FAME (I'm gonna live forever)!

I got my first job when I was 14. My dad actually got it for me. He knew this woman named Dee...I'm pretty sure she was a man, though. Dee owned Juanita One Hour Martinizing (that's waNEEEda for those not from the home land). My dad got my sister a job there first. She liked it and co-worked with someone who got phone call asking them if they could get semen out of a wedding a dress and she said, "Hold on, I will ask my boss, she knows a lot about fishing." My sister is really smart. She was appalled by this! I'm pretty sure she found employment elsewhere not too long after this incident.

I started my job the first day of 9th grade. I wore purple totally cool shoes. Dee also had a tanning bed and an electrolysis studio in the back of her dry cleaner. We could totally use the tanning bed anytime we wanted...That rocked! I would come to work straight from school and Dee would leave as soon as I got there. I would walk over to the gas station and get some jo-jo's and go to work bagging the clothes (if you had grease on your silk blouse from my jo-jo...sorry).

There was this attorney who would bring his clothes in. He was sooooo waaaayyyy cute! (And totally in my league, hellooooo, who doesn't want a chubby 14 year old girlfriend who works at a dry cleaner when you are a young aspiring attorney!) He would bring his clothes through the drive through in his silver Mercedes and I would swoon! Oh! his clothes even smelled cool. All expensive Cologne-y and tobacco-y smell...I would put them up to my face and sniff and sniff and sniff. Then I would go about my job and remove all those weird little amber glass vials with the white powder residue from his pockets. (So weird, because he must have some mysterious illness and have to mix his own herbs to get better, he does sniff and wipe his nose all the time!...hellooooo, so IN my league, because I totally believe in natural healing too!!) My boss said they were for cocaine, but he was an attorney and would never break the law. This was my future husband we were talking about!!!

When Dee would leave, I would turn on the radio to the local soft rock station (KOSY). What? It's all we were allowed to listen to at work (thus began my love of soft rock...blog about that later). Anyhoooo...I happen to know all the words to fame..it was very popular on the soft rock circuit in 87.

I was bagging clothes on rainy day. It was so slow at the dry cleaners and I had the soft rock music pumping! Suddenly, FAME comes on the radio..you can't help but sing! If you're me, you cant help but make up a Broadway production. So I'm in the back of the dry cleaners, dancing with a clothing bag...yes...there could've been some jogging in place...and singing at the TOP of my lungs. Although we had a buzzer (I assumed Dee liked to do the same thing on a slow day) I was singing just a little too loud and didn't hear it. I finished my performance (slightly sweaty and WAY out of breath) when to my surprise I heard clapping! (What the ???) So I go to the front of the store and there was MY attorney, My future husband, clapping and.....*gulp* LAUGHING!

I quickly regained composure, making sure to mess up my totally rad short on one side, long on the other hair cut...I got him his clothes with a blush on my face (and not just from dancing, either!). As he walked out the door with a "Thanks for the show!" I suddenly decided his clothes stunk, and his luscious curly hair WAS totally out, and his nose wasn't THAT cute and those WERE cocaine vials in his pockets, and I hoped his credit card got denied everywhere he went.

Ahhh, Memories...(break into song and dance) Misty water colored Meeemmmooorieeeeeeessss...of the way we were.....