on pain

yesterday while I was pushing carts (which is much like pushing drugs in that is a senseless, endless excersize in suffering and futility), I had no less than three members act a little insulted when they asked for help with their load and they were sent me. One asian woman loudly protested: "I no want lady! eeess too heavy! I want man!" while I tried to calm her down and loaded her three boxes of "pine mountain" fire logs into the back of her minivan. One older lady kept reminding me to be careful of my back, as if loading her utility shelves was the hardest and heaviest work I had ever done. I explained to her that it was too late, my back was already shot, and she shook her head and said I would regret it later, and I assured her I already did. We had a little conversation about the benefit of work, however hard on the body, and no work, when one has no other income. "well that's what women's lib gets you," she said regretfully. No, I thought to myself, that's what a deadbeat ex husband and seriously repressed economy gets you. A 32 year old mother of four children straining with 22 year old guys over 120 lb boxes of metal racks, nordic track machines and the occasional refrigerator. It's work, right? and the shooting pains in my ankles, wrists, the spasms in my lower back, the blisters on my hands, the pretty much constant pain somewhere, is all worth the $330 a week I am making. Because it's more than the nothing I was making before. Yes, now that I must work to survive, I would love to stay unliberated at home with my kids, who are bobbing precariously on the very rough sea of our life right now. But it is what it is, and someday it will be better. In the meantime, I am ready to retire. Right after I run this wheel of cheese back across the warehouse for the 16th time because Betty Member decided it gave her gas.