Staying At Mom's, or, Adult Orphanism, or, The Welled-Up Woes of a Washed-Out Waitress

Once I was a waitress, and I lost my job. I was not laid off from my job. I was fired, and I deserved it.

Waitressing had given me a mysterious shoulder injury that meant that I couldn't hold a tray or do much of anything without looking like there was a wooden nail buried in my arm, which was what it felt like. I had worked in restaurants for eight years, and suddenly at twenty-five I realized that I was no longer just messing around: my job had given me a disabling injury, it had become a part of me, and soon I would be thirty and have nothing going for me but the ability to act sweet for five seconds at a time to people who I'd rather eat nails than ever actually talk to. I wanted to go to college but couldn't figure a surefire way to eat if I quit, and so I just got surlier with every fruitless, hopeless, waitress day that passed. I was fired for this: for being a surly waitress, a mean waitress, a waitress with a sneer on her lips and a jeer on her tongue, a waitress who grimaced like roadkill every time she lifted up your drink, a waitress who wanted to be a respected author/scientist instead of a waitress, a waitress who was certainly not on the fucking dessert menu, a waitress who hated her life, hated herself, and hated everybody else for looking at her and thinking, "waitress".

I made my prayers by way of snippy comments and desperate feelings. But still, my prayers were answered. Verily, the message from God could not have been clearer if a white bull with golden horns had appeared to me in the salsa freezer, and yet, because I am a human, this divine routing of my plans made me madder than hell. I was like a monkey backed into a corner. The busted shoulder meant that another waitressing job was out. The way the management had wangled my hours down to nonexistence before I was booted meant that unemployment was also a no-go. The only other thing I knew how to do was go to school, although being forced to do so had not necessarily been in the plans. So, with the kind of terror that makes you grin like the aforementioned cornered animal, I took out $11,000 worth of student loans, let go of my apartment, and realized that I'd gotten what I'd wanted. More or less. Which brings me back to the point: Staying at Mom's.

I Stay at Mom's because I have no home of my own. My things stay here--the tables, sofas, and other accoutrement of adult life--and periodically, when my boyfriend, who I generally stay with, goes out of town, I join the things. I sleep on one of the sofas, actually. I like to think of this situation romantically as a variation on Adult Orphanism; although I have two parents, both of them quite nice, sleeping on a couch in a cat-infested loft at the age of twenty-six becomes more bearable when I imagine myself as some glamorous Oliver, perhaps in a rhinestone-lapeled trenchcoat, singing for my meals and scrapping to get ahead. More cats live here than do humans, and there's cat hair, cat toys and cat food on every available space where one would wish to place one's human paw. Dogs have died in this home. Teenagers have turned into college students and left most of their things behind, cramming the closets. Adult Orphans have returned home, bringing with them sofas; they have left again, leaving sofas; they have returned to sleep on those sofas once more amongst the dander and felt mice and squeezy toys and actual cats. They return to sleep now. They are going to have strange dreams.