in Minnesota it is illegal to cross county lines with a duck on your head. The next day my dad says I should go back to school. I tell him about Mart's brother. My dad dropped out of the eighth grade to work on a farm to help support his mom and four sisters. Today he makes nineteen dollars an hour as a steelworker. My last real job was working with him, out in the industrial park, laying rivets for jet-walks. He made me promise if he got me a job it wouldn't stop me from going back to school. I had worked there a year when I mentioned to him I'd like to get my CDL so I could learn to operate the forklift. The next day the foreman called me into his office and told me he had to fire me or else my dad would quit. When I asked Dad about it he said he couldn't stand watching me waste my life at a dead end job. So now I waste my life with no job. Dad says in some ways things are better these days, but in a lot of ways, they're worse. He's impressed Greta has sex with me outside of wedlock. Oscar Wilde- democracy is nothing more than the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people. Dad says America is the greatest country in the world. I tell him that's not enough. I start looking on the internet for revolution stories. The Spanish Revolution, Mexican Revolution, French Revolution, American Revolution. My new heroes are William Wallace and Pancho Villa. I know it doesn't matter. As soon as I get a job I'll be contented and won't think about it anymore. I explain it to Greta like this: I see myself as an invested and productive member of society. I repeatedly ask for employment, and, because of my unseemly honesty, I am |
