2.11.02 – open season on silly putty

spent my day off working with the local stage hands’ union on the load-out of the auto show. the ford rep i worked for today was pretty cool; after momentarily flinching when he saw that his team of three burly, scruffy men had been augmented by a young woman, he got over it and even gave the obligatory girl-job (scratching 2001 decals off and replacing them with 2002 decals) to one of the guys and had me work on loading out the heavy stuff. last week during the load-in i worked for buick and the rep was pissed that he had two women assigned to his team and assumed (loudly) that us “gals” were the reason that our team couldn’t lift a 48718842-pound stage out of the shipping crate without the assistance of a fork-lift. a lot of the guys i work with are pretty cool, but some of the crusty old timers can be kinda sexist. working these union gigs causes me to become more butch the instant i walk in the door.

one of the displays we were taking down today was a turntable about 20′ in diameter, made of steel and iron and wood. we had about half of the platform pieces unloaded when i started to rotate the turntable and accidentally grabbed the iron rim from the underside. it turned faster than i’d expected and before i could move my right hand it ran right over one of the wheels that the turntable was resting on. it was out the other side before i even had time to yelp. it hurt, but not as much as i expected it to (always a bad sign) and for a minute or two i was afraid to take off my glove and inspect the damage. when i got brave and pulled the glove off, my fingers were red and throbbing but not crushed flat like i’d imagined. this turntable weighed thousands of pounds, even with half the platforms taken off. it was the equivalent of having my fingers run over by a volkswagon bug. tonight my fingers feel a little bruised but are otherwise fine and i’m feeling more than a little lucky to be typing. it’s amazing how resilient the body can be sometimes.

later, hannah & i went to the mall to buy silly putty. the guy at KBToys told us that he didn’t have it because it’s a seasonal item. when exactly is silly putty season, anyway?