Kansas Ain’t Shit

Noticed an awful lot of “I hate my job...but I’m thankful to be employed” posts this year. Maybe they’ve always been there, but this year I noticed them because I posted something similar. In my younger years I didn’t split hairs over bouncing on a job that made my panties bunch & kept my brows furrowed like Oscar the Grouch. Before taking on a classroom, the place I worked was causing me nightmare’s where I actually murdered my supervisor. I knew I’d stayed a week too long and started plotting my escape. If I didn’t get plucked by a school of MY choosing I was prepared to go work at a gym so that I could at least have the benefit of keeping my body together while pulling in the small bucks until I landed the classroom of MY choosing. I never feigned thanks for being allowed to stay someplace I had no desire to go and counted down the seconds to clock-out while I was there. And then entered my career.

There’s some sad transition towards responsibility that happens as adulthood extends itself before you like the road to OZ. Some equate OZ with heaven, expecting to rest when they meet their maker. Well, no disrespect to the Creator, but my direct makers are my parents and I’ve met them, so I need a different kind of carrot dangled before me to spend all my time fighting wicked witches and rescuing a cast of characters with problems bigger than mine. I am not a social worker. I blame adulthood only partially. The rest of this fear of bouncing on plantation pay is credited to those who rolled our economy up and smoked it--our share anyway--and skated away with hundreds of millions of dollars as a reward. Here I’m left with my comma and 3 zeros that I have to clutch tightly like Big Mama to her pockee (sp intentional) book.

Instead of treasuring the reality of employment, versus the system by which I’m actually employed, I’d rather be treasuring the available room to chase those Ruby slippers. My dreams are bigger than Kansas (who the hell wants to go there?) and I need not to be wasting time kicking and screaming through the poppy fields and winged monkeys sent after me by the place I’m so “thankful” to have the privilege to be disrespected at 5 out of 7 days a week. Some would say I shouldn’t complain, ‘cuz I’ve got those summers off. Well, they’re spent in recovery so I can go back and be “thankful” some more for all the free abuse being handed out. Do you see my watermelon-sized smile? Are my teeth bright enough for you?

Until I figure out how to successfully make this transition--and by successful I mean still being able to eat and illuminate with electricity over candles--I’ll continue to step and fetch like the rest so my comma and 3 zeros can keep making their direct-deposited way into my account.

Respect to those friends & family who are managing to eat off their dreams. You’re my inspiration.

Watch me move.