Monday, March 1, 2010

The Parking Lot

My high school has a tradition of holding a drug free party after graduation at a local bowling alley. Although I wasn’t exactly the joiner type, Ben and I decided to go to the free bowling, more because we loved bowling than for the people, but we did have fun with my friends. Most of his friends went to another school. I remember Ben won a free hat for hitting a strike when they called for a volunteer. No one was even attempting it despite the cajoling of the guy on the intercom, and Ben felt pity for the man and was in a mood where he didn’t mind making a spectacle of himself. It was the only strike he bowled that night.

That party was the third time in my life I had ever stayed up all night. The first two were our junior and senior proms when we went to the after party so Ben could jump in the bungee trampoline and get a killer wedgie on the velcro wall. I remember driving home after the junior prom and falling asleep in his pickup. I was cold, so he turned the heat up. Since he hadn’t had any sleep either, I still think it was a miracle we made it home without him falling asleep at the wheel.

The day after our bowling graduation party, I started my summer job that I would work until heading off to college in the fall. I had accepted a position as third shift short-order cook at a local convenience store. The pay was decent, but I worked 11 pm to 8 am. The work was easy since not that many people want deep fried food during those hours. Most of the people I dealt with were drunk or stoned, with the notable exception of the hospital staff who always had a large midnight order. In the morning, I cooked biscuits for some regulars and made gravy for the morning shift. Having made that gravy, I would never eat gravy at a convenience store again.

The graveyard shift is what led to my first summer of adulthood’s shenanigans. Because I haven’t been a night owl since the day I was born, I absolutely hated the shift I worked. I didn’t have the energy to do anything other than drive home and sleep until my shift started up again. If I was lucky, I’d get in two or three hours of wakefulness before I went in to work since my internal clock was so off that I slept through the entire day.

On weekends, I’d drive over to Ben’s house and pass out in his bed or on his couch until he’d show in the afternoon. He knew I’d be sleeping and since he rarely slept in his house, this worked pretty well for both of us.

At that time of our lives, he spent almost every single Saturday wrestling with the AIWF, a small federation started by one of his friends who wanted to wrestle but didn’t have the form or capability of making it in the big time. They were nice men, the wrestlers, but none of them could have really gone on to something on television. They put together a pretty good league, all in all, and still have local cable channel talk shows and wrestling venues around a couple of states. Ben wrestled as Chris Windham from Sweetwater, Texas, which amused me to no end, him being about as far from a Texan as possible. In the ring, a side of him came out that manifested nowhere else; he loved the adulation and attention from the crowds as he tied on the bandanas and wrapped himself in his good-guy persona.

The wrestling events were staged all over the state of North Carolina and we would often have to drive three to four hours to get to that night’s venue. I hated sleeping in his truck, especially since we frequently took a friend along for the trip. Ben drove a little blue Mitsubishi stick shift. It was just wide enough for three people, but when I was trying to sleep, I couldn’t contort my body sufficiently to keep my feet in the passenger’s side and put my head on a shoulder that wasn‘t shifting gears. There was never a question of me sitting on the door side because that would put the two guys squooshed together and that was not happening.

I don’t remember how we discovered my salvation, but somehow we realized that the mattress of the chair that folded out into a bed in his house was easily removable and fit just perfectly into the bed of his pickup truck. There wasn’t more than an inch of space from the top of the mattress to the cab of the truck when it was pushed up against the tailgate and no room on the sides. With a blanket and a pillow, I could go anywhere and still get as good a rest as if I were in bed at home thanks to the balmy summer weather.

So we traveled. I would sleep in the house until he arrived, he’d kiss me awake, load up the mattress, tuck me in back, and head off to wherever. Half the time, I didn’t even know what town or city I was in when I woke up on the back side of a National Guard Armory or a high school, places where the group held most of their shows. I’d get up, brush out my hair and have a sip of the water Ben would leave for me chilling in the cab, and then meander inside to find him and help set stuff up whenever I woke. All the guys kept an eye on me, I think, while I slept in the back, but I didn’t really know very many of them all that well.

The only flaw in our brilliant adventure was when it rained. On those occasions, Ben would pull off the road and I’d pile in the cab for the ride and sleep stretched out across the seat when we got there. I always had a crick in my neck on those days. Plus, I couldn’t sleep on the mattress again for a couple of days until it dried out.

One day, I was sound asleep in the back with my covers pulled up snug when I felt a few raindrops patter across my forehead. I tried to ignore it and go back to sleep, hoping the light shower would pass without making me move, but as I began to feel the drops impacting on my blanket, I realized I was going to have to go inside.

I opened my eyes to a gray sky and laid there blinking for a few seconds, trying to work my tear glands into wetting my dry contacts before I actually sat up. I will admit to being grumpy when I emerged because I didn’t relish trying to fit my 5’9” frame into the interior of the truck or the inevitable crick that would come. To stall a little longer since the rain wasn’t pouring yet, I checked my watch to see that I really only needed another half hour of sleep before I’d have reached my normal time anyway. With that, I shrugged off the now damp cover and sat up.

It took me a minute to process what I was seeing. I usually sat up to chainlink fences and narrow lanes next to a large building of some sort. There were usually people who knew me within earshot. This time, I saw lots and lots of cars. I looked slowly to the left and saw more cars. This parking lot was full and whatever store I was at was doing a brisk business. Before I could determine my exact location, the skies opened up and the rain went from a cooling mist with an occasional actual drop to a soaking rain with drops large enough that you felt each one hit the top of your head.

Whatever fuzziness from my sleep lingered was pretty much washed away, and though my confusion remained, self-preservation kicked in and I vaulted over the side of the truck. Once my feet hit the pavement, my head came up and I saw the Food Lion sign way up the parking lot from the space I had been left in.

I was in the middle of a Food Lion parking lot. Ben had driven me to a Food Lion parking lot and left me sleeping without a word. My infamous red-headed temper started to rise. By now I had moved up the water chart from damp to wet and I grabbed the door handle as I started to fume in earnest. Boy, was he getting a piece of my mind when he came back. The diatribe with which I planned to blast him was writing itself so loudly in my head that my brain failed to register that the handle was pulled out but the door wasn’t opening. I paused my mental tirade and looked inside the cab.

The doors were locked.

To recap, Ben had driven me to a very busy Food Lion parking lot in a city I didn’t know the name of, left me sleeping alone in the back of his pickup open to the elements, and had locked me out of the vehicle.

A slow boil is the first term that comes to mind when I recall that moment. I stood there with the above three thoughts chasing each other through my brain. I was so surprised that Ben would be so inconsiderate and uncaring of my safety and comfort that I couldn’t form a coherent thought. I glanced at the store, just beginning to decide I was going to have to have him paged when my next shock hit me.

Heads down to avoid the rain and moving as fast as their legs could carry them, Neal and Jimmy, two wrestlers I barely knew, sprinted out the door heading for the vehicle. Slowly my brain processed this new tidbit of info.

Ben had not left me sleeping in the back of a Food Lion parking lot all by myself, locked out in the rain. He had sent me, sound asleep, off in the back of his pickup with two men I barely knew, in a city I didn’t know the name of, to a Food Lion parking lot where I woke up in the rain locked out of the cab.

Neal looked up as I realized this and the expression on my face caused him to visibly miss a step. I was raised with Southern manners, but even those failed me when the two guys got to the cab, sputtering apologies. I don’t remember actually saying a word, namely because I was too angry to speak. Not at Neal and Jimmy. They had just borrowed the truck. But the numbskull who handed over the keys with his girlfriend in the back end? He was going to get it.

Said numbskull was waiting anxiously when we pulled into the little lane up to the chainlink fence behind the big building. I didn’t speak a word. He started to, but thought better of it.

I dripped into the building and sat down on the padding that went under the tarp on the ring. I pulled off my shoes, wrung out my socks, and laid down to go back to sleep. He sat down quietly beside me and moved my hair off my forehead. When they needed the padding, he woke me up and hugged me.

I never delivered that tirade. I never released all that anger in one screaming hissy-fit. For once, I just let it go. Well, I let it go for then. I pretty much brought it back up in every argument we had for the next ten years. I won all those, of course.