Monday, August 02, 2004
(5:53 PM) | Anonymous:
I'm a Blue-Collar, what are you?
Work always makes me tired.I work on the linen crew at Olivet Nazarene University, which is host to the Chicago Bears summer training camp. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have to pick up the Chicago Bears towels and washcloths, while on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I have to pick up their bedsheets and pillow cases with the towels and washcloths. I try to wear gloves because the smell of semen warns me to tread lightly through this pile of laundry.
I've always had class-consciousness likely due to growing up slightly above the poverty line with a mother who worked as a waitress and a factory worker during my very early years. I remember having to go and sit at the restaurant, Apple Ridge in Denver, while she worked her shift. I think this is where I also developed my love of food, since that was the one thing that could keep me occupied at that age. Working for $6.15 an hour for a group of people who make millions by playing a stupid game that excites other blue-collar workers and allows them to make it from week to week has done nothing but increase that consciousness.
I am a reasonably well educated person with decent people skills when I try, there is no real reason that I shouldn't be able to work in some other field except that I don't have the start up capital it takes to afford a decent wardrobe, take the time to look for that job or create the job myself and I also live in Kankakee. My only hope is academia and this hope is similar to the same hope poor, African-American kids who live in the nation's poor cities have of making it onto a professional sports team like the Chicago Bears. My consciousness could be their consciousness except they have become successful and success is the true opiate of the people.
