I quit.

I quit my job this week.

I had been at the job I quit for 111 months. That’s along time. However, during my tenure at this company, I worked in 35 countries, over two separate periods of time (93-99 and 03-06), and for five different corporate entities. I worked for an Inc. (US), a K.K. (Japan), a HK Ltd. (Hong Kong), a Ltd. (UK) and for another subsidiary of the same company in the US and Canada.

I’ve had a lot of jobs. For most, I was an “employee at will”. For others I possessed an employment contract. I’ve cooked doughnuts, sorted checks, researched, coded, sold, fixed, maintained, supported, directed, cared for, managed and shoveled. I have been able to, and have, quit each of these jobs (except from those from which I got fired). The one unique job in this litany was one which involved “court-ordered, non-pay-restitution”. The non-pay-court-order restitution was the result of a vodka-fueled incident when I was about 14 or 15 years old.

I remember it distinctly (maybe). It was certainly the first time I had ever been drunk. We drank Screwdrivers. This was a mistake as Screwdrivers taste like Orange Juice. If I had started with Jim Beam or beer, I definitely wouldn’t have passed out in the woods.

Earlier in the day, my friend and I had been out riding, me on the 3-wheeler I had won in the ice-fishing contest. We came around a corner, about 5 acres from my house, and we came across a bear. Now, this wasn’t very odd as the population density of bears in my “neighborhood” was about that of humans. But nonetheless, we spun and rode the other direction.

Unbeknownst to me, the DNR had been called earlier about a rouge bear in the “neighborhood” and they had set bear traps. Apparently, the rouge bear had killed a goat earlier and knocked over a garbage can and generally been a bad bear.

We made our Screwdrivers out of vodka stolen from my friends’ dad’s liquor cabinet and drank them from Tupperware containers on the porch of my friend’s “double wide” mobile home. It was very near the site where we spotted the rouge bear.

And after about an hour, we began to stagger the quarter mile home. We made it about half way. I do remember feeling very comfortable sharing one arm of a jacket with my friend in the other arm, all while lying on the ground in the woods about 3 meters from the dirt road’s edge. It may have been the most comfortable sleep I’ve ever experienced.

Now this all wouldn’t have been so bad but for the fact that my Dad and Mom were away and my aunt was “watching” me. She freaked out and called the cop. Mind you, this is not a “cops” situation as Moose Lake only had one cop car. And he was a neighbor, living about 3 houses away. And then the volunteer fire department got involved.

While we were happily sharing one-arm-each of our coat and puking merrily in the woods, the cops and the volunteer fire department were convinced that we were both caught in some massive bear trap (picture above).

And that was my first drunk experience, which led to my first court appearance (for underage drinking), which led to the non-pay-court-ordered restitution. It was by far my worst job ever. Because I went to school full time, and worked at a normal job, and played hockey full time, I had to clean bathrooms beginning at midnight at the Moose Lake State Hospital. Nothing like cleaning bathrooms for a bunch of retarded people.

And I couldn't even quit...