Odd Jobs with Brian Clampitt

 

There's a seemingly endless supply of people I can conjure up to slander in my dream life. Last night I found myself in some kind of probationary temp job situation, working with various people, each of whom I had varying degrees of difficulty getting along with. 

One was a bit of a knuckleheaded fellow, a Joey from "Friends" type, who was asked to read aloud by our instructor/job coach. He surprised us by not being completely illiterate. I sensed, though, that he was insecure about it, and, if corrected for some of his minor errors, there'd be brawling.

Next I was working alongside Brian Clampitt and another fellow, who I'm going to have to reach way back to pull up a name for. I want to say Kevin McClosky, a red-headed kid I attended grammar school with. 

Like most of us back then, Kevin was slightly off-kilter, a trait which only seemed to have become magnified over the years. He had developed into a full blown disabled person, with speech and mobility issues. Being paired with Brian and myself to work in a paint store only brought out his disabilities.

Brian fancied himself to be the foreman, although this wasn't a job he was officially sanctioned to do. For a guy who'd appointed himself to the lead role, he wasn't very conscientious in his handling of the product in the store. I caught him stacking 5 gallon paint buckets with a fork lift, placing them upside down on the shelves. 

Because I already was predisposed to dislike him, due to his typically condescending air of superiority (both in real life and the dream), I decided to call him on it.

"You see what you did here? They are upside down," I told him as I flipped over each of the wrongly placed items.  One of the paint cans had a loose lid and paint was already leaking out from being upside down.

He didn't take the criticism well and proceeded to rail against me at every opportunity in a tit for tat manner. His complaints went more to my personality type, as he found my weaknesses the perfect target for his pedantic speeches about slacker types. 

He showed me up good by doing a thoroughly precise job of diagnosing, categorizing and packaging a fishing rod and reel. 

"This would be labeled as a component failure," he proudly proclaimed, as he wrapped up the item for shipping, with overtly perfectionist spite.

I found my similar attempt at wrapping up a fishing pole was, in fact, rather sloppy by comparison.

Though we'd exchanged heated words after the paint cans, he was now going out of his way to display the softer side of his normally obnoxious paternalistic patter. He even engaged Kevin, the more vulnerable target and likely candidate for bullying, with a surprising degree of compassion. 

"See, Kevin. You can do some things. You can sit there just fine. You can listen to the radio and tap your foot to the beat. Just do that. Groove to the beat. Just like that. There, you're doing it," he said, gently assuring the disabled Kevin.

I guess he was being sincere, though you never can tell with those snobby, east coast types. He was actually from Arkansas, or somewhere less refined, but had long ago shed the okie dialect, replacing it with something that resembled George Zimmer, the Men's Warehouse spokesman. "You're gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it." That guy.

Well, things are winding down in my recollection of events. I'm not sure there's even a story to the moral of this dream, just some impressions, fading like footprints in the tide. 

I try to keep the hypnagogic state alive as long as I can while transcribing these dreams, but, as you can see, the editor-in-chief resides in this reality and has a way of coloring the narration. Simple word choices bend the whole perception of events, and soon I'll be writing a completely fictional version of my dream.

Which begs the question, "Who cares anyway?" I mean really, it was just a dream, why not play fast and loose with the details? Who's really gonna know and call me on my inaccuracies? Are there points for giving an impartial account?

It's my dream. Can't I just be the hero every time? Leave out the parts where I'm the obvious fuck up? I mean, there's enough of that in my day to day life already. I suppose it is an exercise in journalistic integrity. Just the facts, ma'am.