Maybe it’s because tomorrow will be the first day in three years I’ve had a “first day of class.”

Maybe it’s because starting tomorrow, my schedule will be jam-packed with work, studying, school, packing sleep, free-time, errands and chores into small short periods of time.

Maybe it’s because I’m nervous about being the “old man” in classes filled with young’uns.

I’m sure I’m being at least a little irrational.

I’m sure that I’ll feel better as the classes get going and I get back into my groove.

I’m sure that daaaaamit, I want a beer.

Oh. Also?

I have $12 in my wallet and I don’t work again until Wednesday. I’ve got $40 in my checking account, and gas authorizations from today and Saturday for $35ish waiting to process. Flat. Fucking. Broke. Oh, and car & renter’s insurance going through Friday and rent due by next Tuesday. This is going to be a week of surviving on saltines and tap water.

I’m watching a YouTube video linked to by Andrew Sullivan, and all I’m thinking as I’m watching it is …

“Hey, look, I’m watching a guy who was buried a mile up the road from me.”

Since Ogre is a former employee of the Franchise, I don’t feel I’m violating my agreement with Greg by writing about his attempt to return to work and how he caused it to fail miserably.

Ogre’s been working at a big-box retailer in Lutherville for several months now. I don’t know if he’s any good at it or not, but he’s kept in touch with Greg, and apparently things were in motion to bring him back as a part-time driver/insider a few nights a week.

Greg spoke to Ogre on the phone and they arranged a time for Ogre to stop into the store for a uniform shirt and to finalize scheduling and the like. Greg checked the computer and noted to Ogre over the phone that his compensation — which had been $5.75 an hour and eighty-cents mileage — had been upped to $6.15 with a dollar mileage compensation.

Ogre showed to the store, and they worked out scheduling. Then it got busy and Greg, the day driver, was on the road for three hours. He was surprised to come back to find Ogre still in the store. I don’t know why he was so surprised — anyone who has had the pleasure to work with Ogre knows that even after working a long, stressful, demanding three hour shift whining to go home, he’d still stick around for several hours being annoying. Greg said to Ogre, “Why are you still here?”

Ogre told Greg he wanted to discuss pay.

Greg told him there was nothing to discuss — his pay was forty-cents higher than it had been, and his mileage was twenty-cents higher. End of story.

Ogre told Greg he felt he was owed more, and that his compensation should be closer to what Chewbacca and I make (Chewbacca makes more than me, but we’re the two highest-paid driving employees in the store, not counting Greg, who doesn’t count because he only drives when no one else is available).

Greg, bless his blackened shriveled heart, laughed and told Ogre no. I was particularly warmed when Greg told me his response when Ogre argued that I was a self-serving asshole at work. “True,” Greg replied, “But he’s a great driver, which usually makes up for his other faults.”

And then Greg, thankfully, gave Ogre his marching papers. “Maybe it’s a good thing if you don’t come back, Ogre. You don’t work here and you’re already getting under my skin.”

***

Greg asked me today “Do you think Mel Gibson hates the month of July?” placing particular emphasis on the pronunciation of “u.”

When I show up at your house with a pizza, and your dogs — four of ‘em — walk with me to the door, and the first thing that comes to your mind to inquire of me, beyond, “How much is it?” or “Hey, that was fast!” is “Did the little one bite you?”, you might want to consider — consider — locking your apparently bite-happy dog (because why else would you have asked while checking out my legs for blood?) in the basement or chaining them up in the backyard.

I like to read.

I like to read a lot.

“Voraciously devouring books of every size on every subject matter”, a quote I think I may possible have paraphrased from someone I don’t remember, sums up my reading habits. Winston Churchill biographies? Fiction about Austrian leftist terrorists living in hotels? Stories of the Royal Navy? Science-Fiction novel utilizing no articles? Yep. I’ll read it.

One of my learning-impaired coworkers asked me the other day, as I sat in the back of the store with nothing else to do, “voraciously devouring” a book (The World According to Garp, if you care), “Do you feel smarter when you read?”

I didn’t really know how to respond to him.

Apparently, for those of the human race not raised to appreciate the written word as a form of escapism at the very least on the same level of the computer, game-system, or television, reading is something to be done only by the snobby intellectuals, only in relation to learning and schooling, and never for fun.

I remember, when I was a kid, my Dad used to read to me every night before I went to sleep. That’s how I was introduced to C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books and Lloyd Alexander’s novels set in the fictional — albeit modeled on Wales — Prydain. A chapter a night, until each book and saga was finished.

I remember also, one of the older neighborhood kids reading to me, something stupid — a novelization of a Transformers episode maybe, and I remember something clicking inside of me that, “Hey, if he can do this, why can’t I?” And I remember being excited that I would be able to unlock the exciting stories within all of the books in the house as soon as I learned to read.

Reading has never lost its magic with me. Money, cars, whatever — the most precious gift any parent can give to their child is a love of the written word. (Thanks, parents).