Tonight around 6:30 pm I logged onto Facebook to do some stalking and discovered the tragic news. Robin Williams has passed. The first post I came to read “So sad. Robin Williams was one of the greats”. My eyes got big and a silent “NOoooooo”, escaped from my mouth. Also just now when I was locating the first post I came to so I could quote it, I hit the like button on someone’s status that I haven’t talked to since high school. Another silent “NOooooo”, escaped again. Anyways, I could hardly believe the news. This man was a 90’s icon and brought me so many laughs. From Aladdin, to Bicentennial Man, Mrs. Doubtfire, and of course Jumanji and The Birdcage-there are so many beloved films that I hold dear to my heart. I started texting people immediately to break the tragic news. I texted my husband, my long-time friend who shares my love for the movie Hook, and of course my sister. I always think of my sister when I think of Robin Williams.
*I did write this post yesterday-it did not take me 24 hours to learn of Robin Williams death. Due to circumstances out of my control (coughtimewarnersuckscough) our internet has been down since Saturday. Pardon the interruption, continue on with the story*
The summer of my 6th grade year and the summer before her 9th grade year my family had a trip planned to visit my aunt in North Carolina. My aunt had a very interesting job-she up until recently sewed costumes/made alterations for movies and T.V. shows. She would always impress us with her newest stories about who she had met and what movie set she was currently working on. One Christmas my sister received a signed autograph from Leonardo DiCaprio when she worked on the little film he was in called, Titanic. My favorite thing that she worked on was Super Shredder’s cape in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret of the Ooze. She sent us a great photo of my Grandpa in the full costume (he even got to wear the helmet). This particular summer though she happened to be working on a new Robin Williams movie, Patch Adams. She called my sister that spring and told her they needed extras for the graduation scene and asked her to be in it. My invite was nowhere to be found. Not that I’m harboring any bitterness or anything from this story.
My sister bragged to me all spring and summer about going to work on a movie. Who could blame her? I tried to act like it wasn’t that cool-but it was awesome. When she got back from her big debut she had lots of great things to say about Robin Williams. She of course had gotten to meet him and she added another autograph to her collection of cool things. She also reported to us how tedious being an extra was. Apparently they shot the same scene over and over again for a whole day. If any of you have seen the graduation scene in Patch Adams, you know that he moons the crowd. So she saw a bare butt over and over again all day and had to fake laugh over and over again. This is the story I thought of when I heard he was no longer with us. RIP Patch.
Other than that sad story-life has been hectic. I had a second interview for the two county jobs that I interviewed for last week. I think it went pretty well. I was not sure what to expect going in. I had never been on a second interview. But the questions were straight forward and simple. The Chief of Staff did ask the “what are your ultimate career goals” question though. After which I froze, muttered, rambled a response. In short I responded “I don’t know”. It was my one trip up of the day. I really need to practice that answer. It shouldn’t be that hard to figure out what your career goals are. At one point in my life I did have an ultimate career goal. When I was fresh out of college, I was full of ambition. Then reality set in and life gave me a beating. I still have ambition-I just no longer have an ultimate goal in mind. There are so many thing I realized I could be happy doing. I resolved a few years ago just to be open to career possibilities and see where the path takes me. A free love, hippie dippie approach to my career goals.
But the opportunity to move forward in the interview process is something that I’m incredibly grateful for-and I definitely needed it to boost my self-esteem. I am also grateful that I had an opportunity to help others last week. I really am trying to stick to an effort of giving back in some way once a week. Last week I volunteered at a small food pantry in my community for a few hours. It was a little overwhelming at first. I was asked to work in the produce section of the pantry. A nice man named Dave tried to explain in about 45 seconds flat how much produce every person gets. “Each person gets 1 bread-unless that have more people in their family then they can have 2. Then they can have 2 ears of corn per family member; 2 grape tomatoes, turnips, squash, apples, watermelon” He said other numbers in there but I had sufficiently zoned out. He must have seen the blank look on my face because he smiled and said “don’t worry I’ll be here”. He disappeared soon after. I think I gave too much bread away-because we ran out early. All we had in the last hour were hot dog buns but people smiled and said thank you. I have never been more grateful to be able to put food on the table in my life. It’s the smallest things that we take for granted. I’m looking forward to going back next week.
A Weird Sort of Story 