Poetry, Part Fifty-eight

After my forced resignation from the Air Force and a prolonged unemployment, I didn't feel good about myself for quite some time. When I finally was hired by Kaman Sciences on Garden of the Gods Road in Colorado Springs, my new co-workers didn't much like me either. However, as the months progressed, I slowly won them over.

One way that I did so involved the radio station they listened to during work hours. The station had numerous contests involving cool prizes such as movie passes and other such prizes. Another involved giving away $1,000.00 per week for a total of $10,000.00 over ten weeks with weekly drawings at local area participating merchants.

For the lesser contests, I fed them answers to trivia questions. For the money drawing, we got really organized by at least one of us listening to the radio station at all hours and reporting to the others if their names or a friend's name was called. When you called the radio station, you or your friend were registered for the weekly drawing. We realized that some contestants were stuffing the ballot boxes at local area merchants. So we began to stuff the ballot boxes with regularity and incredible efficiency. Our names were being drawn repeatedly as a result, and we were calling back to be registered for the next drawing several times a day. In the final six weeks of the contest, my roommate won, then I won, then a friend of Linda, my co-worker, won, and finally a friend of Rich, my other co-worker, also won. We were great chums at that point.

It wasn't a miracle cure by any means, but it did help to recover my own self-esteem.

Social Leveling

I should have sided with the ape,
batting airplanes around.
But I thought of the tiny pilots
protecting little crowds below,
and I believed as I was told.
Knowing Fay Wray wasn't really in danger,
beautiful people were always saved
even before the phrase.

A man is raised to despise the bizarre
out of place.
So I cheered the falling ape
shot down.

Being in the wrong neighborhood,
improperly attired,
while climbing impossibly high
killed the beast.
That was the beauty of it.

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