Eldest Son of The Captain (ESOTC) is unwittingly following in his father’s footsteps, spending the summer before he goes off to college painting; I say “unwittingly” because anyone with their wits about them would avoid my tracks like a fat rabbit avoids the tracks of a mountain lion. But he got a job painting the schools in town to earn money for college and as a bonus is learning some valuable life lessons - like the importance of getting a college degree so you don’t end up like Clubber, a 40 something townie who is the unofficial paint crew supervisor in spite of the fact he gets the same hourly wage as ESOTC and the two other college bound burnouts on the crew.
During the school year, Clubber, who lives at home with his mother and reminds one of an overgrown Oompa Loompa minus the tan, is a Hall Monitor at the local high school, from which he graduated 25 years ago; he apparently liked it so much he never bothered to leave. When he’s not sneaking a cigarette behind the shop wing or ogling the freshman girls, he’s the hired snitch for the Assistant Principal. But with all the little hoodlums on summer break, he’s the self-appointed paint crew chief and Master of the Universe. Some examples:
· Professional painters will always prep the surfaces, paint the trim, and then finish by rolling. Clubber, who ESOTC describes as a giant bowling ball with arms and legs and three holes in the head, is at least smart enough to know he has no business on a ladder, so he chooses to roll exclusively and let the young students do the grunt work of taping and trimming. He does demonstrate some creativity, however, as he sits on an office chair with casters to roll his way down the corridors, pun intended. The only problem is that he rolls ahead of the trimming, leaving his young charges with having to clean up the paint he splattered all over the floor (it’s way too fucking hard to roll a chair over a drop cloth, you know).
· He complains to anyone who will listen that his tax dollars have been squandered on a $230 piece of cleaning equipment for the schools (which will save the town money in the long run), ignoring the smacks-you-on-the-head irony that tax payers pay him to sit around and smoke on school grounds and leer at teenage girls, while occasionally providing witness statements to the Assistant Principal about fights he could easily have broken up.
· Will walk the length of a long corridor to take the elevator up or down a single story rather than take the stairs; rumor has it that Clubber hasn’t taken the stairs since his second senior year, which is about the time that Burger King introduced the double Whopper.
· One thing that clubber has grasped, though, is the municipal employee workplace culture; one day, because the crew ran out of tape and he was too lazy to drive 3 minutes to the hardware store to pick up some new rolls (there’s that word again), he instructed the 3 student laborers to “go hide in the library ‘til quittin’ time.” They get similar instructions when they run out of paint because Clubber has yet to grasp the concept of taking an inventory of supplies.
· Admittedly, Clubber has done an admirable job of preparing ESOTC for the working world by unknowingly modeling the behavior of corporate managers – talk a big game about stuff you really don’t understand, issue executive orders with little forethought, and then blame your underlings for your own stupidity. But ESOTC has figured out a way to diffuse the big guy: bring him food – lots and lots of it. And this doesn’t even dip into ESOTC’s earnings because he also works part-time evenings and weekends at a local Panera Bread, so he’s able to procure huge bags full of discarded product loaded with carbs and sugar which he brings to Clubber at the start of the day. Is it really OK to be an enabler for an obese middle-aged townie in a dead-end job? Who can say? But ESOTC’s work day certainly goes much better!
So thank you Clubber for preparing my son for the cruel, hard world, a place ESOTC can avoid for the next four years in college (so long as he actually completes and hands in his assignments in the same semester they are due). Please accept those dozen doughnuts I had delivered as my expression of gratitude.
So Believe The Captain when he says: Grab your chair and a can of spray paint and let’s decorate the Principal’s office!
Yours signing my artwork, “Clubber Was Hear!”
The Captain
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