#Betty and barnie hill

[klonw]

Betty and Barney Hill

[austinpanda]

Dad Letter 103121

31 October, 2021

Dear Dad--

Happy Halloween! By the time you read this, of course, I’ll be hard at work in the casino. I don’t know what work is going to be like at the casino on Sunday, because I expect a lot of my coworkers will be dressed up in strange, intricate costumes, while I’ll be upstairs in the revenue audit department, just working my ass off, all while dressed like a normal person. I don’t know when I made the switch from one who participates, to Big Chief No Fun of the I Don’t Wanna tribe, but I’m definitely in the latter group, nonetheless. I suppose if I had unlimited resources, I could create a costume and wear it while I audit the previous day’s food and beverage revenue, but the idea seems kind of silly. I don’t even know what I would wear. I know they have little lasers that fit in the palm of your hand now, and shoot three lasers out of each palm. Not sure who I could dress up to be with hand lasers. Maybe Jesus? Making those miraculous loaves and fishes with his hand lasers?

It makes me sad that I’m coming to the end of my two-month scary movie marathon, because some of the movies are truly old friends at this point, and I’m about to enter the period when I won’t see them again for another 10 months. I like watching Fire in the Sky, the true story about the guy who got abducted by a UFO in the 70s, and The UFO Incident, the true story about Betty and Barny Hill, who got abducted by a UFO in 1961. I call these “true stories,” but that’s only accurate for a given value of “true,” I suppose. The most likely explanation is that none of these people were abducted by aliens, but the little kid in me likes to speculate on just how terrifying and fascinating it would be if it were, indeed, 100% true. And either way, both movies have some very good scenes. The UFO Incident, in particular, scared the SHIT out of me every time it was on TV while I was growing up.

But the fact that October 31st is followed immediately by November 1st means several important things: the entire country switches into holiday mode, with the approach of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, and I switch from my Halloween video playlist to my Christmas video playlist. You might think a holiday movie playlist centered on Christmas would be a lot longer than a movie playlist centered on Halloween, but the opposite is true! The size of the horror genre far, far outweighs even the appreciable mass of Christmas films. By way of example: There are currently 36 movies in the Halloween franchise (I made that number up.) and only one It’s a Wonderful Life.

Trying to think if anything more meaningful or important has happened in my life of late. The only thing I can think of is this: When I went to my last doctor’s visit, it was ostensibly a followup about my blood sugar. But he asked how I’d been doing, and because I feel it’s important to be forthright with your doctor, I told him I hadn’t been doing worth a shit. I was miserable, I’d tried to quit smoking, which had made me exponentially more miserable, then given up on my attempt to quit, which only made me more miserable, plus a failure at quitting, plus a lot more broke, because I’m buying cigarettes again. By the time I was finished describing just how bad the depression had become, the doctor decided it was probably better to focus on making sure the depression didn’t drive me anywhere dangerous, and perhaps we could worry about the blood sugar next time I visit. In the end, he referred me to social services, and said he’d have someone call me to talk about how I was coping with shit.

After a couple/three weeks went by, this was the day before yesterday, I got a call from a nice lady from social services, and she wanted to know how I was doing, and she wanted to talk about what kind of help she could give, if I still needed some. And I thought about it, and I realized I no longer needed any help in that area. And why? Because my stupid employer gave me a raise. And by the way, no one, especially me, likes how transactional that makes my ability to appreciate life. (If I’m making enough money, I can appreciate it. If not, then I can’t.) But making enough money doesn’t just activate the ecstasy machine all by itself. It’s not about having a bigger paycheck. It’s about: Now I don’t have to worry about affording food. Now I don’t have to worry about keeping the car running. Now I don’t have to worry how I’m going to pay for any of a dozen things, because I’m now making enough money to cover my expenses. When you’re making as little as I’m making ($14/hr.) the extra $3 per hour will really mean the difference between a nervous, threadbare existence and one where I can make enough that I don’t have to think about survival constantly, and I can focus on improving myself, like with hand lasers, e.g. There’s a reason it’s called a living wage.

Also it was good getting a visit from Stacy, and showing her Bangor, and Stephen King’s house. Anyway, by the time the social worker called, I had also just received an extra-large paycheck, as part of my sign-on bonus. (They take the $1000 sign-on bonus and spread it over nine months, in three installments.) So when the social called, I was temporarily non-impoverished, I was about to be permanently non-impoverished, and none of my stupid teeth were hurting. So I told the social worker lady, “You know what? I’m good!” And I explained that I’ve just received a raise that will enable me to make ends meet, and I’m not in tooth pain, and if there are only a limited number of social worker slots to go around, why not give mine to someone who needs it more? She was happy to hear that things had improved, and reminded me to let my doc know if I needed their help in the future.

Here’s another recent event of small interest. Where I work, there’s a long, very heavily-travelled hallway. It’s got the warehouse/loading dock at one end, the employee marketplace, break room, elevators, the main security station, and it branches off to the casino floor. They play muzak in this space, but it’s modern pop music, so it’s all banal, auto-tuned bullshit that I don’t really recognize as enjoyable music, for I am old, and I only like Tchaikovsky and "Brown Eyed Girl." But there was one song that got stuck in my head; I’d never heard it before. And the part that got stuck in my head featured the lyrics, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” which is part of the lyrics of pretty much every goddamn song ever played on the radio, so I was unable to find the song after lots and lots of searching the internet.

Then I installed the Shazam app on my phone. This is a free little application that you load, press a button, and hold your phone up. Your phone listens to the song playing, and identifies it, along with the artist, and the other song info, and offers to play the song for you. (It’s just this kind of little-while-still-huge thing that makes me love technology so much.) After waiting literally weeks to hear the song again, I was walking down the long hallway at work, and I realized my song was playing. So I grabbed my phone, loaded Shazam, hit the button, and the song is called “Same” by an artist called Josie Dunne. It is not a very good song. The lyrics mention pushing her cart to aisle 4, and any time lyrics mention shit like that, you know that (1) they only did it to rhyme with a previous line, and (2) this song isn’t going to offer much in the memorable lyrics department. But oh man, that “I love you, I love you, I love you,” part is sure pretty.

More dispatches from Bangor next week. I’m about to take a shower using a body wash made by Old Spice with a fragrance called, “Bearglove.” I’m not sure I understand what connotations they were going for, with a name like that, but it smells kind of like apples. So...note to self, whatever bearglove is, it smells like fruit. All my love to you both!