live your life with purpose
Chapter 5 – the co-workers I started working at Sooper Dooper when I was a sophomore in high school. The paths of our lives are interesting don’t you think? I believe it is not in our hands, but up above. The life changers happen because …
I’m sitting here alone. The noise is the wind and a cardboard box unfolding ever so slowly. I’m not playing any music. I’m alone with my thoughts. I’m alone listening. I have so many things to do, yet I sit here in my silence. The …
Chapter 4 of the Sooper Dooper Chronicles is about the customers.
There were many, many customers who came into the store. There were semi-regular, once in a while, rarely and super regular customers. The super regular-scour the on sale ad-would come Wednesdays. That was the day the sales went into effect. The ad came out in The Reminder on Wednesdays. Every single week. The sales. Canned goods almost every single week. Green Giant vegetables, 4 for a buck. That was a really good sale. TV dinner sales was another hot item. Some customers came in just for the canned goods sales and the TV dinners. Soup was also a big seller. If we ran out, they didn’t like it one bit. But, they got a raincheck so that would make them happy.
The customers at Sooper Dooper were amazing. It got to the point that I had their home address and phone numbers ingrained in my brain. I couldn’t help it. I was good with numbers and addresses. I’m sure this early training helped that immensely.
I remember the Gors family lived on Capitol. The Kleins lived on Prospect. I usually had the phone numbers memorized too.
I knew the names of peoples’ kids. The Newmans, Rick and Barb, came in a lot. Mostly Barb. I could never call her Barb though. She would always be Mrs. Newman. She was my music teacher when I was in grade school. So never could I call her anything but Mrs. Newman. She always brought their daughter, Jocelyn. Jocelyn was one of those kids that pestered her mom until she got candy. There were a lot of kids like that. It’s funny to think back. The parents would be embarrassed and I wouldn’t think anything of it. Kids always did that.
The Riters were regulars as well. Carolyn shopped with Matthew. Matthew was another one who was relentless until he got a treat. You really can’t blame the kids. Blame the store setup. How was a kid supposed to get through the line when there was candy everywhere?
I can picture so many of these people coming in the door. Mrs. Swanson. Her husband was Doc Swanson. She was the nicest lady. So very friendly and willing to talk to anyone. I can see her getting her cart. In the winter she always had a long coat that looked like fur. Her smile was always inviting.
Then there was Mrs. Tieszen. Her husband was a doctor too. She was also very nice. I think she had Parkinson’s or some other medical condition because her head would always move around. I felt bad for her. She didn’t let it stop her though.
The Ambachs always came in, ad in hand, making sure we had the sale items readily available. They would go through everything with a fine tooth comb. I think they got a lot of rain checks.
Jamie Damon was a super regular customer. At that time she had a catering business. I wish I could have tasted some of her recipes. I bet they were amazing.
The Porters used to come in regularly too, along with the Whitneys and the Adam family. The Cunninghams, Mel and Elaine and Charlene Shepherd as well. So many customers.
Then there were the cute guys. We always hoped they would come to our check out line. High school girls crushing on older guys. John Gilkerson, Roger Inman and Ivan Venner were the top shelf crushes of the high school girls.
Along with the good there was always bad. There were some customers who were not the best smelling or the ones who were really mean. There were customers with addictions. The Vanilla Lady as we called her. She came in every other day to buy the biggest bottle of vanilla. The story was that she was an alcoholic and this was her alcohol. There were also customers who were addicted to nasal spray. They would come in every other day and buy the nasal spray. Oh and you can’t forget all the cigs that were sold. As I look back now I wonder what was going on in their lives. I always tried to be as friendly as possible. You just never knew what people were going through. Maybe they were really sad. Maybe they didn’t have a way to have a shower every day. Maybe they couldn’t conquer their demons. Just maybe.
Every day was something different. Every day was a new adventure. Every day was a learning experience. Every day was about people. Every day was about life. Every day was about the customers.
The Sooper Dooper chronicles – the morning ladies If you were lucky enough to work any mornings at Soooer Dooper, you got to work with Pat, Charlotte or Lorraine. If you were really lucky, you got to work with all three at the same time. As …
Kurt Dixon, Marvin Engelhaupt and Frank Denton, The Trifecta. The Sooper Dooper Trifecta. I was lucky to work with all three. Kurt was the store manager. Marvin was the meat manager. Frank was the produce manager. As a bit of background, I worked at the …
Today, I thought I was going to write Chapter 2 of the Sooper Dooper Chronicles. I have been working on it all week. I was all ready to write it tonight, until I saw something that fired me up.
Larry Nassar, the team doctor at Michigan State University and the olympic gymnastics team doctor for years, was sentenced today to 175 years in prison. He should have been sentenced years ago. He should have been stopped years ago. He should have been.
Gymnastics was my sport. I lived and breathed gymnastics. Every.Single.Day. There are so many things that we are faced with as children and if we have some common sense and if our parents warned us enough, we know when something is not right. These little girls that he molested, didn’t have that opportunity. But you know what? They knew something was wrong. They told. But nobody would listen. Nobody would help them. It continued and it continued and it continued. This monster continued molesting kids for over 20 years. He molested over 160 children. That number is only the ones who have come forward. I would bet money it is double that number, if not more. This monster was enabled by many many people and organizations to continue molesting throughout his whole career.
It makes me sick that this happens in the sports world. I know this is not the only instance, but I bet it’s the worst instance, and it’s the instance I am writing about here. In no way, shape, or form am I dismissing other instances of abuse.
I listened to the victim statements of many of these survivors. Heart-wrenching. Gut-wrenching. The abuse they endured. Not only sexual molestation, but cruelty by coaches. Physically, mentally and verbally. The abuse is shocking. I am going to link a blog post here of a gymnast named Katelyn Ohashi. https://behindthemadnesssite.wordpress.com/2017/08/24/dear-standards/ Ohashi writes about the abuse, her abuse. About not being able to eat. About working out until she looked ready to practice. About becoming bulimic. The body image issues. My God. Do people not know what happens to girls mentally when things like this happen. It scars. It scars for life. The scar may fade, but it never goes away. The words never go away.
When I was in gymnastics, I was told I needed to lose 10 pounds. I weighed 116 at that time. There was no way I could lose 10 pounds. As I have written before, this developed into a full blown eating disorder called bulimia. What makes it so hard and actually kind of twisted, is that we look up to these coaches. We want to please them. We want to do well, even if they are hard on us. We want to do what they tell us to. They are supposed to be there to guide us and help us make decisions. They aren’t supposed to be there to mess us up. They aren’t supposed to be there to make us be ashamed of our bodies. I never went out my senior year. I didn’t like the coach. I got the creepy vibe from him. Thank God I am pretty good at listening to my gut and intuition. There was just something that told me I didn’t need gymnastics anymore. One of my teammates and I were at practice and the coach told us to lay on our backs, which was probably our best position anyway. I couldn’t believe I was hearing those words come out of a coach’s mouth. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. It shook us up. My teammate got an apology. I never did. I was pretty much done after that. I just couldn’t do it anymore.
The sport I loved. The sport I cherished. What did I get out of it? An eating disorder and a perv for a coach.
My experience is NOTHING compared to these girls. However, it was my experience. We all have our own hell. We all have our own experiences. We all do. One way my experience has helped me grow is because of it, I am now helping other people overcome these hells. This is the positive that came out of my hell.
I hope now by shedding a huge, huge spotlight on these practices that it stops. I hope the abuse stops. I hope ALL the abuse stops. I hope every single person responsible for letting this monster keep molesting kids is held responsible. They knew. They knew. They could have stopped him many years ago. If they had listened. If only they had not hidden it, so many of these survivors would not be in court verbalizing their stories.
These now adult women are brave and strong to come forward. Even if they didn’t want to, they still had the courage to do so. Their stories were moving, and emotional and eloquent and sad. You can’t help but empathize with them. And really, why wouldn’t everyone. As little kid women, they tried. They tried to tell and were stifled. They were innocent. They didn’t deserve what happened to them. If there is a good thing that came out of this it’s that they are now strong. They are now loud. They are forever strong. What happened to them does not define them. It empowers them.
Strong Women – Be Them – Know Them – Raise Them
“Each time a woman supports herself…she stands up for all women.” —Maya Angelou
Her name was Jessie Hall. She was one of the “night managers.” One of the Saturday and Sunday managers too. She was an older lady with gray hair and glasses. She had eye problems. A lot. She also had other health ailments and she was …
Today is our anniversary. An anniversary celebrating 20 years of marriage. An anniversary celebrating 20 years of life together. An anniversary of the day we each said, I do. A love day. 20 years of raising kids and now watching grandkids grow. 20 years of loving …
When we lived in the Euclid house, about half a block away in the now empty lot of Sara’s Dance Studio, there was a small store called The Cottage. That’s where my sister, Wendy, stuck her tongue to the street pole one winter. That’s where I got caught stealing. That’s where we got caught lying.
We used to collect empty pop bottles. At that time you had to pay a deposit for the bottles when you bought pop. We would take them in and get money for them. I can’t even remember how much it was per bottle. Maybe a nickel. Maybe not. I can’t remember. You would just add the ones you had to the pile out back and then tell Ken or Egghead how many you had.
Ken and Egghead ran the store. I don’t know if they owned it. How would a kid know this? Exactly. Ken and Egghead seemed old. I don’t think they were, but as a kid everyone over 25 seems old. Ken had dark hair and glasses and wore plaid shirts. Egghead was taller. He was bald and had an oval shaped face. He had glasses too. He wore solid colored shirts and one of those white store aprons. Egghead was not his real name. That’s what we called him. No disrespect at all. He just looked like his name should be Egghead. So it was, to us. Ken was nicer, although I’m sure they both hated it every time we came in. They watched us like hawks. I wonder why? Remember the Been Caught Stealing story?
One day we thought we would go to the store and get some money for pop bottles. We needed some money for candy. Our life was candy.
We, and when I say we, it was the sister who was my partner in crime. The sister named Sherry. Remember the cigarette story? Remember the burning bed story? Yeah, that sister.
We went to the store and went inside. The store was old, but cool. It was dark and shadow-y. It was musty smelling and the floor was made of hardwood and it creaked when you walked. I wonder if Egghead was a butcher? Those white aprons were the kind that butchers usually wore. Weird. Anyway, I don’t remember if they sold meat there. We were always focused on the candy and the comic books. I was never into comic books, but they had a great selection of comic books. They also had a great selection of candy. I paid attention to that. Twizzlers and sixlets were my jam.
We told Ken and Egghead that we wanted money for the pop bottles we had collected. We told them how many we had and that we wanted money for them to buy candy. Nothing different than any other time we turned in pop bottles. Except this time, one of them walked back to check. What??? They never did that before. Uh oh. They were on to us. This was not going to go well.
It just so happened that all the pop bottles had been picked up by the bottling company and there were none, zilch, zero pop bottles out back on the landing. We were doomed. We didn’t know what to do. What the heck were we supposed to say now? Ummmm, oh. Sorry?
They chewed us up one side and down the other. They both seemed super tall. I consulted with Sherry, because I couldn’t remember what exactly happened next. She thinks they made us call our mom and tell her what happened. That makes complete sense, because why would they just let us go? We both can’t remember what happened when we got home. I’m sure we walked that half block home as slowly as we possibly could. But, hey, we’re still here to tell the story!
We didn’t try that prank on Ken and Egghead again and I’m sure they watched us even closer after that incident. Crime doesn’t pay people!
I wrote a lot in 2017. Maybe not a lot for some people, but for me, it was a lot. I really stayed on top of getting a blog post out every week. I had a lot of good feedback from people about my writing. …