My Crack Addiction

My name is Robbe and I have an addiction. It's been known to kill. It is... crack. I've been sober for less than a day.

A couple months ago, I started a new job. For the record, it's job number 22 in my life. I'm trying to get to the golden job count, where the number of jobs coincides with my age. I'm fairly confident I'll accomplish that goal at some point in my life. Here's to goals!

That said, the job I've been doing is a blue-collar type of job, involving the replacement of water meters, both inside and outside and sometimes always outside. It's good I started the job at the beginning of winter. A lot of this job involves me crouching down, getting on my hands and knees, fixing things in holes, paying my pimp at the end of each shift...yeah. But really, it does involve pipes (okay I have no idea how to not make this job sound like an entire day's worth of that's what she saids) and fixing them and so on. So of course with this line of work, I have come to frequently encounter the wonderful world of plumber's crack.

Most of my past experiences with plumber's crack entails teenage me skateboarding with my friends, seeing someone working on their car, house, garden, etc. and yelling "crack kills!" as if the archangel Gabriel had just come down the day before and handed us the most clever one-liner ever known to mankind. I always thought it must have been so embarrassing for the person whose crack was exposed without them- surely!- knowing. I'd like to say the tables have turned, that I now find myself in a constant state of shame and anxiety at my hourly case of plumbers crack in full sight of pedestrians, school buses, drivers, etc.

However, it's quite the opposite.

For me, it has come to represent freedom. I'm not sure if it's because I assume it's part of my job, or if I just don't care about anything about my image anymore, but I am secure in knowing I can work on the side of a road and just let things go, without a honking horn or a clever quip swaying me from my path. It's almost like giving a finger to the world, because I assume when people see me doing my job outside when it's a toasty 5 degrees at 8 a.m., they're saying, "Wow, glad I'm not that guy." To that I say- my hands may be completely numb, my fingertips dried and split, my feet numb- but I'm not wearing a tucked-in dress shirt, nor a belt. Therefore, my crack may abound. And when crack abounds, a light air is constantly upon me, a cool breeze behind me, as if nature itself is patting me on my (lower) back, and saying, "Good job, this is how it's supposed to be. In you I am well pleased."

That is, of course, until it begins to rain outside.