An Outrageous Claim (Or: A History of My Work Study)

Sometimes people claim to be the first at something.

Richard Lewis, in Curb Your Enthusiasm, claimed to be the first to use "The ___ from Hell."

Ridiculous? Sure. Hiliarious? Absolutely.

I have few illusions that I am particularly original. I remember a series of conversations in college with The Ex where I explained that I can't believe that many (if any) ideas are really original. It was a depressing perspective that I still sort of ascribe to.

Anyway.

I went from a very small public school system to a pretty expensive private post-secondary institute. My parents did everything they could, and I am indebted to them, but we didn't have a college fund to dip into, and while some dudes were cruising around Evanston in nice cars and chick-impressive accoutrements, I was getting by with the assistance of a National Merit scholarship, school grants and loans.

And work study.

I'm no expert on what work study is or was, but I'm going to lay it out as jobs that were filled by students... and the students were paid more then they otherwise would have been because of governmental assistance.

I was work study all four years of undergrad. I dimly recall the process of selecting which positions I would apply for... it was (a) what sounded cool, and (b) what paid the most per hour.

Should I have sought something that might have, someday, helped me in a career I was interested in pursuing? Sure. But that sort of thinking is clearly beyond me, as evidenced by my life both before and since undergraduate study.

I had a pair of jobs, each of which I occupied for two years.

The second job was working in the library. My title escapes me, but my job was to take a stack of cards that represented books that were overdue... and to look in the stacks for books that were out of place. If I could not locate the books, I was to call the people with late books and give 'em a heads up. Maybe I was supposed to threaten 'em.

I currently really do NOT like talking on the phone. Unless you're a chick I'm at least semi-wild about, I really don't want to talk to you on the phone. (Exception: immediate family. Mother/father/siblings are excepted.)

This is true today, whether it's a call from my credit card company to my cell phone offering me a special offer, or a client on my office phone informing me of the latest talented Flash developer... I don't want to talk to them. Email? Sure. Meeting in person? Absolutely. Chat? I can do that.

Phones, though? They freak me out. I don't like them.

So... given that half of my job was to call people that had overdue books, and given my reluctance to call people, and given the lack of accountability... I simply didn't do that part of my job.

I'd do the first half... sure. I'd do it with a vengeance.

I'd take a stack of cards with overdue books and I'd go to where they SHOULD be and I'd look for them. Sometimes I'd find them exactly where they ought to be. Sometimes I'd find them close (but not exactly) to where they should be. Sometimes? I wouldn't find them at all.

But I'd find something that was otherwise worth my time. And my $7 an hour (or whatever I was making).

You know how some people have jobs where they sit at a computer all day and can read CNN and Huffington Post and Drudge Report and The Onion all day? Where they can google anything that they want, and the whole Internet is their oyster?

This was before ALL of those sites. This was at the dawn of the Internet, and before the World Wide Web was really in place.

But I didn't need Google. I had tens of thousands of books I could open and peruse. I could start reading an Asimov book or a study on Western taboos... and be pretty confident that my supervisor wasn't going to come and find me.

It was awesome.

I did the library gig my last two years of undergrad. It was a breath of fresh air compared to my first two years.

My first two years? I was a Sound and Sight Technician. I was well-paid ($18 an hour? Something silly like that...) and I worked in big chunks, rather than two or three hours a day. I was responsible for setting up and managing events on campus... setting EQ levels for speakers, playing movies on the Evanston and Chicago campuses, etc.

In terms of learning and "real-life" experience and money/minute... it was awesome. I'd work a weekend or two a month and be done.

But it was stressful.

Shit went wrong. Feedback happened. Speakers would grab a mic and start walking around the room. People would want to play music when it wasn't planned. A co-worker would be sick and I'd have to fill in on a Friday night (never mind that I really didn't have anything else going... it's the principle...)

It was good. It was terrible.

It did, though, form the basis for this blog entry. I can make an outrageous claim. Please feel free to disbelieve.

You know how people occasionally bring laser pointers into movies? How they annoy other movie-goers by flashing them on the screen, putting their spin on the movie and basically spoiling it for everyone else?

Well... I will submit that I was one of the first people to do that. EVER.

"Yeah, yeah," I hear you say, "sure you are. Assholes have been pointing laser pointers at movie screens FOREVER. Why do you think you were one of the first?"

Well, the movie was Terminator 2. We were able to see the film as a second-run movie... it came out in 1991,  but I think that we watched it on campus in 1992.

I was working as a Sound and Sight Technician, and we had access to ... equipment. Microphones (including lav mics) and ... laser pointers.

Laser pointers, twenty years ago, were NOT something that you'd pick up in the checkout line at a grocery store for your kitties to play with. They were bulky pieces of machinery that took up considerable space. Imagine an old, old wireless phone.... and then imagine a red dot coming out of it. That was the laser pointers.

So I "checked out" (*ahem*) a laser pointer from our equipment closet, and my roomie and I went to see T2.

I knew that there were scenes with laser pointers, and I was immature enough to use the gadget to enhance my own experience, even at the expense of my fellow viewers.

When the sniper was about to take out the scientist? I hunched over in my seat and pointed my (oversized) laser pointer at the screen. I could hear the crowd murmur... they hadn't experienced this before.

I felt akin to a god.

Not God. Not THE god.

But a god.

When Linda Hamilton got to her "It's men like you" speech... I was warmed up. I countered her anti-man/anti-human speech by putting my laser pointer right on her fucking forehead.

I thought it was great. My roomie thought it was hilarious.

But we had to be quiet, because I was holding a rather large piece of equipment that was altering--and potentially spoiling--the movie-going experience for hundreds of other students.

(The quote that I disrupted, from IMDB:

Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death... 

Who wouldn't want to disrupt that ridiculous piece-of-horseshit bit of dialogue?)

I heard giggling. I heard the rustle of confusion. I heard the barely-suppressed laughter of my roomie as I aimed the little red dot at Linda Hamilton's forehead.

But I didn't think THAT much of it. Until the next day.

We were in the cafeteria. I was probably getting Cap'n Crunch with Crunchberries and my roomie was probably having a salad... but we overheard people in front of us in line talking. About the movie.

About the laser pointer.

The person said something along the lines of, "Yeah... Terminator 2 was pretty good. But some guy pointed a laser pointer at the screen a couple of times... it was hilarious!!"

You have to remember. This was new. This was original. This was like the fucking Beatles.

I was the first.

You better believe dat.