[Elspode]

I guess it is a sign of advancing age that I cannot, at this moment, tell you the names of more than one of the five people I worked with last night. Perhaps it is more that I felt so incredbily out of place that I am blocking the details at the subconscious level; some sort of middle-aged guy autonomic self-defense mechanism is chugging away, keeping me from running screaming into the streets over the realization that, at one point, the ages of two of the people with whom I was working, added together, would not have equalled my own age.

In truth, I was mostly ignored by most of the other pizzaoids. I suppose that it must be amusing to have some old guy, a sweaty, long-haired, overweight version of your stepdad, knowing nothing about The Pizza Biz and waiting for you, the edgy, mulitply pierced and tattooed youth, to tell him what to do. Ah, well...the day can't be a complete loss as long as I've provided someone with entertainment. However, due to this rather impersonal juxtaposition of age vs. authority, I really only got to talk at length with one individual, whom we shall call Merle (again, because it is actually his name).

Merle is somewhere within shouting distance of 30, although from which side of it we'd be shouting I do not know. Merle is an almost-tall, rather slender, terribly frantic-looking fellow. Most people would likely feel fairly safe with awarding him the sobriquet of "nerd". Nothing we talked about during the course of the evening would have dissuaded me from handing him that particular tag, anyway.

I'm not certain how we got on the subject, except that, in retrospect, Merle probably tells *everyone* about his bipolar, depressive, psychotic bitch of an ex-wife and the associated trials and tribulations of being a single father. It is even possible that he regales anyone who will listen with the fact that he was the manager of a large mattress store in Texas before his wife's whoring and lack of domestic hygiene led to the demise of their tenuous marital relationship. Passersby on the street have probably heard tell of how even his parents, who revere the institution of marriage above all earthly things, told him that he really should divorce that crazy girl and embark on the adventure of single parenthood. Those who are so presented with the tawdry tales of a young marriage tumbling inexorably toward ruin might sense, as I did, a certain wistfulness in his manner; a slight peek behind a mask of righteousness and outrage that reveals the worried, rejected face of a guy who fears that he may never get laid again if he can't reconcile with the woman who screwed around on him, then ran away to Florida with her boyfriend.

As I listened to Merle talk, we folded up razor-edged cardboard stampings into the various sizes of boxes destined to hold the bounty of PJ's oven. The time passed pretty quickly, marked out only by Merle's incessant, obsessive, outraged rambling, and the occasional profanity uttered by me as I sustained multiple cardboard cuts on my fingers. Merle's work ethic was much the same as his verbal self-presentation...frantic fleeting from one task to another before punching out on the computer and dashing out the door to his next delivery (Note to self - try to work the next Merle conversation around to the subject of the wonderful psychoactive drugs that are presently available to treat OC and other hyperactive disorders). I basked in the peace and quiet of his absence for awhile, and tried to get a handle on my other co-workers.

Stacey, as I mentioned before, is the store manager, but she left for the day while I was out on my first delivery run. The guy left in charge, who we shall call "Captain" (not because it is his name, but because that's what it says on the name tag stuck to his hat), gave me a couple of other pointers, and generally oversaw what I did from an omniscient and safe distance. We passed a few niceties over the course of the evening ("So, have you ever had a driving job before?" - actually, I got asked that question three different times by three different people...I can't imagine what relevance it had, though. Do more experienced pizza delivery guys impress those with less experience?), but mostly, the gulf of age between us was too vast to bridge without benefit of beers or perhaps a CD collection to compare. Captain did ask me later on if I was hungry, and I replied, "That depends on what you're going to say next, I guess." I didn't know if there was free pizza in the offing, or if he was going somewhere else with the question. It turned out that they were getting up a run to Planet Sub next door, and he was just checking to see if I wanted in on that. I didn't, but at least there was that much of an attempt to reach out and be considerate of the new guy.

There were two other drivers working beside Merle and myself. One was pretty intent on what he was doing, and he got the lion's share of the deliveries. He also left the earliest. I assume he is the top dog delivery guy, by dint of his "get-it-done" attitude. We didn't pass a word between us. Merle, blessedly, left for the night around 9:30 to go get his kids from his folks' house, and to take them home and put them to bed (I could give you more details, because he gave them to me, but really...why?). His departure came on the heels of a long and animated telephone conversation of which I could only hear one side. However, the side I could hear sounded very much like what I had heard from him while we folded boxes, so I assume the person on the other end was saying very little anyway. I mean, I had done so, mostly due to a lack of space into which insinuate comment.

As the evening wore on, I had more interaction with the youngest member of the driver corps. I'm not going to name him yet because, well, there was nothing particularly notable about him, and so I think I'll just relate the information once I actually absorb his name. He was rather helpful for the most part. Had I been more aware and less in shock over the whole concept of being 48 years old and working at a pizza place that I don't own, I might have taken more notice when he asked me, "So...are you closing tonight?"

The question really should have piqued my interest more. After all, my first job, at age 15, had been in a restaurant. Although I was technically the dishwasher at that time, I was essentially the complete slave of the place. The end of my shift last night had much the same sort of elements as that first job, albeit on a lesser scale. I had signed up to be a delivery guy, but I had been warned by my friend Robert that there were other associated tasks besides the driving. I knew, for example, that I would be making pizza boxes. I guess I hadn't stopped to consider that I, now 33 years past the labors and physical demands of that first job, would once again have someone point to a large tile floor and say, "You'll need to sweep and mop that." I was wholly unprepared for the moment when Captain started handing me dirty utensils and containers, and instructed me on the proper volume of water and mixture of chemicals to put the triple-well stainless steel industrial sink from hell.

I spent the last hour of my first day as a pizza delivery driver making $5.65 per hour, pushing a broom, wrestling a mop and doing dishes like a busboy, sweating like a stevedore. My arthritic hands and knees were crying the blues. My mind was busy considering the irony of the fact that I would probably be rendered unable to play the guitar and sing the composition my joints were working on, once I was finished with the mopping. No, I hadn't counted on this aspect of the job at all. I must have thought that I was going to drive clean, baby; cruise the streets of suburbia, bringing succulent, steaming junk food to adoring masses. I thought I was going to ride high in my Explorer, dashing through the night, assuaging the grumbling stomachs of Middle America, and reveling in my service to mankind.

By the time I left at midnight, headed for home after what had been, effectively, a seventeen-hour day, all such romantic notions of the life of a pizza delivery guy had left my head, replaced by a tired, chafing reality. And no free pizza.

More to come as more happens...