the ABCs of Summer

V chose summer flings.

Ages and days ago, I worked at the UGA bookstore in the receiving warehouse. It was the first of many jobs I would have that I was no where near qualified to perform. I guess the assistant manager took me seriously when I said I was a strapping young man.
I tried to dissuade her by telling a story about how I was locked in Kroger's walk-in freezer on my first job, but her rationale must have been, "We don't have a walk-in freezer. He'll be fine."
I worked there for three years.
The first year, I took off for the summer to go back home.
The third year, ... I somehow lucked out and had a week off for family vacation or something.
So the second year was the only time I faced the full-fledged Hell of Inventory Season.

The assistant manager was in charge of inventory and to say she took those responsibilities a little too seriously is like Fox News might be the teensiest lop-sided in their reporting and not so balanced as they'd like to think.
With her ubiquitous pant suit and sneaker combinations, her stout physique and slight waddle to her walk, the guys in receiving took to calling her Peng -- short for penguin.
After book rush one semester, she ambled through, saw me reading, and insisted that I break down boxes and put them in the recycling bin. Never mind that is pouring down rain. Another worker came by as I was finishing it up.
"Why are you doing that? It's raining."
"Peng told me to. Or at least I guess she did. All I really heard was 'Waa waa waa.'" That was supposed to be a Burgess Meredith noise. Anyway.

Inventory was a summer-long affair. We would work in pairs. One person calling out the number of items while they other recorded the information on a slips of paper that looked like fat book marks and were color-coded according to the department.
Peng ordered Ivan from Supplies and me to work on book bags while she demonstrated the process to a group of other workers.
Oh my word.
Ivan and I caught the worst case of Church Giggles -- you know when you really shouldn't laugh, and you just start for no damn reason -- I have ever had.
So we were trying to count these book bags but kept cracking up so bad and so loud that Peng came back over and shouted at us, "Inventory. Is Not! A laughing! Matter!"
"Yeah, Ivan," I said, trying to control myself.
Biting our cheeks, we somehow made it long enough without laughing for Peng to be satisfied with our Inventory reverence.

On another day, I was paired with a girl from customer service -- Katherine? -- and we were working our way through the Gifts department portion of the warehouse. Each portion of the shelves had a corresponding gold-colored ticket, but we ran out a few times and had to ask Patsy -- the Gifts manager -- for more.
"Patsy's got the golden ticket! Patsy's got the golden ticket!" we sang.
Oh that apparently did not set well with Peng who must have yelled at Patsy.
A few minutes later, as Katherine and I counted decapitated bulldawg heads you could hang on your wall, a hand shot out through the boxes, knocking several to the floor, and grabbed my wrist.
I yelped, but then I saw Patsy looking at me from her side of the shelf.
"Oh Will," she whispered. "You musn't be so loud." She glanced to her right and left in case Peng were watching. "I've gotta go." She gave my wrist a reassuring squeeze. "I'll talk to you later."

The next day, Katherine and I were pulled to a different section that Peng was overseeing personally and where we again ran out of space on a ticket.
Without singing -- I knew enough not to do that anymore -- we found Peng and asked for another ticket.
She turned to another department manager and shook her head. "It's just like being at home. Every runs to me. I never get a break." She loved to play the victim and not as a joke, but I didn't realize that. She was always serious about it.
"I'm only asking for a ticket. Just one little thing," I said facetiously and thinking I had matched her tone.
Oh no.
That was a mistake.
"Do you want my job?" she started yelling at me.
I didn't get the joke anymore, so I was a bit caught off guard.
"Do you want my job?"
"Um... um..."
"Well, you would be next to Mr. Bryant," Katherine said helpfully.
"Good point," I said.
"Ok, so I'll wait for your answer later today," Peng said and stormed off. Or did her best impression of storming off as she could on her stumpy legs.
Katherine and I went back to work and after a few minutes she asked, "Are you ok?"

With no class, that's how it was all day during the summer. For Katie too. She worked in customer service.
And after the harrowing work day, we needed to relax with the nurturing, wholesome programming of ABC Family.
I think Katie started turning the tv to that channel in preparation for the Gilmore Girls later in the evening, but we quickly became fans of ABC Family's earlier programming.
We watched the Olsen twin shows. Not Full House but one of the two other series they had after that. And they didn't have two time-slots for both shows. They had one time-slot for Olsen twin goodness. They did seem to run through the entire run of one series before running the other. So it wasn't like you would see them at nine, and then the next day, they'd be fourteen.
Although really, it wouldn't be that much a continuity gap. Both shows are very similar, and not just because there's a set of twins in both of them.
"Do they have a line in their contract that says they cannot have a full set of parents on these shows?" Katie wondered, noticing one of the more glaring similarities.
Both shows also have nannies.
Or a manny in one case.
I guess that was all it took. The pitch must have been like, "Completely different show. The nanny -- get this! -- is a man."

The Olsen twins' may have had troubles comparable to inventory, but they overcame them, and if anyone ever treated that plucky twosome shabbily, you could rest assured that person would receive a comeuppance within half-an-hour.
One day, the twins' adventure centered around a fundraiser. One of them, Twin 1?, was rather emphatically coaching some of her helpers.
"No! Those leads are only for closers!" She shouted. Something seemed familiar about her speech, but maybe it was just the similar, shrieking harangue Peng had subjected me to earlier.
ABC was written on the chalkboard behind the twin. "Always. Be. Closing," she said, swatting the board with a yardstick.
"Oh my God!" I said. I remembered where I'd heard that. "The Olsen Twins are alluding to Glengary Glenross. The Olsen Twins know of David Mamet!"
Katie laughed. "Maybe someone the writing staff?"
"Yeah. Some frustrated English graduate wound up writing for the Olsen twins show, and this is his little joke."
We spent the rest of the afternoon in much better spirits, thinking of other allusions to shoe-horn into an Olsen Twins' episode.

After the Olsen twins' show, S Club 7 came on. Like the Olsen show and like Power Rangers, if my cousin Colin's video and toy collection is any indication, but that came on too early for Katie and me to get into, S Club 7 comes in many iterations but the core synopsis held true: an all-British version of the Monkees.
There was one where they were the cheap entertainment at a Florida Spring Break rat trap.
There was the season where the gang tried to break into Hollywood.
And there was the big new one that was premiering that August where the gang was on tour in Spain. ABC Family promoted the shit out of that.
For example, there was one promotional spot that had the following mini-scene:
Blond bandmember explaining who they are: We're a band from England.
The gang breaks down old school.
Spanish guy who just wants to be left alone: You sing like that, you banned in Spain too.
Oh S Club 7! You are a treasure.

Those persevering Brits wouldn't be held down by inventory. They'd sing a poppy tune and kick inventory's ass. Although Peng would probably be very upset by all the singing and happiness.

S Club 7 had a very distinctive editing style. Many of the scenes seemed to last a bit too long, and the characters literally just stared at each other waiting for the scene break until someone would blurt out some totally random fact.
"Jo hates mayonnaise," Bradley would shout and point at Jo accusingly.
Then the scene break. An S and a 7 superimposed on one another would flash on the screen and twirl about, and you would hear the band cheerily singing, "EEEsssss Cluuuub."

ABC Family also farms out parcels of air time to religious programs that DO NOT necessarily reflect the views of ABC Family. Pat Robertson's Living the Life and the 700 Club appear on ABC Fam as does the occasional James Hagee program.
One time the Reverend Hagee interviewed the author of the Christian sex book: Intimate and Unashamed. Basically, the book said men have to initiate everything and should be on top.
Hey, everyone remembers the story of Lilith, Adam's first wife. She wanted to be on top, and the next thing she knows, she's the mother of all demons.
At one point in the interview, Hagee said, "Praise God! He knows what you want and need and will pour it out for you from the Heavens in abundance."
I thought about it a moment. "Katie, did he just say, 'Hallelujah! It's Raining Men'?"
"I think that's exactly what he said. We should go out tonight."

But yeah. Once classes started back up, I lost track of ABC Family. I never did find out what happened to the gang in Spain. And that was also my sole summer fling with inventory. Ugh.
... Um... but yeah. That's it. I don't have anything else to say about summer flings.
Eeeessss Cluuuuub!