The Blockbuster Chronicles - Chapter 3: Learning the Adult World

I gave Megan and Dina a month or so to cool off. I assumed that once the anger faded, they would understand how everything had happened and realize there was no reason to throw away our friendship over one teeny, tiny mistake.

That is the dignified way of describing it. The truth is that I felt horribly guilty and desperately wanted them to forgive me. They did not.

Not everything in my life was going badly. After months of hovering around McDonald's and pretending my interest in one particular employee was merely a passionate devotion to fast food, I finally worked up the nerve to ask her out. Even then, I needed help from a girl named Becky who worked with her. Becky took pity on me and offered to find out whether the girl had any interest in dating the strange guy who kept appearing at the restaurant.

Becky explained the situation in fairly direct terms. I liked her co-worker, I was terrified of rejection, and without outside intervention I would probably spend the rest of my life ordering value meals and hoping romance happened by accident.

She later called and asked me to come by her house so she could report the results of the negotiation. Apparently, my repeated visits had already exposed my intentions. The girl knew I was interested. Becky told her I was a good guy, just painfully shy and insecure, and asked her to give me a chance.

The result was what could generously be called a sympathy date. She agreed to go out with me if I asked her in person, shaved my goatee, wore a nice shirt, and opened doors for her throughout the evening. If someone handed me that list of requirements today, I would tell her to go fuck herself. At seventeen, however, I accepted the terms like a country desperate for foreign aid. I had just lost my two closest friends, and I was willing to do almost anything for the possibility that somebody might like me.

I shaved, found a presentable shirt, approached her at McDonald's, and asked her out face to face. Since my freshly exposed baby face met the terms of the agreement, she said yes. We scheduled the date for two weekends later because she had the ACT the following Saturday.

The Friday before our date, she came into Blockbuster with her brother to rent a movie and talk to me. That alone would have been enough entertainment for the evening, but Megan happened to walk into the store at exactly the same time.

It did not take Megan long to understand what was happening. She had gone to school with the girl's brother, so she pulled him aside and explained that I was a piece of shit who had gotten her fired and that his sister should stay away from me. I stood in the middle of the store trying to carry on a conversation while watching her brother's eyes move between Megan and me from two aisles away. I could hear almost every word she said.

Inside, I was dying. After months of trying to find enough courage to ask this girl out, I finally had a date. Someone had even vouched for me. Now my former friend was dismantling the whole thing in the middle of my workplace.

The conversation clearly changed the way her brother viewed me, but the girl herself did not seem especially concerned. She left with her movie, and our date remained scheduled for the following Friday.

Had I known how badly the date would go, I might have thanked Megan for trying to stop it.

The night was a complete disaster. My shaved face felt strange, and I kept rushing around the truck to open doors because I had never done that for anyone before and was terrified of violating the agreement. My truck had long scratches down one side that looked as though Freddy Kruger had attacked it. I tried to make a joke about the damage, and somehow the conversation turned into an uncomfortable discussion about her scars and how scars could be beautiful. I had no idea what I was saying. I was just producing words and hoping some of them sounded inoffensive.

My plan for the evening had been simple. We would see a movie, get ice cream, and then I would take her home. We watched Rush Hour 2, which went reasonably well if you exclude the silence and awkwardness. On the way to Baskin Robbins, I got lost in a bad part of town late at night and nearly sideswiped another car. By that point, even the truck seemed to be trying to end the date early.

When I finally walked her to the door, she stopped and informed me that I was not getting a kiss. I had not asked for one nor had I made any move in that direction, but apparently she wanted to eliminate the possibility before I accidentally developed confidence. She offered me a hug instead and said we could be friends. Her birthday was a few weeks away, and I was welcome to call her then.

I stood there and accepted all of this with a smile, which should tell you everything you need to know about my self-esteem at the time.

Within a few weeks, I had managed to get my two closest work friends fired and survive one of the worst sympathy dates in Tennessee. Nothing seemed to be going right, so I did what people often do when the rest of life becomes confusing. I went back to work and tried to make myself useful.

I concentrated on doing the job well. I became friends with Kenny, a guy from my school, and suddenly had someone my own age to spend time with. Kenny was good company as long as he was not driving. His approach to traffic laws was more philosophical than practical, and I never feared for my life quite as consistently as I did in a car with him.

I also grew closer to Tim, one of the assistant managers. Tim was a tall, goofy man from Las Vegas who loved video games and seemed to value his car stereo more than the car surrounding it. He lived across town in a cramped townhouse with his wife and young son, and I began spending a lot of time at their house. We played video games, drank soda, and talked. I felt mature because I was hanging out with someone almost fifteen years older than me. Looking back, the age difference should have made me more cautious.

At first, Tim borrowed a few dollars to get through the end of a pay period. A few dollars became twenty, then fifty, and eventually he owed me about two hundred and fifty dollars. I was seventeen, had almost no expenses, and was eager to be helpful. Tim knew all three of those things.

Once I finally realized I was being used, I stopped visiting his house. Not long afterward, he quit Blockbuster without notice and moved back to Las Vegas almost overnight. A year or two later, I tracked down his wife's email address and asked for my money. She gave me several excuses,  including an attempt to guilt trip me over his mother dying, but of course, I never recovered a dime.

Tim taught me an expensive lesson about friendship and motives. At the time, it did not seem strange that a man in his early thirties wanted to spend every day with a seventeen year old. His wife and child were usually there, and sitting around their house while he drank beer and I drank soda seemed harmless. I was lonely, and being included was enough to keep me from asking why I was being included.

Unfortunately, it would not be the last time I loaned money to someone I should not have trusted.

Although my friendship with Tim collapsed after only a few weeks, I was beginning to get along with most of my coworkers. The main exception was Robert.

Robert was in his late thirties, quiet, strict, and generally unpleasant. The only person he seemed to enjoy talking to was Cindy, a married woman in her late twenties who barely worked. Robert was married as well, but he flirted with Cindy constantly while criticizing her work, and she encouraged him just enough to keep the strange routine going. I was assigned to several shifts with the two of them. Awkward does not even begin to describe it. I’m not sure if they were banging in the back next to the shrink-wrap machine or not, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if I walked in on them.

My father stopped by the store one day. I had told him about Robert, including the fact that Robert was serving in the Navy. My dad had recently retired as a Senior Chief, and he and Robert immediately connected. They spent nearly an hour talking about the Navy and, unfortunately for me, about me.

Something changed after that conversation. Robert began opening up to me. He would carry on short conversations and stopped riding me through every minute of a shift. It also helped that I once offered him a ride home during a downpour. Robert rode a bicycle to work every day from the nearby Navy base, so refusing would have meant a long trip through the rain. The drive was quiet and eerie, but I think the gesture finally put me on his good side.

Robert remained strict and blunt, but he began speaking freely around me, especially about his favorite subject: women. He was a genuine hound dog and arguably a major pervert. Until then, most of my knowledge about married men openly discussing other women had come from television. Hearing it in person was strange and more than a little educational.

What Robert respected most was that I worked hard. Even as I formed friendships with other employees, he saw that I took the job seriously. I did not need to be told twice to clean something, stock something, or straighten a section. Over time, I earned his respect and a degree of trust that would help me later in my Blockbuster career.

After Tim left, two women in their forties named Kelly and Lori joined the management team. Kelly had spent much of her career working in communications for AT&T aboard aircraft carriers. Lori had previously managed a Hollywood Video. Both brought experience and maturity to a store that had not always been blessed with either.

I was nervous about the change. I had never experienced a major shift in management and did not know what new rules or expectations might follow. Fortunately, Kelly and Lori turned out to be two of the best people I worked with at Blockbuster.

They were kinder and more relaxed than Deloris, our store manager. They still expected the work to be done, but they gave us enough room to do it without making every shift feel like an emergency. My work habits quickly made an impression. I became their reliable person, the employee who would finish a task, keep the store organized, and notice what still needed to be done.

Before long, Kelly and Lori began teaching me parts of the cash handling and closing process. Within a month, I knew how to perform most of a manager's duties.

Deloris was less enthusiastic about the idea. She mainly worked during the day, while I worked evenings because I was still in school, so she rarely saw me at my best. There was also no open management position. Even if there had been, Blockbuster did not promote anyone under eighteen to third key. Kelly and Lori could train me and advocate for me, but they could not change my age or invent an opening.

My relationships with both women gradually extended beyond the store. It might have seemed unusual for a teenager to spend time with women old enough to be his mother, but it never felt uncomfortable. They were candid with me, believed in me, and treated me as though my opinions had value. I was happy to grab lunch with them or see a movie with Kelly and her children.

One afternoon, I went to Lori's house to install her large television and surround sound system. Her husband was a master mechanic, but electronics were not his specialty. I was paid in food, and we spent the day talking about eighties teen movies and NASCAR. It was my first time meeting him. He seemed cold at first, although by the end of the day we were getting along well. The next day, Lori explained the reason for his initial discomfort.

Shortly after I left, he had turned to her and said, “He sure doesn't act gay.”

Lori had apparently told him about something I said while organizing the music section at work. I had paraphrased a joke from Chasing Amy about getting emotional over Barbra Streisand singing “You Don't Bring Me Flowers.” She repeated the comment to her husband without explaining the reference, leaving him to form his own conclusions before I arrived at their house.

Another memory of Lori still makes me laugh. Walmart sat directly behind our Blockbuster. One evening, while we were working together, she asked me to accompany her there. I was happy to escape fifteen minutes of work while remaining on the clock, so I climbed into her red Camaro for the roughly three hundred foot journey.

I wanted to look at the DVDs while Lori shopped for something elsewhere. We agreed to meet at the registers in ten minutes. I did not notice what she was buying until we were preparing to check out.

It was a pregnancy test.

Ordinarily, this would not have been remarkable. To my seventeen year old mind, however, the situation looked catastrophic. I was a virgin standing behind a woman old enough to be my mother. We were both wearing Blockbuster shirts, and she was purchasing a pregnancy test.

I watched the cashier study us and imagined the story forming in her mind. Clearly, this older woman had seduced the teenage employee, taken his virginity, and become pregnant. They were now preparing for a white trash future involving a rusted El Camino, a single wide trailer, and furniture acquired under mysterious circumstances.

Lori noticed the panic on my face and decided to make everything worse.

She wrapped an arm around me and began talking loudly about the baby. If the test was positive, she asked, did I want to keep it? She was sorry this had happened, but nobody at work could know because we would both lose our jobs.

We stood in the middle of the busiest store in Millington while Lori performed an entire episode of The Jerry Springer Show for the cashier and everyone waiting behind us. I could feel my face turning red, which only made me look guiltier. I tried to deny what she was implying, but she stopped me.

“It's okay, baby. You don't have to be ashamed. You're a stud.”

There was nowhere to hide. All I could see was a line of Walmart shoppers watching with growing amusement.

Once we reached the parking lot, Lori doubled over laughing. I could not decide whether to be angry or laugh with her. After the fifteen second drive back to Blockbuster, she told the story to everyone working and continued repeating it for the rest of the night. Eventually, the absurdity won, and I laughed too.

Kelly was not a practical joker like Lori. She was more of a maternal figure. She quickly recognized how poorly the store was being run and discovered that I shared many of her frustrations. Our mutual disappointment in upper management fueled long conversations, and she gave me advice that felt more like mentoring than workplace gossip.

The months after Megan and Dina left had begun with me desperately trying to recover two friendships. Instead, I found several new ones. Kenny gave me someone my own age to laugh with. Tim taught me that attention and friendship were not always the same thing. Robert showed me that respect could be earned through consistency. Lori and Kelly treated me as capable before I fully believed it myself.

Some of those relationships lasted. Others ended badly. A few managed to do both.

At seventeen, I was still trying to understand why adults wanted anything to do with me. I had not yet learned that being welcomed into an adult world did not automatically make every adult trustworthy. Sometimes they saw potential in me. Sometimes they saw someone useful. The difficult part was learning the difference.

I did not understand it yet, but Kelly's belief in me would eventually push me toward the first big decision of my working life. For the moment, though, Blockbuster was becoming less like an after-school job and more like the place where I was learning who I could be.