Verus Verum

So, that last post I wrote, it was a lie. All of it. I've never been to Washington DC. I stopped believing in reincarnation in the ninth grade. And, although I've lived in flat places, I've never lived in a flat place that got really frosty and cold for long stretches in the winter.

The story that I wrote started while I was training to start working at 'Bucks in 2002.

See, when you're in your early to mid twenties and you work at a place like 'Bucks, everyone wants to know how old you are. Especially all the just-got-out-of-high-school girls. During my first week of training, which was at a store that was 45 minutes to an hour drive from where I lived at the time, I was asked by everyone who worked at that store, and the three who were training for my store how old I was. I was tired of the questing the third time it was asked.

I know when most people are young, age is very important (even though I keep getting bulletins on MySpace that say it isn't. When you're young, almost everything is defined by an age. At four is when you go to pre-school. Five is Kindergarten. Six you stay at school until two PM. Nine you're there until three. If you live in a town with a middle school (which I didn't) you go there when you're eleven. At fourteen or fifteen, you start high school. At sixteen you can, hopefully, drive a car. At eighteen, you get to decide if you want to be done with school, forever. And at twenty-one, you can buy yourself, and your underage friends, booze. Nearly everything is defined by age.

So, I understood that it was important to them, but that didn't mean I had to really answer the question.

My second week of training, more people who were going to be working at my store started showing up to be trained, and they started to ask me how old I was. I said I was 61. Every time someone asked me my age, I said 61. If they asked me to tell them my real age, I'd say 61. If they got upset, I'd tell them it's not how old you are, it's how old you feel. Eventually, they got smart and started asking my brother how old I was because he'd tell them, after he did some counting on his fingers. (That's not a slam on him; I have to use my fingers to figure out his age, too.)

Time moved on and we all moved into our real store and new people were hired, we were understaffed when we opened. They started asking me how old I was. I told them 61. Then, one day, I was tripped up. When I told someone I was 61, I was asked what year I was born in, and I stumbled. I couldn't just throw the year out without a thought like I can my actual birth year. So, I went about remember that I was born in 1941.

That's when more started coming to me:

• How could I explain why I was so young now, even though I insisted I was 61? Reincarnation!
• Where did I live? Somewhere very flat that got cold in the winter.
• Who were my parents? I can't remember their full names. I think my father's name was Jack or John, or something like that.
• Why can't you remember? I died before I was two.
• How? Whooping cough.

After I came up with the story, I started to recite it to people who would ask anything more than how old I was. Most people would walk away after I brought up reincarnation. Talking about how whooping cough felt got most of the others. If I had to go farther, I'd talk about how my past self's father died at Tarwa. Most people have no idea where Tarwa is, let alone about the battle that was fought there. They didn't want to hear about the bloody marine assault on the beaches or other nasty details.

Anyway, the story, no matter how deep I got into the details, was a good way to keep certain types of people away from me for a while. About a week. Good times.

In other news, I have an interview in Cowtown tomorrow. I'm not asking for luck, this time, because it hasn't helped in the past. Just thought people should know why there's no Friday post, even though there hasn't been a post in the last seven days and I don't plan on explaining that.

Hope your June is better than your May.