Have It Your Way

My first job as a teenager was in Burger King and so many of the friends in my life now are from there or I met them through someone I worked with at Burger King.

My family had moved to Staten Island from Brooklyn when I was a sophomore in high school and I was already attending school in Staten Island, my commute to school was only ten minutes since we lived on the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano Bridge and my school was on the Staten Island side of the bridge. But when they first took us out to the boonies of Staten Island to show us where we were moving I was so upset. It was so far out on the island and there were no stores, woods everywhere and worse still the area we moved to was filled with really young kids and the few my age all attended the local high school and were not welcoming me into their click. I remember that first ride out, asking so many times, where are you taking us!!! This is crazy, it's so far away! You're ruining our lives!!! So dramatic, but again it's hard during your teen years to make big changes like that, and for my sister Linda, it was even more difficult, she started 8th grade in Brooklyn, finished it in Staten Island and then moved on to high school a year later, a lot of changes.

I still attended the same school but now had an hour or more commute, on a good day. If I missed the bus I had to wait an hour for the next one. And coming home was even worse, there seemed to be no schedule. I would have to wait more than an hour for my bus home and that ride was at least an hour long, driving through all the local streets and down deserted roads, surrounded by woods to get to my home in the boonies.

For me working at Burger King was like a dream come true. We didn't have McDonalds or Burger King in Brooklyn at that time and going to either of those fast food places was a rare treat. Now I was surrounded by junk food that I could eat all day. I was always grabbing a fry or two, making a milk shake, drinking soda (which I was not allowed to have at home). I loved it. And better still I met so many fun people, I was part of a crowd again and they all lived closer to me than anyone at school. Still not within walking distance but close enough. Some of my friends were starting to drive, or we took car service and there many times when we couldn't drive or get a ride and we would walk miles to meet and just hang out.

This morning I had coffee with my friend Tara, one of my first friends at Burger King who I connected with right away. We both are a little nuts and love to laugh. A great thing about Tara is she remembers so much. She tells me stories and sometimes I have a vague memory of it or sometimes she can make me remember all of it, she's amazing. Even stories about my mom, who she also loved dearly, it's nice to hear those stories.

And what a small world! Tara's father's best man at his wedding was my father's best friend. Tara overhead my dad talking about his friend Whitie one day and she asked his last name, Whitie not being a name she heard too often. When my father told her she said that was her father's best man. My father didn't believe her, he told her there is no way his best friend was in a wedding party and he didn't know the guy or about the wedding. The next day Tara came to our house with her parents wedding album and there was Whitie, Bo's childhood friend. He called Whitie up and asked how he didn't know Tara's dad. Bo, Whitie and Tara's dad were all New York City firefighters, was that where they met? Whitie told my dad that he met Tara's father during the Korean War, a time when my dad and Whitie were not together. It's funny too because Tara used to tell me before we learned about the Whitie connection, that her dad had told her he knew the story of a single firefighter who had married a woman with six kids, I just assumed he heard the story in the firehouse, and maybe he did, but it also could just be that he heard it from Whitie.

Tara is still a funny and silly person and like me, maybe a little more nuts!! She is entertaining and her laugh is infectious. I think she even talks faster than me! When she calls me up, days or even weeks from the last time I've seen or talked to her, after I say hello, she goes right into a conversation like we just got cut off, or like we are in the middle of a conversation. Makes me dizzy! I have to listen closely to catch up with what we're talking about!

Working at Burger King, we wore our corny polyester uniforms, bright orange and gold with big poofy hats. And no matter how much I washed my uniform my closet smelled like Burger King. To this day I can't eat there. Nothing against Burger King, it's good fast food, and clean, we had to keep the kitchen spotless, I remember that. It's just that I ate so much of it while working there and lived with the smell of the uniform permeating my closet, I've had enough Burger King.

This commercial video shows what our "cool" uniforms looked like.



Tara said the first time she met me we were getting a ride home from a fellow worker, Michael, who introduced us. I was getting into the back seat and there were pickle buckets on the floor, Michael told me to move them, I told him no problem, he had bucket seats, that was a luxury. Tara laughed, she got my humor.

The first year I rented a house "down the Jersey Shore" was with my Burger King friends. That house was crazy, too many people and we pushed things to the limit a few times. But for the most part we just loved to have fun, play practical jokes on our friends and laugh. That first year I don't think we went to the beach more than once or twice, most of the time we hung on our front porch drinking beer, having BBQs and laughing.

At this time there were cassette tape recorders. For years I had sang in my bedroom to one of my favorite songs and taped it on my recorder thinking I sounded great, then you play it back and hear you don't sound as good as you thought. Also during this time people would make mixed tapes and bring them along on car rides or to play at parties and one day while hanging out in our Shore house listening to someone's mixed tape, we hear a horrible voice singing along to one of the songs. It was our friend Pat. We were cracking up and knew not to tell Pat of our find, we would save it for the right moment which came when Pat was going out on her first date with a guy she met at the Shore. He comes to pick her up and while he's waiting for her to come downstairs, we pop the tape in and put the volume up loud. I can just imagine Pat upstairs primping, getting ready for her date, all excited and then hearing the music. I think it took her a minute or so to realize what we were playing but she eventually came running down those stairs, boom, boom, boom, boom!!! I never saw her move so fast! She ripped the tape out of the recorder and pulled all the tape out of the cassette, knowing we would play that tape every chance we got. We were laughing hysterically with her date not realizing what was going on, not one of brightest guys.

Busting on Pat was one of our favorite pastimes. She could take a joke and though she was flipping out when we played it for her date, the next day she was able to laugh along with us. Pat also had an infectious laugh. She could make you laugh more when she was laughing at herself, sometimes over something funny she said, or most times just when she thought she said something funny, she would laugh and you couldn't help but laugh too.

Again reminded by Tara this morning, one Sunday afternoon during our Shore days, Pat had a little too much to drink at a happy hour and came home and fell asleep. Tara and I used a pen and drew naked men all over the back of her legs. We figured she'd see it and that was funny enough but it worked out even a little better than we planned. When we drove home that night she was still tired and maybe even still a little drunk but we dropped her off at home, laughing while watching her walk up her front steps with the drawings all over the back of her legs. The next morning she got up, took a quick shower and I'm sure she didn't think she needed to scrub the back of her legs! Probably even overslept that morning and was rushing to get ready for work. Now this part of the story was too bad. She was just about to walk out the door when her mother asked her what was all over her legs and she finally noticed our artwork. Seconds away from her commuting and going to work with those pictures all over her legs. That would have been the icing on the cake for that one.

Tara has tons of stories and she laughs while telling them and you have to laugh along with her. Even now, as the mother of two teenagers, she always makes me laugh. Even discussing a serious matter, that funny girl inside can't help but make a comment that makes me laugh, that can lighten the moment.

They say an apple a day keeps the doctor away. I think a laugh a day is even better. That's my medicine. That's my way!