And So It Goes

I don't know if I ever posted a photo of Dave's DILF (DAMN I LOVE FROGS) mug. Well, there it is in all it's glory. It's a nice mug. Dave likes to badger the little frogs who live around our house. (I think he needs to leave them alone.)

I'm continuing to dive into the trunk of old journals. This fell out of a journal I was keeping in 1989:   

That is not a high school report card, but one from the community college I was attending at the time. I was taking two classes, a creative writing class (for which I was getting a B) and intermediate algebra class (A). It's not in the photo, but it is noted on this form that the creative writing instructor was to give these out to students. (That also seems very high school to me, the paper "report card" being passed out by a homeroom teacher. By the time I finished university, all final grades were being posted online.) Anyway, I looked up both those instructors this morning. One died by suicide--self-inflicted gunshot outside a hospital--almost 23 years ago. The other died of cancer five years ago. 

On to happier times? Try this photo that also fell out of the same journal:

This is a group of women I worked with. We were all servers at JB's. The participants in this going-away party were (from left to right) Jennifer Brandt, Erika Schneider, Jill (whose last name I can't remember), me (in the white shirt with the big, black-framed glasses), and Alexis (I also can't remember her last name). Those are some peak 1980s haircuts, no? (Except for me, I guess. I never did get caught up in the big bang boom.) I was maybe seventeen in that photo and probably drinking and/or drunk. Those are big words for a seventeen year old, right? You have to remember that I had graduated from high school the year before and was working, going to community college, and supporting myself financially. My parents were long out of the picture by then. David and I had been living together for about three years in an apartment we rented near the university.

I just now looked up Jennifer Brandt. She apparently had a problem with addiction and died, likely by suicide or overdose, in 2011.  I lost track of Erika after she left to go to college in Colorado (?) but I knew her mother and worked with her for several years. I went to Erika's wedding--maybe twenty-five or thirty years ago?--and that was one of the last times I saw her. Jill and Alexis I never really knew outside of work.

Jeez. 

From a slightly earlier journal, a list of my favorite poems: 

I was sixteen, almost seventeen when I wrote that. There are some pretty heavy hitters on that list. I was pretty goddamn well read for a poor brown kid from the wrong side of the tracks.

Anyway, here's one more blast from the past, maybe a laugh this time? This is a card of specials from the first restaurant (Goody's--thankfully, long gone) I waitressed in after graduating from high school.

Goody's was owned by a Greek man, Tony Kirikos (I think) who was a real miser. He would come in for lunch every day and if you waited on him, he would tip fifty cents. If he didn't have two quarters, he would give you a dollar and ask for change. Cheap jerk. I worked there for a year before jumping ship to JB's to work with Dave and my brother.