Never the Same IC#11 Part 5 In a Daze of Future Passed

Kirk lived the wastes of potential futures he had lost to the winds of time.

 

Kirk couldn’t grasp what he could have been because he felt so alone, an outsider to the human race, unloved, and immature, feeling much like a lost, orphaned child in an adult’s form. Depressed, aimless, and jobless, Kirk couldn’t find a way forward to become something, someone with a respectable future; truthfully, in his state he didn’t know if he really wanted a way forward. Would he have been better off if he hadn’t wasted a year in college? Did he really want to become productive? Did he want to become a responsible adult? Will he ever be whole as a person? How much time will he waste doing nothing significant? Who or what will help Kirk re-assume his destiny?

            Cue: “Sentimental” https://youtu.be/06ITNnBRveU

With gloomy dark thoughts percolating on how auto accident suicide would feel while quite certain that Dee would not even care in the least that he was gone, Kirk drove on without a destination. He had been down this particular asphalt road before and definitely this dark psychological road as well. Literally, he had been down both these roads far too many times during his young life and if asked where he’s been so far, Kirk couldn’t answer.    

Somehow eventually finding himself there, Kirk slowly drove past Dee’s house briefly gazing in that direction, but he knew well enough not to stare, innately troubled by what he might see. He remembered the times he had spent there with her.

Was Dee sitting out on the porch with a new guy like they used to?

Kirk didn’t want to see that, though luckily, he didn’t see anything he didn’t want to see. He continued to the big park to cruise past the picnic shelter with the very table he and Dee sat on when they happily went steady and later when they sadly broke up. Kirk remembered just then that he had forgotten his sunglasses when the bright sun hurt his eyes. He knuckled out the corners of his eyes. Kirk pressed on to nowhere particular.

Rolling downhill through town, Kirk just let the Baja Bug putta-put-put along at a leisurely pace held back from going too fast in a low gear. Back when he attended high school, he’d occasionally hang out at the town park shelter on Main Street to eat a sub and watch people drive by. On the other hand, back when he drove the old noisy Blue Bomb, he always recognized the kids hanging out there at the shelter, and he’d show off with various vehicular antics. Now, the kids that hung out there Kirk didn’t recognize at all. Despite the Bug’s loud exhaust and bright pink paint job no one raised their heads to look nor care Kirk existed on the same earthly plane as them. 

Kirk continued round and about the village, though didn’t know where he was going. Eventually, he decided to head home but changed his mind not wanting to deal with his overbearing father at that particular time. Kirk felt sure that where ever his father might be working when Kirk arrived, he’d show up to give Kirk the third-degree interrogation. He’d start right in with the pointed questions.

So! How much are they going to pay you? What do you mean they didn’t hire you? What did you tell them that made them not want to hire you? Did you actually talk to Wade? What do you mean that you got too much and the wrong training for them, how is that possible? What do you mean they weren’t hiring?

Kirk would have to accentuate the point that Wade had told his father that they weren’t hiring which would just mean more accusations from his father and/or denials. Kirk imagined all that likely hoopla from his father and just couldn’t deal with him right now, so Kirk decided to go the back way to his brother-in-law’s garage to see what he had going on. He didn’t really expect Mike to be there because the last he had heard since before coming home from college Mike had a mechanic job at the Ford dealer. Even if Mike wasn’t there, Kirk thought it would be easier for him to sit and talk to his sister, despite the whole family’s dysfunctional relationship, than going home and face his father.  It seemed that even though Mike was an excellent mechanic in all sorts of auto repair, he had a hard time holding down a long-term position. Maybe he was hard to work with though Kirk couldn’t attest to that sort of problem in Mike’s home garage.

 After Mike’s marriage to Kirk’s oldest sister there were mumblings about Mike having a wife or an ex back in California, but no one really knew for sure. Mike bought and sold lots of cars apparently for a profit and took on all kinds of odd jobs from plumbing to electrical in houses to cleaning floors in large department stores. Kirk’s father imagined out loud in hushed banters that Mike probably sent a large amount of money back to California, but no one, not even Kirk’s outspoken father said anything more, and Kirk’s sister never said a word.  

Mike and Kirk had a congenial working relationship. Kirk never thought Mike as a friend or buddy by any means, but they usually got along well enough to get things like the car projects done. Mike, after all, had loaned Kirk his first two cars which Mike got back in poorer condition than when he lent them out so beyond a doubt, Kirk owed him. Kirk did attain a good basic automotive knowledge, though mostly theory from his two schools, and Mike didn’t really teach Kirk anything specifically. Kirk picked up some skills like welding and fabrication by watching, other skills by trial and error with errors meaning do-overs, and the best and easiest way to learn anything, osmosis. Yeah, there is such a thing, look it up.

When Kirk approached the garage, he suddenly smelled acrid smoke and a shock of dread coursed through his body. Then, he heard noises within that alleviated his shock somewhat. Rushing in to see what he smelled like it was burning, he found Mike had another project car in the garage and saw sparks flying and smoke rising from its far side. Mike worked hard welding a replacement quarter panel on a car.

Kirk admitted that Mike could replace metal panels on a car’s body with such smoothly welded seams they didn’t need much body filler afterward. Kirk had tried his hand at brazing a couple door panels earlier on, but he couldn’t say the results proved all that impressive. That’s when he learned not to wear open-topped boots while brazing or welding because the molten metal dropped right into his boots and burned all the way down to his feet. It took those couple times of third-degree burnt flesh and kicking his boots off to get the hot metal off his feet to learn his lesson. Kirk wore scars on both insteps to show his ignorance. No doubt Kirk remained a slow learner on some common-sense things.

Apparently, because family news traveled fast, Mike heard that Kirk had gone to see about a job at the tractor dealer, and so asked Kirk how it went. Kirk, still feeling down about that and everything else told Mike not all that well because they were in fact not hiring and his father knew that fact beforehand but still insisted Kirk go and talk to the man. Mike never seemed to comment on these sorts of family issues so both remained silent on it. Kirk just thought he’d hang out there at the garage for a while to try and screw his head back on straight.

The car Mike worked on had some rust problems that he was obviously taking care of at the moment. The interior looked great with a floor-mounted four-speed and console. Kirk asked Mike about the engine as he popped the hood to check out the small V-8. Mike said the engine burned a little oil, but otherwise besides being filthy ran pretty well. Seeing Kirk had free time so it seemed, Mike promised a cut for Kirk from selling the car if he were so inclined to help on the car.

Kirk shrugged and simply said, “sure.”

Kirk wasn’t all that motivated to work on much of anything, and maybe Mike picked up on what Kirk preferred to work on and his present sour mental state. He suggested, if Kirk was so inclined, to pull the heads off the engine so they could do a valve job. Mike had determined that the oil burning problem stemmed from loose valve guides, so told Kirk they could knurl the valve guides and do a valve job to solve the problem. Kirk agreed and dove right in pulling the intake manifold and heads. Of course, Kirk had his distaste of getting filthy, such was the state of the engine, so Kirk used several hand towels to repeatedly scrub the grease off his hands. Anyway, Kirk got the heads off the engine, and they got the valve work done. When they returned from the machine shop, Kirk began putting the heads back on, which happily were much cleaner than when he took them off.

One evening while working in the garage, Kirk sat on the car’s fender, feet inside the engine compartment while reassembling the rocker arms on one bank of the V-8 engine. The process seemed to progress at a leisurely pace, as that’s how Kirk liked working for it seemed if he ever hurried things would soon go bad. So, he installed the rockers one by one giving them a slight tightening afterward, good enough to initially start the engine. The rockers would get a final precise adjustment after the engine ran and warmed up.

Anyway, sitting there on the fender a flying insect began buzzing the overhead light. Not of any real concern to Kirk, who noticed but went on with his task at hand. Then, the bug began dive bombing Kirk’s head. When it really began annoying him, he swatted at the it with his oily hands but never made contact. How bothersome is a flying bug around your head when you’re seriously working?

The bug bounced off his hat a couple times, and Kirk swatted it away, but the bug really liked or hated Kirk sitting there and wasn’t about to give up. All of a sudden, zoompt! the bug flew right into Kirk’s ear! Really maddening, it stayed there in his ear still buzzing away. Kirk groaned, yelled, and clamped his hand over his ear with the bug buzzing away in ear causing excruciatingly pain! He swiveled off the fender to stand up and found that with the bug in his ear seemed to have caused a problem with his balance. Despite the oily fingers, he stuck his little finger in his ear and wiggled it about. HE leaned over and popped his ear a couple tome with the flat of his palm. Yeow! It suddenly really hurt. By then, Mike noticed Kirk’s problem. Together, they went inside to have Kirk’s sister look in his ear.

After looking in hi ear and determining the bug wasn’t about to give up, they decided that maybe if they shined a bright light in Kirk’s ear the bug would crawl out toward the light. They took a powerful flashlight, turned it on, and stuck it up against Kirk’s ear. It didn’t help, the bug still buzzed off and on which was deafening and sickening to Kirk who got woozy and tipsy. He sat down holding his ear with tears in his eyes. Mike thought it was rather funny though Kirk couldn’t find any humor in the situation. His sister seemed serious enough about it and decided to call the medical emergency help line at the hospital. Easy enough, they provided a simple enough answer.

His sister grabbed a bottle of baby oil and held it under hot water for a few minutes. Then, having Kirk crane his neck over so his ear was up, she dripped some oil in his ear. After a couple air bubbles emerged from his ear and the oil ran in all the way to his eardrum the bug stopped, apparently dead. Kirk shivered from the feel of the oil in his ear besides the deep-down ache he felt on the side of his head. His sister stuck a cotton ball in Kirk’s ear and called the family doctor. Seeing it was after hours, the doctor couldn’t see Kirk, and unless he was vomiting or otherwise sick, Kirk could go in the next day.

After an ear-aching night, Kirk saw the doctor. Actually, a little smug about the whole strange circumstance the doctor peered into Kirk’s ear. The doctor said that the ear canal was partially swollen shut because of the irritation caused by the bug. After a little probing with fine, narrow forceps the doctor pulled the offending bug from Kirk’s ear and showed it to the victim. The doctor said it looked like some kind of stinging insect like a small wasp. Kirk thought it had felt worse at one point like he had been stung. The doctor shrugged, gave him some drops and told him to keep a cotton ball in his ear for a few days to keep air from the inside of his ear. Kirk dealt with the dull throbbing ache in the side of his head for a couple weeks. Such proved Kirk’s strange luck. If Kirk didn’t have bad luck…

Well, time passed. So, with nothing better to do with his time without a real job, Kirk decided to take on other jobs Mike offered such as department store floor cleaning. He had no idea how Mike got involved with these jobs, but that was the nature of Mike making money. Of course, these cleaning jobs were basically after store hours to the early morning. This experience was Kirk’s first taste of night shift work, but he didn’t like it one iota.

Kirk did learn some menial occupational skills by loading and driving the power floor scrubber. At first, he couldn’t take the smell of the strong-smelling, toxic concentrated floor cleaner which gave him instant headaches, but eventually, he managed. He’d carefully drive the scrubber up and back down an aisle and then follow up by hand mopping any cruddy water the power scrubber left behind. Directly, he’d move on to another aisle and then another. After the aisles dried, Mike followed up by applying wax and then running a buffer on the floor. They covered a lot of floors in a single night and usually finished a large store in three nights. Kirk earned money, no doubt, but he sure didn’t feel all that satisfied by the manual labor.

Kirk always drank an Orange Fanta when taking a break from floor cleaning. The Fanta cans had little stupid sayings printed on the inside of the cans even though very difficult to read. They tended to go like: “Is this real life or just a Fanta-Sea?” “Don’t you just wanta Fanta?”  “I think you are Fanta-stick.” or “Fanta will make you Fantastic.” These saying just made Kirk feel worse, and he sure didn’t feel all that fantastic during these, his dark and depressed days.  

Taking Mike up on his offered jobs, Kirk got into offered plumbing and electrical jobs. Hot water heater installations seemed to Kirk like fast and easy money though in some cases the installations in the suburbs were in the darkest, dankest locations imaginable. Fighting through tight crawl spaces inhabited by mice and rats, and Kirk sure didn’t enjoy crawling about dark dank rodent infested basements and crawlspaces. He thought he’d like nice clean jobs, but he had no idea what those jobs might be considering his training and experience. When alone, he'd do a lot of sighing.

After dreaming and playing with toy farm equipment as a child and the same with hot rods as a young teen, Kirk began fostering doubts in his ability to be enthusiastically or even occupationally involved in either of those pursuits. He had no idea where he headed with his future though undoubtedly, he continued heading into the nadir of his life.

Kirk thought about checking back and applying for work at the business where he worked as a vacu-former as a teenager or even going back to work at the local campground where he worked off and on as a young teenager. They always say you can’t look or go back in songs and literature which had long before burnt deeply into Kirk’s psyche, but what could he do? His father wanted his money back and Kirk needed to move on and do something worthwhile, but with depressed thoughts crowding out any constructive thinking, Kirk remained lost within his own mind. Could life for him get any worse? Could he, would he ever, find his way?

Like every other night when Kirk went to bed, his dark thoughts turned back to Dee. Lying there in bed, his thoughts always lightened a bit when he remembered how happy and full he felt alongside her despite knowing all that had passed him by. Dee was just like his job opportunities�"you can never go back. Nevertheless, Kirk whispered her name into the dark along with an entreaty.

Will Dee ever see the wrongs in her ways of leaving me? Will I ever see her again? Maybe? Please?

Cue: “I’m a Loser” https://youtu.be/f70Z3cvrQd0