This Will Not Look Good On My Resume

excerpt from Ch. 1 – The Psych Halfway House

My first job was in an office. I hated it. No, that's not true. Actually, I liked the job. It was the people I hated. Thus from the start, I was destined for a long line of jobs in 'the people professions'.

Perhaps most notable of these was my job at 602, a residential program run by the Mental Health Association. Selected patients from the local psych hospital (those with potential!) were transferred, at some point in time, to 602 – so called because its address was 602 Bonkers Street – where the staff would teach the residents life skills, help them find a job and an apartment, and generally provide support during their transition from institutionalized living to independent living. (I highly recommend the program to those who work in an office.) I was hired as a relief worker and mostly covered the midnight shift. Which meant that I helped the residents make the transition from sleeping in a bed to sleeping in a bed.

Which was okay because I would've had trouble teaching life skills. How to buy groceries, how to keep track of your chequing account – these were adults we were dealing with, and I had neither the desire nor the need to infantalize them. After all, people who need people are, well, codependent.

Besides, you want life skills? Okay, how about how to deal with the recognition that you're never really going to amount to much. And how to be content nevertheless. And, yes, how to make foil headgear that is durable yet fashionable.

On my first midnight shift, I took Kessie with me, partly thinking of all those sweet and cuddly animal therapy programs, and partly thinking that if I dozed off, she'd be my alarm system, sure to wake up growling the second any crazy with a knife walked into the room. Turned out, she refused to go sleep. I stretched out on the couch and she sat on my head. All night. At full alert. Apparently ready to scream. The place scared her.

No wonder. All of my coworkers had previous experience with mental illness. First-hand. In fact, I think that was a prerequisite for obtaining a full-time position. A relapse seemed to be the prerequisite for promotion.

excerpt from Ch. 2 – The O & D

But that's just as well because the program pairing someone from the juvenile detention center with someone from the psych halfway house – 'Northerly Hills 602OD' – was pretty much a disaster. Rott (short for Rottweiler), a big kid with hair that was a cross between a Mohawk and an Afro, was a repeat offender for assorted assaults. Actually, one of these was against a coworker who, in a moment of canine confusion, called him Poo (short for Poodle). That was the first time. The second time happened when I dared said coworker to tie a pink ribbon in Rott's hair when he was asleep one night (we had to do bedchecks every half hour). Anyway, Rott was paired with Len, the most meek and mild of the 602s (whose diagnosis was not that of a personality disorder but that of no personality). The idea was that antagonism would be statistically impossible and hence another assault equally unlikely. Rott beat the crap out of Len at their first meeting. So he was then paired with George, who was not only physically intimidating, at 6'4" and 240 lbs, but also suffering from delusions of questionable grandeur – he thought he was Hulk Hogan. Rott beat the crap out of George too. (The upside is that George no longer believes he's Hulk Hogan.)

Read Chapter 2

excerpt from Ch. 3 – Maintenance

And then there was that trip to the dump. Jimmy, Jackie, and I were to make a garbage run. Not knowing how long the trip would be, I asked Jackie, who'd gotten into the front seat of the pick-up beside Jimmy, who was already at the wheel, if I could ride up front instead. "I'm very prone to motion sickness." It's true. Ask any one of eight airline attendants. And five train attendants. I even get nauseous working the microfiche machines in the library.

"Oh no, me too," she replied. She had a crush on Jimmy.

Well, the solution was obvious. "Jimmy, how about you sit in the back then and one of us'll drive." He glared at me. Then angrily started the pick-up, jerked it into reverse, and headed out to the road, spinning gravel and bumping recklessly over all the ruts. I guess I was staying in the back. My stomach lurched. What'd I say? I couldn't figure it out. Surely he knew I could drive; in fact, I was driving my van clear across the country 'bout the time Jimmy was just getting his license. Halfway to the dump, it dawned on me.

"Oh I get it!" I leaned forward into the front seat. "My truck is my penis!" And then I threw up.

Read Chapter 3

excerpt from Ch. 4 - The Business Program

      “A million bucks – that's what, thirty times what most people make in a year? There aren't enough hours in a day to have worked thirty times as long. And I can’t imagine anything that would be thirty times a hard. Would you have made a contribution to society thirty times as valuable? What's your big plan, are you going to manufacture the cure for AIDS? Build plants that can de-radiate nuclear waste?"

      Arnie snorted into his beer, and some of the bubbles went up his nose. "Beer straws!" he blurted when he had recovered. And Steve pulled a straw out of his pocket. A very fat straw.

      "The prototype," he said, sticking it into his mug, and draining it.

      "You get drunk faster," someone explained cheerily. Right. Of course. I got up to go shoot some pool.

      When I returned to the table, the discussion was about whether there were aliens walking among us. And if so, should we kill them.

      "I say kill the mother fuckers!"

      "Yeah. And ask questions later!"

      "But what if they're here to help us?"

      "Help us what? Do we look like we need help?"

      I almost sprayed my beer across the table on that one.

Read Chapter 4