You stick it there: Five consecutive, awkward years at summer camp.

Ask one of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who spent a portion of their lives in summer camp what their they remember the most and you’ll get a show of fond stories about people who learned about their self worth - all while fashioning keychains out of twigs or learning to canoe.

I’m not saying that these people are liars, but I am saying that there was probably a lot more to remember about camp than crafts and pond sports. Most of the people I have talked to about summer camp remember it as the first time they smoked pot, exposed themselves to The Clash, or touched a boob for the first time. They started to turn into young adults at summer camp. I suppose it was the same for me, in a sense.

"But how do I know where to put it?"
"You just have to feel around," she called back.

I stood in one of the bathroom stalls while the counselor stayed put in the sleeping area. My body decided to take that first, spritely step into womanhood on the second day of my stay at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Camp. I ran to my counselor, a young bohemian of about twenty-one with thick glasses and an arsenal of rings on her fingers, upon the discovery and explained what was happening to me.
She looked me over for a second, clearly in thought, before saying,
“Well, you have a couple of options. Do you want to swim at all this week?”
“Yes.”
“Well, now you only have one option. Come on.”

After a long like back to the cabin, she pointed to the bathroom and said, “Go wait there,”
as she went to her trunk and rummaged around. She eventually produced a small box and dumped the contents onto her bed, picking out a tubular package with pink, friendly looking daisies on it and a booklet of directions.
“This,” she said as she approached me, “is something you need to learn to use.”

One painfully awkward crash course in feminine hygiene later, I found myself alone in a bathroom stall with a strange, foreign device in my hands that was supposed to end up inside my body - somehow.
“And people use these?” I called out.
“Women use them, yes.”
“Why?”
“They’re convenient.”
“Can I have the directions?”
“Sure,” she said, tossing them over the stall from the main room of the cabin. I thought it was weird how she refused to come inside the bathroom. It made me feel like I was holding a stick of dynamite and it would explode any second. I studied the directions one more time, trying to make sense of the vague diagram and the directions that came in every language imaginable except the one I needed.

“You alright?” she called.
"What if it goes in the pee hole?" I called back.
"You can't do it. It’s impossible."
“But -”
“The pee hole is too small. Most people have never even found it."
There was a pause. Finally, I asked,
"Have you ever found your pee hole?"
There was an even longer pause. An awkward pause.
"No, Jas. I have not."

I eventually got everything squared away and was allowed to swim again, and though my counselor and I never spoke of the exchange again, I sealed my fate as the “that girl” of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Camp.

Camps are supposed to be the place where the socially inept, such as 12 year old me, could go to escape the empty, confusing lives they led at middle school or high school. For me, camp just took those awkward years and mashed them into one week.

Prior to St. Andrew’s, my only experience summer camp was limited to a week I had spent at Camp Pristine Pines, a Girl Scout camp nestled in the foot hills of the Appalachian trail. I slept in a leaky cabin with eleven other girls who were really into horses the The Babysitter’s Club, two concepts that I did not understand whatsoever. They always picked me last in team sports, leaving me with no option but to partner up with Ms. Tammy, the camp leader. Being my own partner was not an option; her staunch belief in the buddy system left her incapable of letting us do even the most basic tasks on our own. A girl in a neighboring cabin had to spend an entire afternoon sitting in Ms. Tammy’s office because she walked to the volleyball court by herself. With her leathery skin, an accent that rivaled the Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, and a temper to match, Ms. Tammy developed into worthy nemesis.

My overall experience culminated in a moment of fury when no one would go with me on a much needed, midnight bathroom run. I moved from bunk to bunk, whispering small pleas to my sleeping cabin mates to wake up and walk with me to the latrines in the middle of camp. Most of them pretended to be asleep, but a few of them muttered, “No,” or “Go find someone else,” before I could even finish my question. Finally, I crept over to Ms. Tammy’s section, separated from the rest of the cabin by a wire screen.
“Ms. Tammy,” I whispered, scratching on the screen. Nothing.
“Ms. Tammy, I have to go to the bathroom!”
With a snort and a groan, she turned on her back and put her hand on her forehead.
“Go back to bed,” she muttered, “It can wait ‘till the morning.”

At that exact moment, I decided that I hated summer camp.

The frustration that had been building up all week came to a head as I planted my feet in the middle of my cabin, pulled down my pajamas, and pissed all over the plywood floor. When I was satisfied, I climbed back into the bottom bunk and went to bed, eager to see the faces of my cabin mates the next morning.

When asked why I soiled the cabin, I replied,
“Because no one would be my buddy and I couldn’t help it.”
Then, when they still threw accusing looks in my general directions, I innocently said,
“It was an accident - I promise.”

To this day, whenever I tell that story in real life I always tack on the phrase, “Those bitches had it coming.”

The remainder of the week dragged on for what seemed like months. The weather was rainy; the girls were more interested in talking about horses than anything I considered even remotely relevant; and although I learned that someone under 90 pounds could use their thumbs to gouge out an attacker’s eyeballs in the Girl’s Defense Course, it wasn’t enough to make me want to go back to Camp Pristine Pines the next summer.

My parents, after hearing wonderful feedback about St. Andrew’s from my sister and some of the other kids from church, convinced me to give summer camp another go by sending me to the performing arts session. By “performance arts,” they meant breaking us off into small groups every day and creating skits from the more colorful tales in the bible. At the end of the week, each group picked their best skit and used it in a showcase for Parent Pick-up Day. For the grand finale, every group from camp ran on stage and danced the Macarena to REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”

I went back for three more sessions because of one of my cabin mates. Her name was Helen and she was a mildly athletic, cool tempered girl who exclusively wore faded band t-shirts and showed me the Beastie Boys for the first time. Aside from my counselor, she was the only one who knew about my leap of womanhood and, to her, this made me a mature and worthy accomplice. Helen had this energy that sucked in everyone around her, making them grateful to be in her presence. I had never been so warmly received by someone so cool. When she told me she was switching from performing arts camp to general camp, I followed her. When she went on morning jogs with the counselors, I went with her even though I hated jogging and I was always wheezing by the time we were done. When the boys began to give her a hard time, I got in their face and told them to leave her alone. It seemed like a worthy trade until one year when she snuck off to make out with one of them in the bushes. I never told her how it made me feel because I knew there was no point. Helen was the most popular girl in camp; she was bound to fool around with one of the guys sooner or later.

I kept to myself for the rest of the week. She’d poke me with her fork at lunch or dinner and say things like,
“Dude, what’s wrong?” or, “Hey, something bothering you?”
“I’m good,” I replied, “Just not feeling it.”

A day or two later, someone would tell her that she had “broken my heart” and she and the other girls would stop waving me to their table at meals and cease asking me to play on their teams for camp games. I wouldn’t return to St. Andrew’s after that summer.

Out of all of the embarrassing things that I have done or experienced at camp, Helen was a special kind of embarrassing. Otherwise, camp was simply a cocktail of awkwardness that I have learned to appreciate in the years since. My favorite memories are ones that make me look back and silently scream, “Really? No, really?” - like the time I pretended that I had seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail so I could run around and say “Kni!” with Helen and the rest of her friends on camp skit night. When asked if I could quote anything from the rest of the film, I replied,
“Oh, sure!” and promptly changed the subject.

Once, I even tried to reinvent myself as “Mizzy,” a hip kid with an out of this world sensibility, but that fell flat on its face when I introduced myself to a kid who also read the comic book that I found the name “Mizzy” from. It was one of the most embarrassing moments of camp - second only to the time I asked my counselor if she had ever found her pee hole.

The Right Type

Because I have never been one to let sinus infections come between me and a paycheck - and also because I'm not a little baby - I started out my week by gargling hydrogen peroxide. Then, after I was sure that every germ in my throat was dead, I popped enough sinus pills to take out a dinosaur. My agent must have sensed that my Rocky-like approach to fighting disease was working, because yesterday she called to let me know that I was trying out for another television show this morning.

"Who is it for?" I asked.

"Janice," she chirped, "and she specifically asked for you. It's a one liner, but it's still an opportunity."

"That's awesome!" I said. "What's the project?"

"It's called Fancy Free. They're billing it as the African American Sex in the City."

"Sweet! Who am I reading for?"

"Let me see here," she said, "Ah, here we are: Video Vixen. You're reading for the Video Vixen."

"What?" I shot back, nearly spewing my drink out of my nose, "Really? They asked for me, by name, to read for a Video Vixen?"

"Is that so strange?"

Strange? Strange doesn't even begin to describe the hilarity of what these people were asking for. To better illustrate what I cannot find the words for, I created a side by side comparison using a photograph from that time I dressed up as Ike Turner and the most work-safe image I could find when Googling the term, "Video Vixen."

I love this image because not only does it showcase how dapper I look with an afro and a baseball bat, but it also demonstrates my clear and ongoing battle with the concept of "type."

Growing up, I more closely resembled an albino Cherokee Indian than a sophisticated, girlish waif - and the latter remains highly debatable. In shows, you would typically find me in the chorus - although I broke the trend a few times to play a queen, a homeless person, and a singing prostitute. I slowly stopped participating in theater as high school carried on, opting to focus on opera and classical music because I seemed to be a better "type" for it. Type didn't seem to matter one way or the other in the classical world until I shipped out to opera school and learned better. In short, vocal type determines everything you can and cannot do. Much to the dismay of my professors, I manipulated my voice time and time again to evade classification because I wanted to sing the pieces I wanted to sing.

"You," my Scandinavian vocal coach told me, "are lyric soprano - I think. I don't know, because you keep sing too many different pieces! You'll find much ... problems ... with your career because you are not true coloratura; you are not a true mezzo; you are not true dramatic. If you want to be career singer, you must discover who are you and stick at it. Who did you think you are, Maria Callas?"

Maria Callas was one of the greatest opera singers of all time. If someone tried to tell her that she couldn't sing a piece because it was "outside her type," she'd give them the finger before plowing over them with a tractor and learning it anyway. I like to imagine her as the Chuck Norris of opera.

I love listening to her because her sound is gorgeous yet unique. Unlike other vocalists, whose training masks their individuality, Callas was a distinguished performance artist no matter what part of the fach, or vocal classification system, she fit into at any given moment. If she was involved, you knew she was involved. Type? Maria Callas was once contracted to perform La Traviata and MacBeth back to back. In case you don't know, that's incredible.

To answer my voice teacher's question, no: I did not think I was Maria Callas and I never aspired to be. I just thought she was really, really badass. My admiration for her was obvious at my final jury. I sang a coloratura piece and a mezzo piece, much to the dismay of my voice instructor. In retrospect, it was probably a stupid and big-headed move on my part, but I reasoned that I planned to go into journalism and would no longer pursue performance arts, so why not sing what I wanted this one, last time?

For the record, I made A's on that jury. Also: that whole journalism plan - yeah, it lasted all of five seconds. On week two at my new school, one of my professors suggested I check out the theater program orientation. I officially switched majors later that semester and found myself answering to type again. The Program already had its go-to's for ingenues, leading women, leading men, funny guys, funny gals, villains, and so on - or so it seemed to me, at least. That first year I kept a low profile, but I took every class I could get my hands on and slowly began to carve my niche in The Program as "that girl who was dangerously into Conan O'brien and Lily Tomlin."

As I became more comfortable with my own personality and where my sense of humor fit into the grand scheme of things, I began to take bolder steps in the direction I wanted to go. When they announced the next season, I predicted which opportunities had already been set aside. I then set a goal for myself: to fill in supporting gaps accordingly. The obstacles? Type, meaning that the season contained three very different shows with three very different roles to fill; but also a pecking order, meaning that The Program already had a number of talented girls who had invested more time there than me.

My first goal was to nab a supporting, ditzy, ingenue role. I had long been type-cast as either Mom or Weird Bag Lady and just once, I wanted to wear a frilly dress and hoot and holler with the rest of the youngin's. I butted heads over this desire with one of my teachers several times.

"Jas," he said, "You don't have an ingenue's voice. You don't have that light, bright, ingenue look."

To his credit, he was probably right; but I still went home that summer and worked to prepare for the next year. That fall, when I came back to school, I found the girliest, most ridiculous, purple dress I could find and walked into the audition with a head full of curly hair and one of the coloratura songs I had begged Scandinavian voice teacher to let me sing a couple of years before.

It was the beginning of a fruitful college career.

In this line of work, I often hear people talk about the kinds of roles they'd "always like to do" and how they will never be able to realize that fantasy because they are "so wrong for it," and I don't understand. In a world where a woman can play Adolfo Pirelli in Sweeney Todd or a central character in an award winning film can literally be played by a TIRE, why limit yourself? You don't need to decide if you're right or wrong for anything; that is the director's job.

Sometimes, Type can be your friend. There are always going to be projects where Type is rigorously enforced, and probably for good reason. As an actor, though, I still don't see the need to let Type govern every single endeavor I go after. That's why I found an agent who understands the benefits of not being pigeonholed and sees each audition as an opportunity to stretch - even if it means sending this dork (me) out to read for a video vixen.

SBAP Presents: The IT Crowd Impersonations + My Contribution to the South's Stab at Pilot Season

Last week was a decent one for me to be an actor in Atlanta. I had an audition for a major network pilot, bringing my attempt to join the South's stab at pilot season to a grand total of two tapings. I experienced an audition that made me somewhat proud to be from a smaller, underdog agency.

A major network plans to film something called a "backdoor" pilot in the south. A backdoor pilot is essentially a television movie that the networks produce and then air to see if the show can attract enough viewers. If it does, then they typically order a complete season. Not only is this awesome news because they plan to film it here, but they are also doing early principal casting here as well - something that most of the projects that have filmed here have neglected to do.

I was in jogging on a treadmill when I got a call from my agent. When the agent calls, I stop whatever I am doing and answer. I accidentally left the treadmill running and went to the bathroom to answer.

"Yes?" I panted.

"Wow, did I catch you at a bad time? You sound out of breath!"

"Nah, nah; I'm just at the gym. What's up?"

"Well, I have an audition for you tomorrow at 10:40am and I need to know if you can make it."

"Tomorrow," I said quietly, trying hard to remember if I had anything to do the next day, "Tomorrow... crap, I have work!"

"You have work?"

"I mean, I do have work, but it's not until 1:00pm."

"Alright, but you should know up front that if she wants to call you back, you have to have availability later in the day."

"She? Is it Janice?"

"It is. She keeps asking to see you. I had to sell you really hard on this one, though; the part you're auditioning for is a high school cheerleader slash girl next door type. She was grilling me over the phone about whether or not you could look young enough. So when you go, you need to look like a high schooler."

"Got it."

"And if she wants to see you again, will you be able to make the callback?"

"I'll make it work."

"Good. I'll send over the sides and the address of the audition site shortly."

Janice is one of the biggest, established casting directors in the south. I have auditioned for her twice before. Despite her reputation for having a steely disposition, I have the upmost respect for her because she leads the forefront of the battle to move more film work to Georgia. I also enjoy her auditions because she won't let you continue the scene if she doesn't dig what you're doing with the part. She gives you the tools to change it.

I waited in line as the actors in front of me went in and came back out like clockwork. Finally, I was inside and standing face to face with Janice.

"Hello," she said, "Good to see you again. Stand on the mark and we're going to run through all of the lines. Sound good?"

"Yes ma'am," I replied. It overjoyed me to know that she had even remembered my name.

"Good. You can start."

"Hey! Toby! Wait up. I think we should go to the diner after school today and study for -"

"Play it to me, honey."

I nodded and looked right at Janice.

"- and study for that English exam."

"Need help?" read Janice, in character as Toby.

"Nah, you are so awesome to offer, though. I think that I can -"

"Look at me," Janice interrupted. This time she was Janice.

"Yes ma'am," I said quietly.

We continued on to the last scene, and the second I finished saying,

"I don't love you because you're popular and all. I love you because you're a kind person," she lowered her glasses and said,

"Good. That was very real; very natural. I like it. Now this business with your hair and make-up. I'm scared that you may be too old. How old are you?"

I told her my age - my real one, not the one I swore I would tell people when I started auditioning professionally.

"I see," she said. Reaching for my headshot, which showed me with hair down, and added, "Can you look like this?"

"Yes," I answered. I yanked the elastic band from my hair. I shook it out and parted it the same way I had it in my headshot.

"Good, good," Janice said, clearly in thought. I stood there, crossing my fingers and repeating the mantra, Callback. Callback. Callback, over and over in my head until she broke the silence by saying,

"I'm going to want to see you here again around 3:30. Have your agent call me in about two hours for the exact details. You can send the next person in on your way out."

I went to work with a spring in my step and a mission to find the shift manager.

"Excuse me," I said when I found him, "but guess who's going to audition for a TV show?"

"Who?" He asked, feigning boredom.

"This gal," I said, popping my collar. His expression lightened.

"Really? That's so cool. So you're going to need an extra bit of time for lunch, eh?"

"Please?" I said, clasping my hands together. He glanced behind him.

"Just mark it on your time sheet. Now go and get to typing."

I told my co-workers that I was expecting a very important call and politely excused myself to the back room whenever I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I saw numbers and messages that may as well have said False Alarm until, finally, my agent called.

"Jas?"

"Yes, what's the news?"

"Well, I just want to be sure that she said to come back. Because here's the thing - Janice is in a closed room and the assistant with the phone says that you aren't on the list she was making."

"No - no. That's not right. Janice told me to come back around three-thirty with my hair down and less make-up on. I'm supposed to be seen again."

"Hm. It could be that the assistant is new. If Janice told you to be there, then she means for you to be there."

"What should I do?"

"You need to go."

Pushing the double doors of the hotel open, I walked into the ballroom with more purpose than a mother about to run her child's mean, relentless teacher through the wash. I had gotten off of the business floor a little later than I had intended and got caught in the beginnings of rush hour traffic. Traffic, however, proved to be no match to my resolve to accomplish my goal.

"Hello," I said when I found the assistant, "I'm here for callbacks?"

"Your name? Don't tell me," she said, grasping her forehead, "it's -"

"Jas," I finished. No time for don't tell me's.

"Jas," she repeated.

"Janice told me to be here at three thirty with my hair down and less make-up on."

"Gotcha," she said, penciling me into the list, "if you don't mind waiting over here. We're going through the adults first, but then we're moving on to the teenagers."

I texted my agent the word, "Success. I'm in."

Her reply: "Excellent. Now get in there and show them what the new guys on the block are capable of."

I camped out near the entrance to the casting room. It took no longer than a few seconds to realize that the actual teenagers I was in line with were there to try out for the same part as me. These weren't just teenagers; they were children.

"Hey, is this your final callback?" I asked one of the girls.

"Who, me? No, this is actually my first read for this project. My agent told me about it a few hours ago. I'm actually missing Social Studies to do this," replied a spritely blonde girl.

"Who's your agency?" I asked.

"Top Talent."

Aha; so that was it. The girls in line with me hailed from the older, more established agencies in the area, and therefore didn't need to prove themselves with pre-tapings and first rounds; their agents had been in the business long enough to be able to send their talent straight to the director tapings - no questions asked. Apparently the script gave the older agents an impression that this high schooler needed to look extra young; the girls in line with me might as well have been wearing diapers. They were in and out of the casting room like an inappropriate analogy and, before long, the assistant looked at me and said,

"Jas. It's your turn."

I walked into the room. It was set up differently: there were now two extra men in the room as well as a professional grade camera.

"Hello!" Man #1 said.

"Well, hi!" I replied.

"Jas," Man #2 mused, "That's an interesting name. Short for Jasmine, I presume?"

"Actually, it's my initials. My birth name is Jessica."

"Really?"

"Yes," I said, sneaking a peak at Janice. She was smiling. "I was born in a small town and Jessica was a very popular name during the year I was born. There were practically a million of us all the way through ninth grade. The teachers were going to start numbering us off."

"No way!" said Man #1 said.

"I know, right? I said, 'hell no,' I put my initials together and came up with Jas."

"So what's your middle name?" Man #2 asked.

"Amanda."

"That's so cool. Thanks for sharing. Well, we're ready when you are."

"Alright," I heard Janice say, "We're doing the first scene and the last scene and that's it. That ok?"

"Yes ma'am," I said.

And we did it.

I played to Janice the entire time. Not the camera; not some spot behind her like they told me in practically every acting class I have ever taken; but Janice. When we finished the last line, I felt as though we were smiling at each other, sharing a brief second of understanding. Her expression said something along the lines of,

"You did good, kid."

I was excited. I had done a good job. I was literally dancing on my way out - a common reaction of mine when I feel like I had a fun audition - when one of the directors turned around and said,

"Jas!"

I stopped dead in my tracks.

"Nice Pumas."

"Thanks!" I said. "Thank you very much!"

And I stepped outside the door with a happy, confident smile.

--

A week has passed since that audition and I haven't heard a single thing. With television, they typically let you know within the week if they need to see you anymore. With that in mind, this latest project is probably a no-go. However, just because something is a no-go doesn't mean it wasn't worthless; for example, I am 100% sure that I made a stellar impression on the two directors. Impressions, if they are good enough, can be just as good as bookings. As an actor, you have no control over the project you audition for. However, there are the maybe's to keep in mind:

Maybe it just wasn't the right time.

Maybe it wasn't the right project.

Maybe a piece of paper came between you and the project and it really was that important for them to have an LA Girl with more credits on her resume.

Maybe you blew them away, but the part has already been promised and/or contracted and the auditions are only a union formality.

Maybe you were too big.

Maybe you looked too old.

These are the things that we have no control over. Politics. Unions. Resumes. Prettiness.

I have no idea which one of these maybe's, if any, factored into the final decision, but there is one thing I can be damn sure of:

They liked me. We had fun. Janice will ask to see me again.

Excuse me, miss, but might you help a fancy man and his poodle?

During the year before I transferred to theater school, and I worked at *The Pet Store, a small retail hub that served as an extension of a larger chain based in Kansas, for a little over a month.

I was pushing a shopping cart loaded with electrical collars, flea and tick sprays, and canine toenail clippers. A small, plastic container with a recently healed dwarf hamster balanced at the very top. I had only been on the sales floor for a few seconds when I felt a slight tap on my elbow and the voice of what sounded like Truman Capote's ghost say,

"Excuse me, miss?"

I screamed and jumped, violently pushing the shopping cart forward in the process. The dwarf hamster, which had been teetering and tottering the whole time, tumbled down the side of the mountain of merchandise. I made a dive for it, barely catching it in time. With the hamster safe in my hands and the goods intact, I looked up to face the source of my fright. I stared into the quizzical expression of a middle aged man with thick, wire rimmed glasses. He was wearing a green blazer and donned a massive golden ring on his pinkie. His tan rivaled those of the more popular girls I had gone to high school with.

"Miss," he began again, holding two items out to me, "could you look at these and tell me which one will do a better job at keeping my purebred, standard poodle from menstruating in the carpeted areas of my vacation house?"

I set the hamster on the shelf and took the packages, turning them over to read the specs on each one.
"Well," I began, "These aren't really going to stop your dog from bl-"
"Please," said the man, holding his hand out in a halting gesture, "Don't say it. My brain doesn't wrap around that concept."
"Right. Well, these are basically maxi-pads for dogs. They don't prevent; they just contain. If you want her to stop doing her thing, then you may want to get her fixed."
"I could never get Courtney fixed," he said, fingers fluttering to his lips, "I breed her. She's a proud mama!"
"Well, this will stop her from making a mess anywhere, regardless of whether or not she's in a room with carpet."
"Ok, well; if you had to take your bitch in heat out in public, would you rather her be seen in," he turned each package over to scan them, "Dog-ettes or Fancy Pants?"
"I'm a little partial to Fancy Pants myself. Mostly because of the frills and the cute patterns."
"But they both - oh, what is it that I'm trying to say? You know, work?"
"Absolutely."
"Well then," he said, handing me the Dog-ettes, "I'll just take the ruffles. Thank you!"
He grabbed three more packets of Fancy Pants down from the shelf. As I watched him saunter to the cash registers, I took a second to reflect on how I had arrived at a point in my life where situations like this had become a regular fixture in my daily routine.

I wound up working at The Pet Store because I desperately needed a job. I had just moved back in with my parents after transferring out of my previous school. My GPA was destroyed, my abilities as an artist were in question, and I was virtually broke. My plan to get back on track was too heavily influenced by the idea that I needed to live out the life I had missed out on while I was at school. As a result, I sought inclusion in a culture that I had no business being a part of. I applied to countless coffee shops, record stores, and other places of business that specialized in selling the concept of hip, but I never got an interview from any of them.

The Pet Store and I found each other through Drew, a guy I had gone to high school with. I wandered in because the Humane Society set up camp by the entrance, putting their best and brightest on display. The goal was to lure the consumer to the door with puppies and funnel them in from there. I had gone inside and was playing with the ferrets when I spotted Drew emerging from of the office. I plopped one of the ferrets on my shoulder and waved.
"Jas?" he said.
"Hey, man!"
"Jas?"
"Yes!"
"Dude!" He threw his arms in the air, "How have you been?"
"Eh, I've been.”
“You’ve just ‘been?”
“To say the least... What about you? I heard you and Ellie broke up."
"That's actually really weird that you mention that, because she totally did a drive by here a few days ago."
"What?"
"Yeah; someone told her we were hiring and she wanted to see if I was still working here. So she walks through the door and one look at me and that girl's outta here."
"She was always a little crazy, that one," I replied. Ellie and I had butted heads more than a few times during high school. She was - "Wait, you said you were hiring?"

Three days later I sat across from the owner and manager in a cramped office. I wore a pair of nice khakis and a sweater for the interview, but felt slightly overdressed when I noticed that he was wearing torn jeans and that the outline of his belly flowing over his waistline was plainly visible when he sat down.
It wasn't an interview so much as it was a serious of questions like,
"How do you feel about handling live snakes and lizards?" and "This job can be pretty gross. Are you sure you're prepared to handle that?" intermixed with job protocol and expectations.
"You get paid minimum wage," he said, "but that doesn't mean you can do a piece of crap job here. This is an easy gig; all we ask is that you show up and do it."

I spent the first few days coming to terms with the fact that Christopher Guest wasn't too far off the target when he made his brilliant 2000 mockumentary masterpiece, Best in Show. Scenes where Parker Posey violently throws a stuffed parrot and screams, "She's freaking OUT!" played through my mind while I quickly learned that many people who owned pure bred dogs and cats were completely and totally insane.



When I had recovered from the culture shock, I settled into the store routine and got to know my co-workers a little better. There was Drew, the lead stocker; Jules, the lead cashier; Ennis, another stocker who came from a privileged family and smoked a lot of pot; Tiffany, a fellow cashier and the store sexpot; and Crissy, a plain and quiet girl who was engaged to, and very much in love with, a guy in a wheelchair. Then there were Marvin and Tish, the owners.

"Yeah, I'd watch out for Marvin," Drew told me, "He hits on all of the cashiers. He and Tish will more than likely try to get you into bed with them."
"Them?" I asked.
"Oh yeah," Drew said, suddenly whispering, "Marvin and Tish are swingers. Their Facebook status says Open Relationship. See Tiff over there?"
I looked over toward the other cashier station. Tiffany, adjusting her cleavage to appear a bit more buxom, inspected her shape through the reflection of the scanner.
“What about her?”
Drew raised his eyebrows and produced an ever-so-informative glance.
“Seriously?” I asked.
“So the rumor goes. Actually, I take that back; it’s not much of a rumor these days. She’s pretty proud of it. Hey! Tiffany?”
“What?” she asked, jumping a little.
“What do you think of Marvin?”
“He’s hot. Now go away.”

Tish and Marvin hailed from the hollowed highways of the Louisiana badlands. They brought with them a colorful history of balancing their swinger lifestyle with their hectic schedule of managing the pet shops and orchestrating charitable causes for dogs and cats everywhere. Some would take this piece of information and assume that, due to their benevolence toward the animal kingdom, that they would share that love and enthusiasm for everything.

I quickly learned that this was not so.

I had put the Dog-ettes back on the shelf, finished stocking the mountain of merchandise in the shopping cart, and was finally getting around to returning the dwarf hamster to its home at the front of the store. As I plopped him down into the wood chips, I couldn’t help but notice another hamster that was twitching in the corner.
“Um,” I said, searching for anyone in the immediate vicinity who might be able to tell me what to do. I went and knocked on the office door.
“Come in,” I heard Marvin say. I cracked the door open and saw him with his feet propped up on another chair, checking off the returns from the previous shift.
“Hey,” I said quietly, “There is this dwarf hamster in the corner of the cage and it looks pretty ... gross.”
“Is it shaking?”
“Yeah.”
“Is it’s ass all wet?”
“What?”
“Does it look like it peed all over itself?”
“Um... let me go check,” I said, slipping over to the cages. One glance at the hamser’s rear-end and I had to fight my gut reaction to pelt it as far away from my face as I could. Upon returning to the front office, I replied,
“Um, yeah. It’s pretty gross.”
“Wet tail.”
“Huh?”
“Wet tail. Animal diarrhea. Put it in one of the plastic containers and throw it away.”
“The hamster?”
“Yup.”
“You want me to throw a live animal in the dumpster?”
“Well, it’s not going to be alive for very long now, is it? Just do what I said: put the hamster in a plastic bin and toss it before the others get infected and we can’t sell any of them.”
“But -”
“Wet tail can wipe out the entire inventory. Go.”

With a grimace on my face, I used the top to slide the sickly hamster into a container. I don’t know why, but I poked some holes in the top. I slowly made my way to the back of the store, trying to channel the tune of an appropriate funeral march in my head. Once I was outside by the dumpster, I looked at the hamster one last time. It was curled into a ball with one foot sticking out. As I extended my arm to drop him in, I froze. Glancing to both sides to ensure that I was alone, I pulled my arm back and ran over the the edge of the pavement and quietly let him loose in the grass and ran back to the dumpster.

“Go,” I whispered, “Be free. Enjoy your last hours of life in a nice, outdo-”

A sudden breeze rustled my hair and a ferocious, winged predator of the late afternoon chose that very second to swoop in with a screeching, “K-kaw!”

The hamster, which had been nestled in the grass a second before, was gone. He now soared through the air, utterly unaware that this was his final journey before he was ripped apart and eaten in some secret hawk lair. I stared off into space as I tried to process what had just happened. The sudden sound of the back room doorbell pulled me back to reality. I tossed the former coffin into the dumpster, and said to myself,
“Well, at least now he’ll die of natural-ish causes.”

I resumed my position at the cash register and tried to act like everything was totally normal and that a gigantic hawk had not just made off with a hamster that was supposed to be enjoying its last moments among a grassy patch surrounded by daisies and other woodland creatures.
“Hey,” Marvin said, opening the door of the office, “D’you take care of it?”
“Pretty much,” I replied shortly.
“Good. Now go and help out that customer,” he said, pointing to the entrance. I turned to see a familiar face: the gentlemen in the green sweater had returned. This time he brought Courtney, the standard poodle.
“Miss,” he said, setting one of the Fancy Pants down on the counter, “I just can’t figure this out. Could you please help me?”

I looked back toward Marvin, who snickered and shut the door. I turned back toward the gentlemen, now doing his best to make sure that Courtney did not sit down on the floor, and feigned a smile.
“Sure,” I said.
Then, as an afterthought, I added,
“But let’s go to the grooming room. They have towels.”