intermission

So here we are, and I am taking a small breather from telling the tales of my Burger King adventures 20 years ago.

I probably have four more BK posts left in me. For those who are fatigued by these stories, I apologize. But sometimes I feel that one of the unspoken missions of my blog is to spread the wisdom I have accrued through unlikely means, and that was certainly a summer filled with lessons, not all of which were about grilled meat. Wait until I tell you about clown school. Doesn’t that sound promising?

selective memory with cheese

So here we are, in the continuing saga of my Burger King Summer of ’91, one score ago.

There are things that I remember vividly about those ten weeks. One such thing was the day that I swear I made Burger King history by making a single order of six ham and cheese sandwiches. I don’t think anyone had done it before, and I’m sure it's not been done since.

change with cheese

So here we are, in another chapter of the 20th anniversary of my Great Burger King Adventure of 1991.

I don’t know why my ten summer weeks at Burger King happened to fall during a period of great change, but they did. Being smack in the middle of it provided me with yet another valuable life lesson:

You do not want to be on the front lines of change. People may say they want change, but they mostly don’t.

It was an odd chapter in Burger King history, when the Whopper Jr. was temporarily renamed Hamburger (or Cheeseburger) Deluxe, and the old-school Whaler fish sandwich was now the more-PC Ocean Catch. This proved to be impossible for long-time customers to comprehend, let alone accept. It’s not like there was an ad campaign that explained the change, or even massive signage to clarify the situation... it just happened. And I’d see customers come to the register and crane their necks up at the menu board, brows furrowed, eyes darting and searching... and then, in small fearful voices, they would ask:

first day with cheese

So here we are.

Twenty years ago, I was lucky when that call came through. It was just one summer earlier, during the recession of 1990, when I’d had no luck at all even getting an application at the fast-food joints of Jacksonville, NC. But in the summer of 1991, The King called, beckoning me to his flame-kissed burger palace.

And now I had not one, but two part-time jobs that would help add desperately needed kopeks to my college coffer. I’d work the registers at the mall drugstore in the evening, and during the day, I’d do everything there was to do at Burger King. It would prove to be a pivotal, horrible, wearying, lonely, amazing summer where I learned less about burgers and more about human nature than I could have dreamed.

old tymes not forgotten

So here we are

I’m not a Luddite. I just want to make that clear. I love my way-too-many gadgets that start with “i.”

But I still keep an old-school weekly/monthly planner. Complete with a no-longer-manufactured Pilot V-Ball pen jammed in the spiral binding for handy storage. 

Yes, I know what year it is. Yes, I have iCal on my laptop and phone. Before that, I had a Palm Pilot. Before that, it was Outlook. But all attempts to use them day-to-day were absolute disasters. Maybe it’s because I’m a freelancer, maybe it’s because I don’t have a big office network, or maybe it’s because I tend to remember things better when I physically write them down. In any case, I’ve been using paper planners since college; and before that, those little checkbook-sized, grandma-friendly, 2-year wallet calendars (which were surprisingly handy and effective, and I always knew what birthstone was in play at any given time). 

christmas in july

So here we are.

Let’s see... what to write about today... Golly. I got nothing. Feeling lazy and disjointed. It’s quiet outside. Quiet and hot. 

The mass Independence Day Weekend exodus from the city has begun, and the residential, non-touristy neighborhoods of New York City are that special kind of dead that I so enjoy. You don’t have to wait for the “walk” sign because there’s hardly any traffic barreling at you. That brunch place with the long Sunday lines? This weekend, you can walk right in. It’s a sweet little reward for staying in the sweltering city while everyone else is having a holiday among water and sand, trees and grass. 

Sometimes I wonder why so many New Yorkers leave the city for the country in the summertime, especially when equal or greater numbers of tourists flock here and leave their quiet front porches behind in favor of the concrete hustle. Sure, it’s hot here, but it’s hot everywhere. 

change of plan

So here we are.

I was all set to write a post about a dear friend of mine. The plan has shifted a bit to include another.

Regular readers will recognize the handle Ironmom (a.k.a. Julie), as she has been my most frequent commenter here. She’s also been a dear friend since college, and she still likes me even though I’m not on Facebook. She’s been in training for the better part of a year for her first Ironman triathlon, and yesterday was her big day. Armed with her bib number, I’d planned to dial up the race site and track her progress, hoping that the fact that she was going to spend more than 15 hours - you read me, 15 hours - pushing her body to the limit would inspire me to do my simple little tasks, including, but not limited to, prepping for some auditions and cleaning the bathroom and other chores I’d been putting off. If she could run a damn marathon on top of swimming 2.4 miles and biking 112 miles, I could banish some damned mildew. And I’d write all about how proud I was of her and how this humble woman both inspires me and puts me to shame.

Then I came home from running errands to the news that Alice Playten had died suddenly - to me, anyway - at the age of 63.

pomp

So here we are.

This past Saturday, my alma mater, Northwestern University, held its commencement. I know this because their graduation speaker was esteemed alumnus Stephen Colbert, and his fabulous speech was all over the web within hours. 

My husband (also NU) and I watched this speech online with a great deal of jealousy. It was such a pretty ceremony, with regal purple robes set beautifully in front of bright blue Chicagoland skies. It had rained on our respective graduations, and my final college memory is sitting in a dull, black robe in the bleachers of a dimly lit sports arena, listening to a speaker who was very much not Stephen Colbert in all the worst possible ways. In a word: bleak.

Maybe it’s the YouTube effect, but it seems as though all the major universities are really stepping up their games when it comes to commencement speakers these days. Mine was best known for having a sitcom character loosely based on her, but that hardly meant she was as entertaining as a sitcom character. When asked, my husband couldn’t remember who his speaker was. This is a big deal, seeing as whenever we’re watching old TV shows, he can rattle off the résumés of the second and/or third guest stars with ease, or at least say something like: