EPTI took my seat, the only one left, and set my backpack down between my legs for the ride. My seatmate was to be a three hundred pound Caucasian man who introduced himself to me almost immediately. We shared a first name, and he jovially confided in me that he was fairly certain the person to sit next to him would either be last the person on the bus, or a little old man. I smiled and ended up coughing a couple of times instead of chuckling, but told him I really didn’t mind. I didn’t mind it to be honest, the seats were nice and I had enough room. After all, at five ten, two hundred pounds I wasn’t particularly skinny myself.
Now, normally this is the point would be where I would listen politely to whatever the other person had to say, perhaps make a comment here or there, and let the conversation die while I lost myself in my own thoughts, but for some reason I couldn’t help but be entranced by the conversation I shared with this man. We shook hands after our little introduction, and while my two uncles on my mother’s side had me accustomed to strong handshakes to a point I hardly noticed, he felt the need to explain his strong grip. He was a chef whose countless hours of stirring had given him hand strength equal to that of either of my racquetball-playing uncles, and we soon got into a conversation about our respective backgrounds and goals. He was on his way to Hawaii, where an old coworker had a job for him at his new restaurant, and he’s leading to make sure everything is in order before his wife and kids follow.
As the conversation progresses, it turns out he married his childhood friend he’s known since he was five years old. The “awww” I give fuels a blush on the forty-year-old man’s face that only makes the notion more adorable. I in turn share my struggles in the newly discovered game of Starcraft 2. I had spent 3-4 games a day for a week in customs practicing a 3 gate robo +1 attack into 8 minute expand and attack at 10 minutes build against the very hard computer until I had a 50/50 winrate, got into gold and went 8-8 with it, then went on a bad losing streak and got demoted to silver (of course, I don’t go into any of those details, but for those of you who came up through those leagues, you know the kind of build I’m talking about). He responds to my story with a consoling smile and “I don’t know much about the game, but that’s gotta be tough getting demoted in something that matters to you like that”. We talk about some television shows that we’ve watched, as well as my classes, current major, and a bit about his kids, but I cannot recall many details and before I know it I have to get off for my stop.
As I get up to leave he invites me to stop by his work if I’m ever in Hawaii, and I say that I will if I’m in the area. Long after, it isn’t until a stubbly, redheaded pizza guy with a penchant for the word “awesome” tells me “I can’t forget the marinara, you paid for that and if I left it out I’d just feel like the worst pizza guy ever” that I realized just what about him I liked so much.
Note from the author:
+ Show Spoiler +
I had a fairly recent realization in my life that the vast majority of things I’ve done have been for other people. Not that this is particularly different from most people, but something about the fact that I’m much more likely to keep up with my work in a class where I actually like the teacher as a person and want them to think well of me and their abilities as a teacher, that I’ll cook breakfast in the morning just to see a smile and hear a “Is there something you want from us or something?” from my parents, that I’ll take care of what I’m supposed to but don’t want to just so people will leave me alone seems a bit odd at first thought, or even that I would play some of the new games just to have things in common with my friends. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just that somewhere along the lines the thought of doing something just for me became almost abhorrent. The idea somehow got into my head that I wasn’t really worthy of doing something for, so when people would ask me what I wanted to do with my life, sure I had some things that I enjoy, but somehow finding a career that I would like for myself seemed like it necessarily be some kind of guilty pleasure. Not that I couldn’t get satisfaction out of activities, but more along the lines of I had to see it’s impact on someone personally for it to matter to me.
I feel like this has shown through in both the part time jobs I’ve worked, the better I liked my supervisor, the better work and more satisfaction I’d get out of it. I think this is one of the reasons I was always so attracted to the idea of being a chef, even those as lowly as a pizza guy who hands out marinara sauce truly has the job of not just feeding the masses, but spreading joy in food form. As many of us know, a good meal can bring people together, improve someone’s mood, serve as a catalyst for conversation, and overall lead to a more pleasant atmosphere to be in. Of course, having no real cooking experience, no training, and barely being able to cook an egg over-easy without breaking it, I don’t think many places would take on the risk of having me, and that would just mean training I would have to go through, which I may or may not be any good at. It’s very easy to enjoy something casually and in theory, much different to do it as a living after all. After this we also have to look at the sources of my motivations for such an inclination and realize they might not be the healthiest, and where they might stem from, but I might try to do that some other time.
As for how all this relates to the story apart from the career choice, apart from being someone pleasant to talk to on a bus ride and an all-around nice guy, thinking about all the people I’ve known he’s the closest to a person I’d like to be of anyone I’ve ever met. Easygoing and with a career he enjoys (I’ve always thought that you should never trust the food made by a skinny cook), and with a life he was fairly obviously content with in spite of some recent troubles with having to move to find work I don’t know how I can get to a point where I feel like what I just described, but I’ve been re-examining a lot of the values and motivations I have or have had in the past and I just hope that this blog will act as a tool to help me figure these things out. Right now I’m leaning more and more towards just going back and finishing up school with a BS in Microbiology or something along those lines, as long as I can keep up the motivation to work at it, and then figuring out what I want to do. As before, questions and comments are welcome below, and I’d like to thank missefficiency for her help in editing the story portion of this blog (although the ending is a total rework from what she went over). If anyone actually made it through all that, thank you and I hope you found something about it worth reading.
