Jeez, Did I Really Do That?

By Xlibris US

Do you remember your high school graduation, your first trip away from home to meet a girl, your Christmas break from college when you drove a car to a fun vacation? I remember mine; so come see how yours stack up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499031898

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Fred K. Lee.

ISBN:      Softcover   978-1-4990-3191-1

              eBook           978-1-4990-3189-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 07/24/2014

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Contents

The Big Bust

Epilogue

New York, New York

Veterans Without Ribbons

THE BIG BUST

It was close to five AM when I reluctantly got up and struggled my way to the bathroom. It had stopped raining but it looked dark and dreary outside; I hoped the day would improve for the big ceremony. I’d been tossing and turning all night in anticipation of this day. I knew that I wouldn’t be getting any more sleep this morning so I snorted, farted, kicked off the sheets, and reluctantly got up. Ge-e-zus, I hope I don’t fall asleep during the proceedings, I thought as I groggily made my way down the darkened hallway and turned on our tepid shower. There was no shower curtain but the boys weren’t shy; we all had strong wrists, and nobody ever accused us of being privacy freaks; on rare occasions when we were able to lure a lady up to our rooms, we employed a bed sheet. Of course, after it got wet it was almost transparent! However, we did save some money on washing. Besides, shower curtains cost money and we would rather spend it on frivolous stuff - like food! Anyway, we had a standing rule that when one of us got lucky, the others would go play Parcheesi with the nerdy fellow across the hall. And after clearing some of the cobwebs and brushing my teeth I left the apartment to the tune of my roommates’ snoring, for something to get me through this day. Outside, in the temporary amphitheatre that had been set up, behind the rows of chairs was the stage, now with a large amplifier on either side, the speaker’s podium with two microphone, and the seats for the dignitaries - this was really going to happen!

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There were dozens of restaurants (I tried working one summer as a waiter and counterman in my father’s restaurant - the tips stunk, mainly because I never bought into that myth that ‘the customer is always right’ garbage. And when they were wrong, I told them so. So my father wisely transferred me to a job where I had little contact with John Q. Public before I cost him all his customers) and lunch counters within walking distance of the University but not too many were open that early in the morning; but I finally found one that had individual booths, went in and ordered bacon and eggs, home fries, toast and coffee. As I waited the waitress brought me a carafe of coffee and I read The Montreal Star, thoughtfully left behind by a former occupant; it was yesterday’s but I read it anyway. It carried the usual gloom and doom stories that the news media delight in reporting so I skipped to the sports section. As usual, the Yankees were shoo-ins for the World Series and Les Canadiens had started their training camp and were confident of winning another Stanley Cup; and a young goalie named Dryden was stopping everything but bullets. After breakfast, I fell asleep while reading Terry and the Pirates, but luckily the owner knew me from the many times I’d been there over the years and, since there were few customers right then, he let me get in a few hours of much-needed rest; and when I awoke and told him where I was going, he wished me luck and wouldn’t let me pay the bill!

On the way back to the apartment I happened to see my reflection in a store window and noted that I looked almost as bad as some of those hippies I was fond of criticizing. With exams and all, there hadn’t been a lot of spare time for beauty treatments during the past couple of months and my longish hair, several day’s growth of uneven whiskers, together with my droopy eyelids from the lack of sleep gave me the appearance eerily close to that of that Del Rio, Texas radio DJ, Wolfman Jack, that all the people in our building thought was cool. I had a few hours before my presence was required so I took the bus to Pasquale’s for some sprucing up (he used to have a shop in the neighborhood but he had recently moved to Notre Dame de Grace, a borough where the rents were more reasonable (had our place not been subsidized by the University we wouldn’t have been able to afford to live in the student ghetto either). It was a bit out of the way but he was a good friend, and his manicurist was a pretty girl; besides, Pasquale always did a good job, and I wanted to look good for my family and friends who would soon be arriving for the big event. He had a shop in a busy shopping mall; there were three other barbers besides him and I knew them all - business was brisk. I’d done some part-time work for him before he’d moved, as a shoe-shine boy and cleaner. I only had enough cash for a haircut but when Pasquale heard what it was for, he insisted that I have a shave and a manicure on him! So after congratulations from everybody and then bidding them all good bye (as well as to a pile of my hair), I thought I was looking pretty good as I caught reflection in the bus window on the way back to the apartment to change my clothes.

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The weather had turned sunny, crisp and clear as I sat there on a cheap folding chair with a group of other gowned pupils, facing the hoard of parents and other well-wishers, and waiting to receive my hard-earned degree. The leaves that still clung to the trees were bright red and yellow. It was Fall convocation at McGill University and everyone was squirming in their chairs, anxious to get their mitts on that piece of parchment (which was a must in order to get a decent job in this era of unionism, favoritism and nepotism) for which many of us had sacrificed four and five years of partying and other late night hi-jinks; signifying, finally, for most of us, the end of our academic ‘careers’. Wisely, halfway through my course, I realized that an Arts degree, at best, would allow me to teach a bunch of bratty teenagers in some far-flung region of Canada; so I transferred to Civil Engineering at the more prestigious university, McGill. A BEng was difficult but at least I would be good at something other than tutoring basket weaving and folk dancing! Better, I should ask myself, ‘Can I improve this structure?’ than ‘I wonder if there’s a museum in the vicinity where I can take my students to show them the wonders of Picasso’s three-titted ‘art’?’. Tonight, as was the custom, the junior class would celebrate the survivors by throwing a beer-soaked, ‘bon voyage’ party for the graduates at one of the many ballrooms in Montreal. I decided to make a short appearance to bid my colleagues farewell and then leave to have dinner with my folks and a few close friends instead of partying half the night and waking up in the morning with everything hurting, including my hair and teeth!

As I sat there half listening to various professors giving boring speeches congratulating us for a job well done, about the many opportunities that lie ahead, and a politician saying that one or two of us might someday even discover something that would make the