If you love something, set it free...

This post will be ridiculous and requires a lot of back story, but I haven't written in awhile, so here you go.

When I was a kid I played with dolls. Not Barbies mind you, I had MEGO Batman dolls, which were a little bit smaller than Barbies. I was a big fan of Batman because of the 1960s TV show that was rerun every day after school. I had Batman and Robin, and at various times I also had the Riddler, Joker, and the Penguin. I say various times because I got the dolls as presents more than once; they got lost or stolen, and I distinctly remember the Penguin losing all his limbs in the bathtub (they were held in place with some sort of string that was not water-resistant). As I got older I lost interest in the dolls, which I didn't know were called action figures until much later.

I'm not sure when the transition from dolls to small plastic action figures occurred; for me, the Star Wars figures were the first of the small ones. Before that, the aforementioned MEGO dolls and GI Joe dolls were what I knew (in addition to the KISS dolls, which I wanted but never got). Maybe I lost interest when they were made smaller.

Fast-forward to 1991, after my dad closed his bakery and I had to get a real job by myself for the first time. I ended up at Kay Bee Toys in the mall, after having failed to get a job at Suncoast Video, which is where I really wanted to work. I was Christmas help at Kay Bee, but I did a good job and made it past the holidays. The Batman movie had come out 2 years prior, which greatly rekindled my interest in Batman. When I started at Kay Bee, they were blowing out the Batman action figures related to that movie (they were actually from a DC assortment with the movie logo on them). I bought those figures and hung them up on my wall at home. Then I bought the rest of the DC line, and then Batman Forever came out, with its exclusive figure line (from Kenner). I bought all of those figures too. After that I started buying figures willy-nilly. We would get closeout figures like Beetlejuice, and I would also but figures from comic books I liked, like Spawn and X-Men.

I think the strangest collection I had was a set of 8 April O'Neill figures from various Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lines. I never read the comic book or saw the cartoon series. I saw the first two movies in the theaters and enjoyed them. But I'm not sure why I bought the April O'Neill figures. I hung them on the wall with the other figures and that was pretty much all I did with them.

Fast forward again to 1998, when we moved to DE. All of the action figures were boxed up for over a year, because we lived in an apartment and didn't want to unpack too much, because we planned on buying a house. When we did get a house in 1999, the action figures stayed boxed up until 2001, when I decided to sell them on eBay. They were just sitting there and I didn't miss them, so what was the point? The action figure market had bottomed out by that point, so I didn't even get a good return on them, but I was happy to let them go. Or so I thought...

The only figures that I regretted selling were those April O'Neills, for some bizarre reason. Sarah says that I brought this fact up quite often. Fast forward again to last weekend. We both got flea market fever in a big way, so we decided to go to a monthly rummage sale a few towns over after I got out of work. The first table we arrived at had 4 April O'Neill figures on it. No other action figures, just her. It was the first time I had seen any in person since I sold mine. My first impulse was of course to buy all four of them. Then the wishy washy impulse kicked in, which asked why I would want these again, since I previously sold mine and had stayed away from action figures for the past 9 years? But Sarah, ever the voice of reason, said that if I didn't buy them, I would regret selling them AND not buying them. They turned out to be a dollar each, so I did buy them. Now I just have to figure out where to hang them up...

I'm taking what they're giving 'cause I'm working for a living.

If you are a Constant Reader of my blog (and really, who isn't?), you know that I was a baker in high school, and that I hated it. Guess what? I'm still a baker, but I don't hate it anymore, because I chose it this time instead of it choosing me.

My dad bought a bakery in 1982 when I was 12 years old. He was a baker as long as I can remember, although he worked in a chemical plant with his dad when he got out of high school, I believe. Every once in awhile he would take me with him to the bakery on the weekend, which I loved. When he bought his own, I started going every Sunday. I would have to go to sleep very early on Saturday afternoon, and he woke me up around 11 pm. But I was always afraid that I wouldn't get up, so I stayed in the bed and stayed awake until he came in. I guess when you're 12, you can do this. Back then, I was just an assistant of sorts, I didn't do anything like making dough or frying doughnuts. I usually put icing on stuff. There was a luncheonette next door that opened at 5:30 am, and I used to go over there to play pinball and Space Invaders (the German lady that came with the bakery always gave me quarters). Sometimes I would sleep in the office, there was a small single bed in there that also came with the bakery. Now that I think about it, that mattress must have been totally disgusting.

I eventually learned how to fry donuts, and I also became a pan washer after school. I didn't want to learn anymore than that, mainly because I was lazy. I didn't want any more responsibility. My dad bought a second bakery in 1985, which had been abandoned for 4 months when he got it. When I say abandoned, I mean the previous owner locked up and never came back. Eventually the power was shut off, and all that product in the coolers and freezers went bad. There was a lot of cleaning to do, and it was all done in the summer. I stayed away as much as I could, because I hate to clean. Maybe I knew subconsciously that it was going to be my last free summer.

My dad taught me how to make bread in the new place, amongst other things. And my hours got stepped up after a year or so, as the second bakery was in a bad location business-wise, and we eventually dwindled down to just a few employees. We were making everything at the second bakery for both locations, and my dad had to drive all the baked goods to the first location (which became my weekend job when I learned to drive, and was also the first and last time that I fell asleep at the wheel and hit something). As I mentioned, I hated my job, and my dad and I fought a lot about my working there. He said I could quit if I wanted, but I really don't think I could have. I never got to go out with my friends on the weekends. But I always had money, and I was pretty generous with it back then (I still am now, but less so, I have the giant debt to prove it).

My dad closed the second bakery in 1990 and then the first one in 1991. I was free! But then I had to do something I never did before: find a job. I had no idea where to look, because I didn't know how to do anything else. I quit college after 3 semesters (more on that later), so I had no degree in anything. I put on a shirt and tie and went to the mall, with a RESUME. Does anyone take a resume to the mall? I had no idea what I was doing. I was hoping to get a job in Suncoast, so I went there and scheduled an interview. I was sweating like a pig and extremely nervous, and I didn't get the job. I was wandering around the mall with Sarah, and she told me to try KayBee Toys. They gave me an interview right then, and I was hired! Yay! I was supposed to be Christmas help, but I did a good job so they kept me on. I enjoyed the job, but there were bad things about it, the major one being the 3 dollar-an-hour pay cut I took after leaving the bakery. And to compound that, I started collecting toys. I bought entire lines of action figures, and lots of trading cards.

After a little over a year at KayBee, I actually began to miss working at the bakery. I had no idea why, but I wanted to go back. I went to the guy who bought the bakery from my dad, and he gave me a job with him. He also had two bakeries and had a truck driver to shuttle baked goods back and forth. I enjoyed the baking part of the job, but after awhile I became the pan washer and truck driver as well, and it wasn't fun anymore. So I got another job with my dad at Rutgers. I was the youngest baker there, and the manager didn't take me too seriously because of that. I was a better baker than the head baker on my shift, and he even went to a baking school! I also had to drive the truck every other weekend, and I hated that too.

After Sarah and I moved to DE and I served my sentence in the 9th Circle of Baking Hell (Sam's Club), I got a job at a country store called Byler's. My neighbor showed me in the newspaper where they were adding a bakery to their store, and Sarah had to push me to fill out an application. They hired me and I have been there from day 1, which turned out to be the Monday before Thanksgiving 2001. People seem to want a lot of baked goods on Thanksgiving, and it has only increased since then, exponentially at times. I get to make almost everything from scratch, and if I want to try something different, I can do it. The people there are great and they treat me embarrassingly well, and I get to work with many Amish women. It's a lot of fun learning about their culture, and vice versa. You haven't lived until you've had an Amish woman tell you to "go on with your bad self."

I hated working with my dad back when I was young, but now I'm very glad I did. He gave me a very rewarding career that I love, and he gave me a good work ethic, although it's a little too good sometimes. I got to spend a lot of time with my parents and my sister at the bakery, which I may not have done if there wasn't one. They weren't always good times, but I miss those times when we were all together, as those times are very rare now.