Mexico. Oman. Norwa—no! N...n...Niger. Good. Russia. No!
The country name game was supposed to keep my mind off the frigid winds howling around my ears as I stood on a corner next to an on-ramp to Route 33. It proved counter effective whenever I came up with a cold country. I struggled to stay equatorial, or at least temperate, but whenever I stumbled onto a Greenland or Ukraine it felt like the air nipped at my curled fingers a little more aggressively, like a friend's pet hamster when you were just trying to feed it a cookie crumb. And then you're mad at the hamster, but there's nothing you can do about it; it's just nature.
Being a professional sign waver in the middle of January (a vocation known more colloquially as “a shitty job”) requires a great capacity for mental escapism. Lord knows the thought of the seven bucks an hour I was earning wasn't going to keep me warm, so I did my very best to make believe I was anything other than a degraded, shivering, pathetic-looking undergraduate wage slave. I tried to take pride in what I was doing: I imagined I was a gallant standard bearer, overlooking not a slush-covered thoroughfare next to a Bob Evans but a war-torn battlefield next to a Valley Forge.
And the rocket's red glare
The bombs bursting in air
Gave proof through the night
That Goody's was having a going-out-of-business sale and everything in the store was 30-60 percent off
My mind eventually drifted to less fanciful thoughts. Like how as much as I pitied myself, I was making more than the workers at Goody's were about to. I mused on the irony of the situation, that my economic plight led me to a job where I advertised others' economic plight. I felt like a burn victim arsonist.
And really, I had no right to complain. Even as I stood there that day, I watched a crew of city workers shovel out a sidewalk across the street. Icicle-laden pickups sped by, kicking up slush the color of moldy onions. Where were they hurrying off to, I wondered? From out the passenger's side window of a Ford F-250 two foil packages flew with a cranky but well-meaning admonishment: “Next time dress for winter!”
As I examined my recently obtained “Toasty-Toes” foot warmers, I thought about that charitable stranger, and what she would have needed them for. It made me realize, as I have several times a day for the four weeks I've been in Athens, that there's a lot I don't know about this town. Since I got here, I've worked in a campus dining hall, a car wash, as a personal aide to a man living in the oldest house in Athens, and, least illustriously, as a sign waver. I've had opportunities to interact with a lot of fascinating people, and every one of them has had something to say about what it's like to live and work here. But it's only my first month. I can only imagine the vast sea of stories begging to be told. I would like to record these stories, and through them maybe paint a broader picture of what it means to be a working stiff in the incredible, complex, diamond in the rough that is Athens, Ohio.
At the very least, I figure, it beats the country name game.
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