Almost Three Weeks Later ©2013 by Joe Sixtop all rights reserved

     So I finally managed to get fired from the American El Chico, my workplace of nine years. They'll tell you I quit but I got a more accurate story. My last shift there was a lunch on Friday, September 20, 2013. My penultimate one was dinner on the preceding evening, Thursday the 19th. As I was doing my closing sidework that night, I cut the shit out of my index finger on my go-to hand on one of the tea urns. I bled like a motherfucker. A big flap of skin was hanging off my bloody finger. I bit it off. It was kind of painful but luckily, I'm a badass.
     GM Brenda B offered to send me to the emergency room but I declined. I still want to be drug screened and asked for that but Brenda declined. The next day, I got fired (by the condescending dickhead KM, not Brenda). My finger's still a little fucked up so now (almost three weeks later)  I wish I would of gotten some medical attention for it but I guess it's too late now. O well.
     Regular enjoyers of These American Servers™ might recall that I've been a hyperactive, psychotic mess all summer long. I still don't know what was (and, to a lesser degree, still is) wrong with me but I've developed some coping mechanisms, kind of like if I were still living at home with Mom and Dad. Since I got real healthy a few months ago, I seem to be perpetually in what the cool kids in the psychiatric community used to call a manic phase. On some weird level I kind of love it but it's mostly just caused me some problems and I need to chill. So I've been trying to meditate. It helps some. Certain vitamins seem to hype me up so I have to be careful with them. And PLEASE don't nobody give me any B-12!
     Music really gets me going big-time and I like that shit at top volume. In an effort to calm down, I gave up the rock and rap for a couple of days. I substituted a CD I have from a band called The Innocence Mission. I'm a little charmed by their music and the vocals of bandleader Karen but they absolutely DO NOT rock. I played them at top volume. So mellow are the pride of Lancaster, PA that  they didn't make me play air drums or bounce off any major walls. Then I started thinking that giving up good music was too great a sacrifice. I've discovered that I can still listen to even fast, heavy rock without a lot of bad consequences but only if it's at low volume, which I guess is better than nothing.
     O yeah. I don't want anybody worried about me. I got fired on Friday and took off Saturday and Sunday. On Monday I went job-hunting. On Wednesday, I was out of training and on the floor in a full station at another, slightly better, chain restaurant. God bless them and I'm not joking. Plus football's ("Joe Beer Man!" January, 2011) back in full swing now so that helps. I paid October's rent when it was time AND the lights are still on. You never know what the future holds but sink or swim time arrived in Joeville and as of now I've yet to sink.
    The craziest, fucked up, most unforgettable part of my psycho-Summer 2013 was that back in the early part of it, I met someone I really, really like. That sounds like a good thing, doesn't it? Well, trust me; it hasn't been.