Without food and water, the little bird’s fate was inevitable

Published May 02. 2016 9:22AM

 

I was the first to hear him chirping high up in the rafters at work. His outside peeping sounds, mixing inside with canned music and business announcements, were nice. At first we didn’t see the little guy, we just heard him. Then I spotted him flying from I-beam to I-beam. Intermittently he’d land on fixtures and pause motionless, just long enough to look as if he were part of a display and for sale. It’s common to see a bird inside a big building like Home Depot and BJs, but in our store, unusual.

 

A couple of years ago we did have a baby seagull walk through the in-door, and after a stroll up and down a couple of aisles, he calmly walked right out the out-door. But on the day I discovered our little bird, trapped inside and chirping at us to help him, it was heartbreaking. I knew, without food and water he was going to die. I kept telling myself he’d find his way out somehow, even though I knew it was unlikely. The store got busy and after a long day, I went home for a three day weekend and forgot about the bird.

The following Monday I went to work with nothing but the tasks at hand on my mind and there in my department, perching proud on top of a sign, was the little bird. Astounded that he was still alive and appalled and feeling guilty that I had forgotten about him, I got a bowl of water and a bag of wheat-chips from the vending machine in the employee lounge. Placing them at the top of the highest empty fixture, I hoped he’d find them before the store opened in two hours and I’d have to put them away. The little guy was skittish, he never found the food and water.

Years ago, in an East Lyme apartment, when my husband and I removed the fire screen from our woodstove to clean out cold ashes, a bird flew into the room. Because the stove pipe vented directly to the outside it wasn’t unusual during warmer months for a bird to flutter down the pipe and end up staring at us from inside the screen.

We spent over an hour trying to catch the terrified bird. We tried everything from using a broom to shoo him toward the door, to scooping with a long handled fish net. Finally I found a piece of decorative netting and tossed it like a Third World fishermen casting a net. Got ‘em.

The terrified little bird’s heart raced against my palms as I took him to the open slider by the deck. Triumphantly I opened my hands while gently tossing the scared little guy to freedom. He flapped up against the overhang of the deck and flew right back into the apartment. It took us another 15 minutes, and few more casts, to catch him again.

There would be no net casting for our little friend high in the rafters of the store. If he didn’t eat and drink we all knew he’d die. Once the store opened I removed the food and water. With a handful of crumbled chips I made a Hansel and Gretel crumb trail leading out the automatic in-and-out doors which we paused open. Customers were coming and going so for our little bird to find the food, and be lured outside by our cleverness, we figured it was pretty unlikely.

Ten minutes later I announced over the loud speakers to concerned customers and staff, “Elvis has left the building.”
Cheers echoed in the rafters.

Only a synapse keeps our memories close

Published April 18. 2016

A couple of evenings ago I had one of “those-nights.” You know the kind. You wake up after a few hours of having had just enough sleep to take the edge off your tired and then its eyes wide open and mind racing.

Was the coffee pot set to the right brew time? Did I turn the heat down and lock the front door? Did I pay the cable bill, will it be snowing when I take the dog out, what about global warming, do we have enough milk for coffee and will the Republicans win the next election?

For 45 minutes I lay there telling myself how tired I was going to be if I didn’t fall back to sleep, soon. So I quietly got up, didn’t want to interrupt my husband’s gentle snoring, and turned on the TV.
Really, really late TV is an odd mix of self-help, food prep and murder. For three easy payments of $129.99 I could purchase a machine that would tone my butt and flatten my tummy. Switch channels and for the same payment plan I could receive an amazing countertop cooker that does everything from roast chicken and dry fruit, to probably wash my dishes and do my taxes. And there was a creepy episode of Investigative ID. That night I wasn’t into a late night viewing of how victims become victims and why perpetrators become perpetrators. So I continued to flip through the stations until I happened upon a program about memory.

I always thought that our memories are like a huge library, checking in and storing volumes of reminiscences, some readily accessible and some not quite. The not so important ones I thought are stored way back in the corners, where it’s dark, dusty, like piles of old magazines half rotten and forgotten.

“Not so,” the program said. (If I remember correctly.) The shelves are certainly full and the memories in place, it’s the pathways to them, the synapses, which are lacking.

While my digital clock flashed numbers beginning with three, I was hoping to learn why I can so easily recall almost every minute of November 22, 1963, during algebra, the last class of my school day. I remember almost all interactions with fellow students, teachers and with the bus drivers who had radios blaring out their open doors so we could hear the awful news. And yet, unless there are leftovers, I can’t remember what I had for dinner last night. The program outlined why.

The significance of recalling a traumatic national event builds strong pathways, because we revisit it so often. Each time I think about JFK’s assassination, new synapses grow, like add-ons, to reinforce and amplify the experience. It’s the same with significant events in our own lives like births, deaths, accidents, a new home, new puppy, new car and the awful case of the flu I had over 35 years ago which got me to quit smoking.

The program went on to explain how the frequent recalling of certain memories tends to actually build new memories, real or not, among the old. Which means my first kiss, with tall, dark and handsome Jack, while skating on a frozen pond in New Jersey, surrounded by a romantic crystallized wonderland of ice covered branches, was actually an awkward lip-smack while walking on frozen swamp ice in the backyard, with Jack, the pimply faced kid next door.

Memory is funny that way, it can romanticize or negate what actually happened. Don’t take my word for it though, it was late and I was getting sleepy again. Oh yeah, meatloaf, we had meatloaf.

Even if up late, Carolynn never needs an alarm clock to wake up on time. You can reach her at cp.enoughsaid@aol.com

I am retail

Published February 29. 2016 9:09AM 

I used to be embarrassed to tell people what I do. It’s a dead-end low paying job, I thought. You don’t need an expensive college education to do it, you don’t need higher education at all. My job necessitates long hours on my feet, if I am lucky enough to get long hours. I work nights, weekends and most holidays. I am treated as if I only matter in terms of someone else’s needs, and even if I am right, I am always wrong.
I am retail.

I am the face of every aspect of your life. I clothe you and your family and I enhance your home, I even run your home. You cannot live without me. For those of you who doubt my place in the food chain of life, I stock the food chain.
I am retail.
I am the dress you wore to your sister’s wedding and the suit you wore to your last job interview. I am the furniture you sit on and the sheets and blankets on your bed. I am your bed. I am the food on your plate and the plate. I am the towels hanging on the bar in your bathroom. I am the bar. I am your Huggies, your Kleenex and your Scotts. Like I said, you cannot live without me.
I am retail.
Who else am I?
Many decades ago, between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I took a temporary job in retail. I’m still working in that temporary job and I love it. I’ve worked in linens, clothing, table top, cooking, bedding, food and pets. I’ve sold craft supplies, furniture, antiques and art. I have owned two retail businesses and a small manufacturing company. And I’d still be running those businesses if economics, illness and life allowed it.
From behind the counter and the desk, I’ve watched the American buying public change from interesting, honest and kind to over-rushed blurs who pay with plastic and sign by scribble. To them I am a faceless entity whose only task during the working day is to fulfill their needs. And that’s okay because that’s what I am paid to do.

On behalf of my fellow retail workers, let me say we are more than a name badge pinned to colorful aprons or matching shirts. We are just like you.
I have a wonderful family, live in a beautiful home and drive an awesome car. My children have college degrees, as does my husband. I would also have a fancy framed certificate except that the back half of my college education was spent in Africa. That was an education onto itself. I am more than what you think I am, if you think of me at all.
I am retail.
When you walk into a store consider who folded the sweaters, shirts and pants so neatly stacked on the table in front of you. We did that after they were left in a pile, again. The clothes perfectly hung on the hangers, we zipped, buttoned and hung them after someone left them on the floor in the dressing room, again.
Wait, you say. I don’t need you. I can walk into a big box food and clothing, grab a shopping cart, fill it, and self-ring my purchase.
Who dragged those carts into the store because they were left in the parking lot, again? Who unpacked and processed those items which filled your cart? Who ticketed them and put them on the shelf? You cannot live without our drugs, appliances, household goods and yard supplies. We are your computer, paper and printer. We are your phone. Do you hear us now?
We are retail.
We are proud.
 

Clueless about memorable icons, theirs and mine

Published February 4, 2016

 

At work one day, I expressed to a coworker my frustration of being bombarded by customers with half a dozen very different questions in less than five minutes. Unrelated to my tasks, the subjects, in part, ranged from, “Where’s the ladies room,” (twice) to “How do I get to I95 south,” to “Do you deliver?” I answered, back and to the left, you can’t there from here and yes, no, sort-of.

So I said to my co-worker, “What do I look like the Shell Answer Man?”

“The Shell Who?” she said.

The woman was in her thirties and did not know who the Shell Answer Man was. I felt old.
So I asked her, “Are you familiar with the Marlboro Man?” She shook her head. I changed the subject.

I find it interesting that I am more than twice the age of a human being who does not remember some of the most iconic advertising characters I grew up with. Because today, most gasoline ads are about energy saving, not dollar saving, who needs a Shell Answer Man anyway. And it’s understandable that someone old enough to be the parent of my grandchild might only know who the Marlboro Man was because of anti-smoking campaigns. After all, cigarette advertising on TV and radio was banned in 1971 due to the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act.

But what about the phrases that became so ingrained in our everyday lives back then like, “good to the last drop,” and “takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” To this day my coffee still comes in a blue can and my watch, bought at the biggest of the big box stores with falling prices, cost a mere $8.88. Which means I’m stuck in my ways and cheap.

Most of the adults I work with didn’t have clue who Poppin’ Fresh was until a huge little lizardy online insurance company parodied it in one of their own wacky and popular TV commercials. But what about Speedy Alka-Seltzer and Morris the Cat? Barely memorable, unless you are old enough to remember LBJ and Tricky Dick.

When I started quizzing others about what I remembered, I switched to famous people. I was sure that the You Tube, Pay-per-View, Netflix, Amazon and Hulu generation would be familiar with the actors and actresses that were so much a part of my life when TVs had rabbit ears and you could park and watch movies through the windshield of your car. Some didn’t actually watch the movies at the drive-in but that’s a subject for another day.

The younger-than-me-bunch knew that Kate Hudson was Goldie Hawn’s daughter but they never heard of Laugh-In. Jayne Mansfield no, her daughter Mariska Harqitay of Law and Order, yes. Danny Thomas, no, Marlo Thomas sort-of, because of St Jude. Marlo’s husband Phil Donahue, no way. They didn’t have a clue about Loretta Young, of big and small screen, and monkey mom Maureen O’Sullivan. Once famous in the pool, on ice and on screen, Johnny Weissmuller and Sonja Henie? They had never heard of them.

Ed Sullivan was a somewhat familiar name because of the Beatles. Steve Allen and Jack Parr no, Johnny Carson, maybe. Merv Griffin, nope. The marriage of Tiny Tim to Miss Vicki and the unforgettable singing voice of Mrs. Miller, (not to be confused with Miss Miller of talk show audience fame), they never heard of any of them.

I wanted to continue but soon realized that even though the divide between generations could have led to a depressing wallow in old age, it did not. I am as clueless about their memorables as they are about mine. So I’ll brew a good-to-the-last-drop cup of coffee, have a Poppin’ Fresh Danish and watch Tarzan and Jane on my Zenith with Flash-Matic tuning.