All About Guys

It's All About Guys

It's never easy on Mondays.

"My bed felt so good this morning," says Jeff.

"Yeah, mine, too" from Peets.

Soon ensues a discussion of favorite beds from our youth, which Peets wins with the queen size account of the king size beds at his grandmother's house. "It's all about pillows."

We can't go a day without a topic, some theme for the morning's conversations. Golf shots we can't prove, the injustices of the college hierarchic system, or the five points of Calvinism—each day the story's different (except for Lloyd's wrestling story, which I heard three times in my first three weeks on the job). And each is always a story, anything to which you can add, "And then . . ." Memories always waken us, even on Monday mornings before five o'clock. Amazingly, many of our anecdotes end with punch lines—no small feat for brains only recently conscious.

We're grounds workers at Pensacola Christian Academy. There are supposed to be five guys on our eye-crusties crew, but rarely do all five of us show up to work. It's a day-to-day thing. (Well, except for Chris: his salvo of ailments and excuses allows him to work only one of our five required mornings per week.) Sometimes, like Jeff often says, it's just impossible to crawl out of warm sheets. Other times, sprained ankles and planters warts claim the feet that would otherwise follow our growling equipment. Just ask Lloyd: he's actually had both—at the same time.

The four of us faithful have only one excuse for walking behind dust-puffing vacuums and screaming blow sweepers: money. We need it. Try motivating four college guys with anything else on sweatshirt mornings. The predawn walk to work makes possible the afternoon walk to professional writing class. (I think I heard that in chapel, but I sometimes sleep though chapel.) Funny, though, how all that rhetoric goes out the window with the first drop of rain, especially when the sheets wait, still warm.

We get along well for the hodgepodge of personalities we represent—from the ex-collegiate basketball player to the pudgy Packers Cheesehead. Our majors? Music Ministries, Graphic Design, Copy Writing, and Accounting. Our homes spread around America's edges with Lloyd from Oregon and me from Maryland—Peets, a Californian, and Jeff a resident of Wisconsin beer country. We hum different songs, but we all quote fondly from Dumb and Dumber.

And we all have our favorite idioms. Peets loves his "It's all about" and "guy." I stopped trying to mimic him—he's too classic. Jeff's the only guy I've ever heard describe a beautiful sunrise as follows: "Wow, check out that sunrise—and there's frickin' idiots that'll tell you that all that crap frickin' evolved." The guys would probably tell you that my pet expression, "Nice!" (said with clenched jaw and a bit of gravel) finds its way into most mornings. Lloyd asks, "What time is it?" more than any other of us; I guess that's his phrase. And Chris? Well, when he does visit us, he rarely says anything . . . though he smirks a lot.

None of us wear watches, but we've learned how to tell time the old Indian way: when the Burger King sign comes on, it's a couple minutes past six. The kamikaze bus drivers rev their engines fifteen minutes before that—forty-five minutes before the academy's principal stops in the middle of the vacant parking lot to look both ways at a stop sign. And when the paint-scuffed grounds truck from campus circles the building, it's time to load up for the shop. In the event that any of these constants prove less so, we have the bell tower bongs from campus. Tonto never had it so easy.

Another constant is the "trash run." Every day we run it, and everyday we find things. Things like a rigid Batman cape without its Batman—we skipped away rich with that discovery. All discarded lottery tickets we save for at least a day, and baby pictures never come down from above the phone on the garage wall. I found a phone number (from a girl's dorm) on a torn napkin; I'm sure some guy is mourning that loss.

We are scavengers. Each looter always brings his spoil back to the group, that we may partake in his discovery—be it an American flag or a ripped leather softball. Amidst the candy wrappers, soda cans, and straw sheaths, we've salvaged other precious spoil—prizes including a baby-clothes hanger and a boat show sign, a hub cap and a half, a rigor mortis frog, and a Michael Jordan cap. Oh! and somebody's math homework—sure that dog ate it.

On one trash reconnaissance mission, I found a toy soldier at the handle end of a plastic grocery bag. "We're being invaded!" I almost shuddered, but then I realized that we had a powerful secret weapon: golf carts.

Golf carts. They have a magic to them—no, not the mesmerizing back-up beeper—nor even the aroma of the trash-can cauldron strapped to the back. Maybe it's the electric whine of combustionless travel—like the monorail at Disney World. Everybody loves the monorail. Whatever it is, all of us like to drive them—well, Peets might not, but Chris's driving addiction compensates for that.

There's the I-don't-feel-like-working-so-I'll-drive-this-thing-around-looking-for-trash syndrome. This kicks in somewhere between a half hour and fifteen minutes before we head for the time clock—sometimes right after a ten-second weed-pull for weeding's sake. Often contagious, it's not uncommon to find two slouching forms under a darting, little white roof.

Less prevalent but still chronic is the Academy 500 virus. When this bug bites, all carts—all two of them—rev to full speed (approximately fifteen miles per hour). Weaving, wedging, and cornering bring no throttle relief, though sometimes a Lilliputian tire squeal. You'd think that after weeks of mornings of this, we'd realize that the cart pulling the equipment trailer never wins. We're dumb like that.

The boss made me Cart Inspector Boy (fearless protector of cart complexion)—maybe because we haven't had a collision since I started on the crew. Well, except for Jeff's failed Evil Kinevil jump from a speeding, turning cart . . . I don't think he meant to leave from the passenger side and definitely not head-first. But at least no other carts or crew participated in the curb-jumping, trailer-bumping accident.

Walking from the time clock to breakfast I ponder the maxim passed to me from my dad. He warned me not to marry a girl until I had seen what she looked like first thing in the morning. (That's when we humans supposedly look our worst.) I don't know how ugly we look on our seven o'clock shluffing to the cafeteria; but our crew boasts three upperclassman girlfriends—each soon to be fiancées (note that soon is relative). Lloyd's sweetheart waves to him from her dormitory window as we pass. Mine flirts with me at breakfast, despite my hat hair and parfum de petroleum. Cara, Jeff's special lady, waits for him to clean up before a pre-class meal, while Peets still waits for a girl of his own—an athletic one with a trim mother.

Maybe we'll find one for him during one of our lingering trash-runs—preferably before the semester ends. Or maybe I should have given him that trash-run napkin.