Independence Day means you can testify! Truth . . . unchained.

Happy 4th of July to dear you,

I am in the midst of selling the precious property here at Inlet Beach and moving on to another . . . place.  Hard to call it home since it cannot match the space, the wild beauty of this last gorgeous acre in a now exploited, paved zone.  But I know not to look back.  Lots of quotations on this topic . . .

On the one hand, there is the future-focused "let it go" mantra:


And on the other hand, there is the learn from the past kind of mantra:





I am thinking about these messages because I am not only letting go of my lovely land here, I am also cranking out a comedic memoir about various adventures working, surviving and gypsying around the USA.   These reflections are very American.  We can invent and reinvent; we (economy allowing) can spin our pasts into pleasing tales.  We can (with consequences, of course) live our truths.

So, as summer sizzles and I see the moving date approaching, I write little stories about how I got here.  And by making the reflection fun, I am freeing myself from grief.  Moving on.  Independence.  Happy 4th.  And amen to Johnny Depp's words.  However, I would definitely have replaced "shit" with the F bomb.

Love,
Joyce

Oh, and if you care to read the first sections of this little book, here you go:

                        Joyce Fleming

      PLAY MONEY

           A record of endless gigs and tiny rebellions

I escaped from the "heart of Dixie" decades ago.  Yet here I am . . . back home in the Florida Panhandle.  Cliche wisdom might claim we can't go home again.  We often do.  Pop movies frequently focus on this theme.  But my story is not a romantic tale like Sweet Home Alabama or Hope Floats.  What brought me home is/was work, not a career, but survival.  This is my story, moving back from now to then, a happy, confessional of a multifarious soul journeying through zip codes and gigs as dancer, actress, waitress, secretary, fitness instructor, paralegal, professor, and retail renegade.

                                                                                     June, 2018

I just got written up by Ted, my manager at the local JZPeppy, for dropping the F bomb at work.  Sixty-three years old, and I am now a retail criminal.  A part-time, underpaid, over-qualified retail criminal with a wicked mouth, sitting in a windowless mall office being cross-examined.

"This is a very serious matter, Joyce. Tell me your version of what happened."

"Ted, the customer should mind his own business. I was ranting about the president and racist policies while cleaning up the shoe department. Oh, by the way, why does that zone always look like a crime scene?  Anyway, I was ranting to a co-worker and not to a f****** customer.  I had no idea he could hear me."

"You just did it again."

"What did I just do again?"

"You cursed."

"I don't put curses on people.  I'm not a witch."

"No.  I mean your language."

At this point, Ted is staring at something over my head.  He would prefer not to look at the source of this cursing.

"Oh.  You mean I said f*** again."

"Yes.  And stop saying that.  Please.  Joyce.  Stop."

Meanwhile, passive and slightly puffy Kalli is taking notes, recording the conversation for human resources.  I wonder if she is spelling out the F bomb or using asterisks.  But I digress . . .

"OK, Ted.  So what do you want me to do?  What will calm our unhappy custy?"

"I have to write you up and send a report to Corporate."

"So, what does that mean?  Am I fired?"

"Not this time.  But we are watching you."

Yes, they are watching me at JZPeppy.  Frankly my dear, I don't give a f***.

I started working here during the Christmas holiday season in 2015.  At that time, I was finishing up a rather grim semester teaching composition and literature at a local state college. Let’s call it Gulf Shores State Advanced High School (GSSAHS).  As expected, my time there as an adjunct had been less than exciting.  Spoiled by teaching at more vibrant colleges in Chicago and St. Petersburg, Florida (more on that later), this experience was like walking through mud one day and a mine field another day.  Department full-timers were simple, sweet folks, but followed a rather dull pedagogical model.  And some of these folks (the not so sweet ones) had a problem with my “passion” and tendencies to ignore rubrics and standardized writing assignments.  So, in the fall of 2015, I opted out and signed on as a sales associate with JZPeppy.

Ted hired me to work in the shoe department.  Why shoes seemed right for me has never been clear.  What was clear at the time was the fact that nobody wanted to deal with that part of the store.  The job involved lots of boxes, boxes, boxes, and feet, feet, feet.  The department literally stank.  Of course, I encountered many fun customers and serving them was easy.  This was not brain surgery.  However, there were also the others, those who brought their bad attitudes and unhinged children with them to shop.  Flashback to memorable run-in of this type:

I am mumbling to myself amid piles of mismatched shoes on a busy Sunday shift.  “Why would anyone put a stiletto heel in a Nike box?  This is purgatory.  Oh, no, here we go, an angry mother and restless child are entering the department.”

Mom:  “Don’t touch anything.”

Child:  “Why?”

Mom:  “Because these shoes are dirty.”

Child:  “Then why are you trying them on?”

Mom:  “Don’t sass me.”

Child:  “I want ice cream.”

Mom:  “They don’t sell that here.”

Child:  “I feel sick.  I think I’m going to puke.”

Mom:  “Well, use that box over there.”

Really?  Did she just advise the kid to vomit in my merchandise?  I have to intervene.

Me:  “Hello.  Should I show you where the restroom is?”

Mom:  “Are you asking me to leave the shoe department?”

Me:  “No.  I just overheard your child say he felt nauseous.”

Mom:  “You need to help me find shoes and leave him alone.”

I have nothing to say in response.  I simply stare at her.  This non-response always infuriates customers who are looking for a fight. 

Mom:  “Where is your boss?  I want to speak to a manager!”

The random manager on duty (not Ted) is consulted.  Customer is mollified by gifts of $10 off coupons and promises of a reprimand to the cold bitch in the shoe department who, obviously, hates children.

This reprimand did not take the form of a “write up” (I still don’t know what that is), but it took the form of Zen advice.  “Joyce, please be more mindful.”

Well, at least I had been mindful enough not to drop an F bomb.

                                                                                *****************

I am still serving time at JZPeppy on weekends.  The dollars pay some bills and allow me to play here in the family home in Inlet Beach, the grand old property I have been caring for since my move here in 2013.  That move was prompted by my Dad’s death and another gig-related comedy.  Stay tuned for that revelation.

                                                                                November, 2012

Late autumn in St. Petersburg, Florida, is stunning.  The heavy summer heat is gone; the air is clear; the water sparkles; loud American tourists are replaced by chilled Canadians and Europeans.  My last fall there was neither chilled nor sparkling.  I went all in to stand strong against assholes in academia!  Admittedly, this battle was one of my tiny rebellions that changed my work status and location.

I worked for the local state college in St. Pete since my arrival there in 2003.  Hired as a composition adjunct, I had plenty of work and taught courses at the main campus (in the center of the Pinellas County peninsula, a short bus ride away from my downtown dwelling) and the new extension campus in town.  All instructors faced a mutual challenge in this zone:  a (sometimes large) segment of the student population lacked curiosity and thought reading was unnecessary.

Imagine you are teaching a Composition I class and the day’s project is to write a response to an essay in the textbook.  You assume the students have prepared by reading that essay before class.  You learn quickly not to assume this.  When the response writing assignment is announced, you will hear “But I didn’t read the essay” like a choral ode filling the room.  You will attempt to adjust.  Adapt or die.  You will then say “In the future, always prepare for class by reading assigned material.  Today, we will read the material together.  Bob, start us off with the opening on page 67.”

Bob doesn’t respond.

You repeat the request.  “Bob, start us off with the opening on page 67.”

Bob mumbles:  “I didn’t bring my book.”

It gets worse after this.  You will hear about allergies preventing reading, bad girlfriends/boyfriends who steal textbooks and sell them for drug money, and, yes, you will also hear about the dog that eats anything related to academia.  You will continue to adapt and accommodate.   Or you will do what I did one November day in response to similar nonsense.  You will speak the unfiltered truth.

“Seriously, I am so over listening to this lazy bull****.  To those who read the material, stay and we’ll get something done.  To the rest of you, class dismissed.  Course dismissed.  Semester dismissed.  Don’t come back.  I’ll give you a B as a final grade just so I don’t have to see you ever again.  Good luck!  Enjoy your futures at Burger King!”

Silence plus dropped jaws.

Then, mass exodos with threats of going to the Dean . . . or whoever my boss is.

The two prepared, smart students are embarrassed and know this little explosion will hurt me more than the “customers” I dismissed.  This was my third strike, my third incident involving . . . honesty. 

Strike one involved a tech employee who demanded I abandon my work at an office computer before class because he needed to update some widget.  I said “no”.  He said “you have to.”  And I stomped off to teach.  I opened the session by describing what had just happened and addressed my favorite students in the class directly.  These two dudes were always prepared, curious, and bad ass.  One, let’s call him Vito, worked as a rent collector and body guard.  He packed heat.  The other , let’s call him Hulk, was simply huge, the size of your average NFL linebacker, and he always wore brass knuckles on his right hand (taking them off to type or write essays in class, of course).  After my little recollection, Vito and Hulk stood and asked my permission to “get some water”.  Of course I agreed and of course I knew exactly where they were headed and what they would do.  My heroes headed to the adjunct office and cornered tech-dude, preventing his exit.  They just blocked the door eyeing him. Tech-dude was trapped for half an hour. 

The next morning, I arrived on campus and my Department Chair gave me the lecture of the century.  Tech-dude was traumatized.  How had I dared to use my students as mafia hitmen?  I apologized and signed something and went about my business.  Tech-dude avoided me from that point on.

Strike two involved the Bill of Rights. I taught a Composition II course focusing on arguments.  Topics were always current and political. Spring 2012, many students were thinking about the upcoming Presidential election, the one that resulted in Obama’s second term.  However, there was this one guy who just couldn’t stay current.  He was still enraged about the 2008 contest, the one where Sara Palin ran as the Republican vice presidential candidate.  Obsessed with Sara’s supposed crimes against democracy, Enraged Guy wrote an argument targeting her words. The problem here is he was not actually citing her words.  Enraged Guy confused a Saturday Night Live sketch with reality.  In one of those sketches, an actor posing as Sara stated “And I can see Russia from my house”.  No.  Sara did not say that.  An actor did.  Enraged Guy also cited a comment she really did make about using our Second Amendments rights (guns baby) to protect ourselves from . . . liberals (?) He managed to screw this up too because he said she had prompted us to use our “Fifth Amendment” rights (not exactly about guns baby).  He was reading this in front of the class and I had to correct him on both goofy errors.  He was deeply insulted.  After class, we had a little chat:

Enraged guy:  “I don’t appreciate the way you put me on the spot.”

Me:  “Your content contained two ridiculous errors.  As a Democrat and a liberal, I really can’t have you making my party look bad.  If you are going to speak out against any conservative, you better be accurate.  We can’t afford that kind of idiocy now.”

Enraged guy:  “Those were just typos.”

Me:  “Oh hell no.”

Enraged guy:  “I am filing a complaint against you.”

Me:  “Go ahead.  Just make sure you show them the original copy of this paper, the original with the idiotic errors in it.”

The complaint was filed.  I found out Enraged Guy was the son of some rather powerful local people.  They asked I be banned from teaching.  This didn’t happen, but I was warned I would be watched.  (Were there audio-cameras in those classrooms?  This foreshadows future fun at JZPeppy.)

Back to this gorgeous autumn, 2012, the season of strike three.  My dear old Dad died in October and this loss shifted the way I viewed everything.  I knew future work assignments hinged on my being on the chain.  Losing Dad made me realize I needed to get permanently off the chain.  Life is short.  I can teach anywhere.  We have a beach house in the Panhandle of Florida that needs to be cared for, lived in, and Mom wants to stay in the Birmingham house.  I will move home.  I will live in the Inlet Beach house as caretaker and chain-breaker.  Bring on the lawnmowers, shovels, and tacky straw hats.  The city girl is headed to the Redneck Riviera.