Peering through a fence, passed a horse wearing a pink bridle,
I'm looking east at the factory in Oklahoma City where I worked for a time in college.

This is nothing new. Sometimes, we cannot escape the irony of life.

One fall while attending college, I took a part-time job in a factory in Oklahoma City. I worked five days a week from 330 to 730 p.m. For the times, I made great money. After taxes, I drew $140.00 a week.

I worked assembling a variety of products for i’m-not-sure-what. I lacked the talent required to successfully apply epoxy to tiny little plastic disks that fit over something, and when the products I worked on were returned, they moved me to a different job on the line.

I started out operating an electric screwdriver. I got really fast at fastening backplates onto stuff. Within a few months, I moved up the line to the coveted tester position. I even got zapped a few times testing products. Thrilling, I say!

All the factory workers were full time with the exception of six college students. The factory decided to try something new that fall and hire a few part time workers on the evening shift. Some of the employees resented us and treated us like we thought we were members of some privileged class generation (X). They’d ask us what we were studying in school and what we were going to do with our lives. When we answered them, they'd scoff. They’d make snide remarks about "Russian Literature" or "International Relations." They'd dismiss us as book-smart and street-stupid.

They weren’t all jerks, but the jerks were louder and thus, harder to ignore. Some of the people I worked with were very kind and brilliantly funny. I still remember all their jokes. Some were backward, and some just liked to act backward pronouncing words like "buffet", "buff-it."

Some were smarter than I'll ever be, and most were very tough. One woman, a boss-lady, was built like a house and walked like a horse. She rode a motorcycle and every time I came face-to-face with her I felt like a gnat on the horizon. She scared me to death - almost as much as my first mother-in-law. Hahahahahahaha.

Looking back, I can’t blame them for being a little bitter. The facts were pretty cruel. We were doing part-time what they were doing for a living, and we got the same benefits they got -- a turkey, ham and a week’s pay at Christmas, health insurance and a week of paid vacation every year. I'm still not sure how I landed such a great job, but I did and I was very thankful for it.

The employees we worked with eventually knew we would all move on. We would graduate college and go become nurses or political scientists or something. In reality, the traditional Generation X career trajectory was underwhelming, at best. I, for one, spent my first summer out of college sitting at a desk taping car rental coupons to paper so someone else could put them on microfiche. I briefly considered faking my death so I wouldn't have to pay back my students loans, but I thought jail might actually be worse than that job, so I didn't do it.

At any rate, we would escape the factory and its free turkeys, even if it meant we took desk jobs that paid less. I remember one day when some people were giving me a hard time, a woman I worked with on the line told me keep at it. In her gravely voice she told me I was going to make something of my life. She hated factory work, but accepted it as her lot in life.

For years, every time I was anywhere near that factory, I’d go out of my way to drive by it, probably looking for that woman, or the girl they thought I was or who I used to be or shadows of people I loved then, gone now in one form or another. I remember once, 10 years after I’d left, driving by and locking eyes with some of the people with whom I’d worked. We exchanged these mutual expressions of isolation. Our paths would never cross again, save for my pathetic drive-bys.

The great irony is that mine was a blue-collar childhood. My father would have given anything to have a job as good as that part-time gig. In fact, the year, 1989, was a hard year in Oklahoma. Both my parents lost their jobs and moved away. And, what all those fools who gave me a hard time never knew was that I sent half my paycheck home every week.

You know, it just occurred to me. My dad was the sailor who carried me out of that factory. My path to college was paved with his hard-luck bones.