Dona E. Bowens

Yesterday was my first day back subbing at my alma mater Archbishop Hoban High School, the school LeBron should have chosen to attend, but already, I digress. Kicking back in the teacher’s lounge a coworker asked the question that must be asked during the first week of school, “How was your summer?”

“Bizarre,” I said without hesitation. This caused my coworker to guffaw and say, “That’s some truth right there!”

Truth, indeed, and seriousness. It was a bizarre summer at my new summer job. Last summer, I spent chilling and getting paid at a golf course. I would’ve returned to the golf course, and went through all the re-hiring steps to do so. But then I flunked out because I like to partake of the LEGAL devil’s lettuce, but if you want a city government job, which the golf course is, legal or not, you cannot partake of the lettuce. And Akron has a 33 year-old mayor! I’m sure he’s got gummy goo stuck between his teeth as I type this. Whatever, dudes. I ain’t gonna fight the power, I’m just going to roll on to my next summer gig.

Opened Indeed and opened my portfolio career file and started looking for something to do this summer. “Portfolio career? What’s that you ask?” All credit to my cousin Taylor for this one. I don’t know if she coined the term, I hope she did. She sure as hell introduced the phrase to me. Let me explain it this way; in my portfolio career file I can teach English or Spanish if you’re desperate. You need a proofreader? I got you. Is it comedic copy that you desire? I’ve done that, too. A little editing work? Yup. Sure I’ll rewrite your cover letter for $50/hour. Substitute teacher, uh huh. And reaching waaaaaaay back in my portfolio is a little social work and/or psychology. I’m kicking myself for the umpteenth time right now for never taking that zamboni driving job while I was in graduate school. Man! How many have that in their portfolio career file? Regret! Thy name is Zamboni!

I took a job in social work because they were the first to contact me. I should have known that this job was going to be a fucking disaster when they couldn’t even get the first telephone interview together. The HR woman called me early, which made me happy because I wanted to get the interview out of the way so I could cultivate a little lettuce, if you know what I mean. <insert rim shot here> But then this happened:

Hello? Can you hear me?

Huh? What? Are you there?

I’m here!

<CLICK>

I spent an hour trying to reconnect and it kept going to voicemail. Emails went unanswered as well. I starting thinking, “Oh lawd! She was driving when she called. I hope she’s ok.” I don’t mean to be Dona Downer but it was just odd. Get disconnected through nobody’s fault and then just keep on pushing as if to say, “Must be fate! Guess you’re not supposed to hire this person!” I should have listened to fate because this job…wow.

Anyway, the HR person showed up three days later writing, “Ahhh, I’m touched that you were worried. Can we reschedule?”

Ooooookaaaaay. No explanation. Should she have explained? I think so. “At that very moment my phone died and I’ve spent the last 3 days covering for a vacationing colleague.” I would’ve been real cool with something like that. But no. Got passed the phone interview and was invited to meet the HR rep face to face. Well her and her 5 year-old daughter. Both of them dressed in tank tops, shorts and flip flops for my second interview. And there I was that morning debating if it would be ok to show up in sandals with my very casual suit-ish ensemble. I mean, I was wearing a lightweight jacket over checked peggings. (Pants+leggings=peggings)

HR rep explained that her daughter hadn’t been feeling well that morning and so couldn’t go to camp or whatever she did in the summer. I thought it a good thing that a company allowed employees to “bring their daughters to work” any old day of the week and not just on the designated day. This is the human services field after all, showing empathy for humanity. I let the tank tops and flip flops go.

So that’s how I got a job working in a residence for people with developmental disabilities. But not before completing 40 hours of training. I didn’t mind because they were paying me to train and it’d been 20 years since I’d done such work. Used to work Sundays at a residency for people with schizophrenia when I lived in DC. The easiest money I ever made. My job required me to cook and eat with the residents and point at the “Sunday” slot on their pill box and say, “Take that one.” After that, we’d watch some TV and talk shit with each other. Once, a blizzard came through and snowed me in 3 days at the residency. We had a good old time. We ate the house down, and considering the circumstances, I slept on the couch in the staff room and dreamed of the overtime I was banking.

Boy have things changed in 2 decades. Now, I was trained to administer medicine properly. I was trained how to remove, clean and reinsert catheters. I leaned over to the woman next to me and said, “This is intense. I don’t think there’s anyone at the house where I’m assigned with a catheter.”

“But that I can change,” she assured me. “We sent one of our residents to a routine doctor’s appointment, and she came back with a catheter. It happens.”

I hoped it wouldn’t happen to me because, heeeey, listennnnn…let me just say this, I have my limits and sticking catheters into penises or pussies is one of them. I mean? Am I really qualified? Seriously. Then when the lesson (with a video!) turned to how to administer medications rectally, I discovered another limit that I have. One classmate volunteered, “I prefer to make them lift a leg when I do it. Having them get on all-fours is a waste of time.”

Duly noted.

What the actual fuck had I gotten myself into? It seemed that since I had last worked in a residence, they had dropped the educational requirements (needed at least a bachelor’s back in the day), dropped the LPNs and RNs and started training the GED crowd on how to do the minor tasks of LPNs and RNs—for half the price.

“But it’s only for a summer,” I reminded myself. “Next year maybe you’ll get back to golf once they realize that they can’t find lettuce-free employees.” I wasn’t the only one who got caught in the dragnet at the golf course 😉

My first day at the residence, henceforth known as the shithouse, was a disaster beyond even my imagination. The Dude I was supposed to be caring for is 37 years-old with autism and fragile x syndrome. He can dress himself, brush his teeth and shave. He goes mute sometimes, I can relate to that, but he does speak and cracks the occasional joke. He loves him some High School Musical and plays along (so he thinks) with his guitar. His family loves him so much that they set him up in this 2 bedroom condo and hired my company to help him with those things he can’t do. What he can’t do is be alone, cook or wipe his own ass. He violated that “be alone” rule on day one when he ran out the door convinced that it was time to catch the bus that carries him to his day program. So there I am running after him in 94 degree heat, hanging on for dear life to the strap of his lunch bag that he’d slung over his shoulder before taking off. He was determined but I’m fat and I dug in my heels, leaned back on that strap and got him to stop running at least. It was a standoff that I was trying to figure out how to win. It was a risk, but knowing his prized possession to be his iPad, I said, “You know what? I’m going to run inside and play with your iPad!” I let go of the strap and ran into the house with Dude hot on my heels. Once inside, I closed and locked the door behind him hoping that locks weren’t part of his skill set.

I couldn’t get him to do anything that first day. He wouldn’t shower or shave. He wouldn’t put on his Depend underwear that he wore at night to protect his mattress from his frequent accidents. He did let me wipe his ass, however. But I chalked that up to vengeance. It wasn’t horrible, the ass wiping. But it’s not something that I’m going to add to my portfolio career.

Me and Dude got on much better as the weeks past. He learned my name. He got mad at me especially when I wouldn’t let him take 3 hours to eat dinner He got mad at me when I forced him out of his routine and made him shower as soon as he came home from program one day because, for some reason, they let him walk around with shit smears on the insides of his thighs. Didn’t they have people trained on ass wiping at the day program?

I got to know my coworkers as well. All women and all in various stages of fuckeduppedness. There was the cute girl who would announce, “I’m going out to my car to smoke a Black & Mild.” Then she’d come back in and snooze on the couch the rest of her shift. She would’ve been canned from the golf course, believe that. She told me that she knew someone on the lam for murder and then said, “I probably shouldn’t have told you that.” You think? Then there was my boss who confessed to having completed her GED just last year Congratulations! For real. Boss then spent her time avoiding going home to her boyfriend. She sat off the clock for hours, chatting with her incarcerated ex. I suppose that’s one conversation she couldn’t have at home. Then there was the trainee who spent 3 hours with me and Dude one day. I like to listen to people’s stories and trainee told me about growing up in foster-care and I commended her for surviving a situation I never could have. We exchanged numbers with a promise to meet up on day at a Chinese buffet. The first text message Trainee sent me was asking for money to help her meet her car note. My response: Block and delete.

The Dude and I knew how to work with each other 3/4 through summer when the worst day happened. He was enjoying the sumptuous dinner I’d prepared when he suddenly grabbed his ass and ran break neck for bathroom #1. I followed, grabbing a pair of rubber gloves on the way because I surmised there would be some ass wiping in the very near future. Poor Dude had explosive diarrhea and couldn’t get his ass down on the toilet before the shit was pouring out of him and onto the toilet seat.

OK. If you’re eating or weak of stomach. Now’s your chance to back away slowly. You don’t have to read everything that I write. I mean, I’d like you to. If I had to suffer, I want everyone to suffer. However, I’ll understand if you want to turn away now, because it doesn’t get better from here.

Oh man. Ohmanohmanohman! I told Dude to take off all his clothes and to run to bathroom #2 with the shower. This might have been a mistake but I didn’t know what else to do. He did strip down, as told, without dawdling. I don’t know what you know about fragile x syndrome, but one of the characteristics is large, extra large testicles. Everytime Dude moved, that ball sack acted like a pendulum of feces and just sprayed shit every-whicha-way. He took off across the hall, splattering shit as he went, into his bedroom where more shit was splattered and finally into bathroom #2 where he was hit with another wave of explosive diarrhea and missed the goddamn toilet AGAIN. AGAIN, I tell you!

Would you be questioning your life choices at this point? I was questioning life itself. Why? What was I supposed to learn from this? What could be learned from this? Don’t smoke devil’s lettuce so that the only shit you have to deal with is old white men crying when they can’t get a tee time at the golf course? Is that the lesson? Listen, devil’s lettuce is the only thing helping me with this trauma.

After fucking up every toilet in the house, Dude’s autism kicked in strong and he refused to get in the shower. I had my gloves on and my t-shirt pulled up over my nose to filter the stench as I pleaded with him, “Please, Dude. Get in the shower. Get in the shower Dude.” I had the door to the bathroom blocked with my body to keep him from making a shitty mad dash for it. Being careful not to touch him, I inched closer knowing he has personal space issues just like half the world. Each mini-step forward inched him closer to the shower. Then he stalled just at the edge of the platform asking, “Why do I need to shower? I don’t need a shower.”

Shit is dripping from those horse testicles the whole time we’re having this battle and pooling on the bath mat. Friends, I started crying and pleading to no avail. At my wits ends I finally put my gloved hands onto his shoulder and applied steady pressure. Do you understand what I’m telling you? I think that you do. Dude stumbled into the shower saying, “Ok, ok, ok,” letting me know that he’d been fucking with me the whole damned time. I took the showerhead from its perch and began hosing him down like he was a horse that just won The Shitucky Derby.

Then it was my job to clean up all the shit.

I somehow got it cleaned up. The bathrooms reeked of bleach and looked as if they’d been flooded once I was done. Scrubbed the carpets in the hall and bedroom while chanting, “They ain’t paying me enough. They CAN’T pay me enough.” Called my boss afterwards and honestly, she said all the right things. She’s too good for that place—not because of Dude. Oh no. Believe it or not, Dude is the best part of the job. The company has a culture that’s quite toxic and punitive. Every new directive is given with a threat. “This is the new policy and anyone caught out of compliance WILL BE WRITTEN UP.” It makes sense to me that, when under constant threat of write-ups and docking of pay that employees assume a fuck it attitude. I heard tales of employees throwing parties in the Dude’s home and the previous boss stole all his food before lamming it. And this is one of the “good houses” because his family is vigilant. Woe to those without someone in their corner.

So, in keeping with the company culture, I’ve decided to reenact our first meeting, when we were supposed to have the telephone interview and got disconnected. Remember that? Yeah, I’m about to disconnect without notice. Ain’t that some dastardly…shit?