Anyway, I have spent months trying to find a job.
I suspect that many potential employers don’t appreciate my age.
Add the fact that I am still on a lifting restriction due to breast cancer surgery, and you’ve got a terminally unemployed chick with an incredible stress level. It’s also hard to keep a straight face when my doctor warns me that absolutely, I must try to live my life stress-free. She doesn’t even crack a grin when I tell her that the only way I can accomplish that is to develop a really bad drinking problem.
So anyway, a few days ago, my eyes landed on a rather unusual ad in the classifieds.
“Now that’s a job I can do,” I muttered as I circled city cab driver. “I’ll just sit in the car all day and drive people to their destinations. My only worry will be whether I get robbed or murdered.”
By the interview date, I had remembered a local cab driver’s story from last year, before I was medically allowed to drive again. I was the first person he picked up in the evening ... after being stabbed a few months earlier by a psycho chick.
That’s right.
Stabbed.
So I practiced my speech for my new boss.
“I’m sorry, but I won’t be driving around in bad areas,” I would say. “If you want me to drive after dark, I’ll need permission to frisk my customers, and I will require a bodyguard to ride shotgun.”
As it turned out, the new boss didn’t want me to drive a cab any more than I wanted to drive one. Instead, he gave me a job driving people to and from the airport in a nice SUV!
Now, did I ever imagine myself – at 55 years of age – circling the airport at 4 a.m.? Nope. But then again, I trust that experiences come around for a reason. I’m willing to look for and celebrate the sweet stuff in this employment opportunity. I know to my bones that there are some quirky things I need to experience in this venture or the universe wouldn’t have chosen me to be behind the wheel.
Yesterday, during orientation, I was handed a checklist of 10 things to check on the vehicle before I start my shift. Hmmm. The only thing I tend to care about is whether my car starts and my favorite music is easily accessible.
Check the washer fluid? Are you crazy? I can’t even get the dumb hood to open on my car.
But … I need a job.
And so I pretended to be just another bored mechanic, looking over a list of stuff I can do in my sleep.
Before I start the job I will ask a neighbor to give me a crash course in finding the oil stick and the brake fluid thing.
Friends on Facebook are teasing me like crazy. They don’t think I can transport people to and from the airport in this awful seasonal traffic and also keep my big, fat road-raging mouth shut.
But I assured them that somehow, I will find the patience to quietly drive in this mess, even if it’s necessary to buy myself a muzzle.