Surfing Ruined My Life

I don’t really know where to begin, truth be told I should really begin with the miserable day on which I was born at 12:03 am in the middle of one of the worst ice storms in New York history.  Not to mention the fact that I was born a few weeks prematurely, came out yellow and spent around 2 weeks in an incubator with doctors giving me 50/50 odds of survival.

My birth pretty much set the tone for the course of my entire life.  No matter what was going to be on offer to me it was going to come at a struggle and then be more of a kick in the ass rather then a desired and many of time expected reward.  Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know the many moments of purely stupid adversity that seem to plague every up cycle in my life.

My birth is a perfect example.  Here is life kid welcome to the world, now you have to fight for your vestige.  We can go back to the age old shell incident of which I have reminisced on here since the very beginning.  I was 5 and at the beach with both my Mother and Grandmother.  We had the best day ever.  The weather was nice, I played in the shore break and built sandcastles.  The kicker of the whole day was that I collected these two pails full of wonderful shells (they were probably just clam shells, but at the time they could have been the most rare shell in existence to me).

I was so proud of those shells.  The day came to an end, as the three of us made our way back to the car these two guys maybe in their late teens, early twenties came charging our way.  They ran right into me close lining me face down onto the pavement.  I fell, scrapped both my knees and my two pails of shells were spilled out all over the sidewalk broken into a million pieces.  It was right then and there at the tender age of five I learned the world was going to be full of heart ache and despair and no matter how hard I tried I was going to get fucked in the denouement.

Despite this cruel hard lesson I constantly forget how fucked the world can be to its people.  Enough living in the past and back to my being Angry!!!! But Im worse then angry, no, I feel…….Beaten.  Ralph Ellison wrote a masterpiece of a novel called The Invisible Man.  Basically its about this black guy who every time he is given an opportunity to shine it always turns out to be for a false pretense and instead of it being his moment of glory becomes utter humiliation and ruin.  I wont go into any more detail of the novel, but will say that it is definitely worth a read.

I read it in high school and to this day I think it is one of the more powerful works I have ever read.  What am I blabbering about?  Don’t worry I got a few good old fashioned Lisanti rants for you except at the moment instead of feeding me with anger power persevere they are practically bringing me to my knees.

It all started with scoring this new cook job at the Westmont College (if your lost you can check it out here: https://surfingruinedmylife.net/2010/09/02/the-apprenticeship/).  Basic gist of it is I was offered a position that was suppose to allow me to better my situation in life and was amped on it.  Sure it cut into my surf time and is a ton of really hard work.  I have never been averse to working hard and as a matter of fact get some satisfaction out of it.

Pretty much as soon as I quit the gas station and started this new job of course my car decides to take a shit on me leaving me in a bit of a desperate situation.  I figured it would be all right.  I would just bring it back to the station I worked at for the last two years, where I never missed a day of work and keep the place in tip top shape.  When I called my old boss to see if they could help me out, now mind you I was not looking to get a bro deal or any thing just get my car fixed by someone I knew to be honest, he told me to basically go fuck myself and he would not work on my car because I quit.

That in my opinion was the biggest bullshit ever.  Here I am trying to make my way in the world like everyone else and had an opportunity to make more money and set myself up a little better in life.  Its not like I left them with out an option.  I asked for a $1 raise an hour.  If they would have met that or even made some type of counter offer I would have probably stayed, but I was turned down flat out.  It cant get much more insulting then that.  I was there for two years and never got a raise or anything.

Whatever my old boss wants to be a fucking cunt about the whole thing that’s his problem. The funny thing was I thought we were friends him and I, but I guess not.  As usual his good nature toward me turned out to be like many others who have passed through my life, as soon as being my friend was no longer advantageous then I had no more use and thus passed out of his realm of posterity.  Its all good because I know 20 years from know that toothless moron will still be working at that gas station living in a trailer, smoking pot and drinking a 12 pack every single night after work, while some one else gets rich off his efforts, meanwhile I will look down upon him with pity.

Long story short (yeah like that is not a crock of shit) I ended up bringing my car to some place I picked out of the phone book because in the words of Nick the Kook upon picking a dentist after losing his teeth in a freak piggy back ride accident, “they looked like they knew their shit from their ad”.  My car got fixed but I am definitely sure they charged me for some unnecessary work, but my lack of automobile mechanic knowledge was too limited to know the difference.  700 bucks later I have a car that runs and no more money.

My car is finally running fine and with my new job I should have no problem recouping the cash right?  Wrong! Work has been rather tough and stressful.  I have kitchen experience but I have never worked in a kitchen as vast and dynamic as the one I am in now.  Although I am starting to feel my “sea legs” so to speak I feel that my boss is not pleased with me.  Its not just a feeling, he pretty much lets me know that everything I do is sub par all the time and that if I don’t shape up Im on my ass.  At the same time no one shows me how to do anything and Im just told do this and left to figure it out on my own.

Then if it turns out wrong Im yelled at for not asking, if I ask Im yelled at for not knowing.  It’s a catch 22.  Nothing I do is fast enough.  Im getting there, shit I even come home and practice cutting vegetables.  I will be good at this but I don’t know if I will be allowed the sufficient time.  Meanwhile Im a basket case every single day worried about what I will do if I lose this job since I quit my other job, which was one of the easiest jobs I had ever worked.  I don’t really want to look for new work, nor am I in the financial situation too.

To make matters worse rumor around the kitchen has it that my boss wants me to take over the pizza station.  First off I don’t want to work in pizza I did that for 5 years and know it inside out.  I took this job to gain cook experience.  Second the hours are horrid garnishing me to work 8am-4: 30pm Monday-Friday.  Im barely surfing as it is working 11am-8pm but with this new schedule I might as well just sell all my surfboards and spend my evenings drinking beer, getting fat and watching the boob tube.

I mean weekends off suck all that means is crowds everywhere I chose to go and at 4:30 its all blown out, crowded and in the winter time dark.   Fuck my life.  Nothing is official yet but I heard it from a few people now this weekend and Im sure tomorrow my boss is going to throw me under the gauntlet with the bad news.  Looks like Im going to have to find me a new job….AGAIN!!!!!

I should have never left my old job.  I should have known it was too good to be true that someone would give me a shot a something great.  It was all a lie.  Lets make Chris jump through a few more hopes and then when he thinks he is headed for a big finish we will take out his knees thus allowing him to fall flat on his face.  TWO STEPS FORWARD AND 15 STEPS BACK MY FRIENDS. Maybe I should have been born with no legs or arms like that dude from that video I posed in my “Keep Keeping On” Blog?  Things seem to have worked out well for him.  Oh, wait; I forgot, HE HAS NO FUCKING LEGS AND NO FUCKING ARMS.

I Think the picture says it all folks.