More About the Coworkers (Part 1)

I guess the first person I want to say a bit more about is "Sugar Booger" (the 19 year old secretary at A-1 Plastic Supply with the incredible mistyping skills)... As near as I can recall, she was about 5' 2", extremely well built, with long (bleached) blond hair, dark eyes and amazing legs. In other words, she was totally hot... That's why I really should have been attracted to her - only I wasn't...

I guess I need to explain: The issue was that it was all so contrived. The hair, makeup and clothes - she paid so much attention to every little detail. I swear it must've taken her well over an hour to get ready in the morning... The end result was that you couldn't really see the person through the "packaging". And (for some reason) that had started to matter to me... Then there was her "dumb blond" act. The problem was that it didn't seem to be an act - and that had also started to matter to me.

Aside: Back in high school Sugar Booger would have been exactly my type. But over the years that followed I (slowly) came to realize that there is nothing more attractive than a woman who can run a brush through her hair, throw on some jeans and a shirt, and (in roughly 5 minutes) be ready to face the world. Yes - it is a very special lady who does not need the approval of total strangers to feel good about herself. (They are surprisingly few and far between.) ... But back to Sugar Booger...

She could be rather sweet at times. One day around lunchtime she came back to the warehouse to tell us she was heading down to Forest Lane (where the fast food joints were) and asked if she could bring us anything back. As it turned out Sam, Jim and I each wanted something from a different place, and as we started trying to work out a compromise Sugar Booger said "I really don't mind stopping at all three." And she did...
I mean - it made sense for her to do things like that for the boss because he signed the paychecks. But she had absolutely no reason to go that far out of her way for the guys in the warehouse other than simple thoughtfulness... Well, I guess it could have been evidence of an overwhelming need to please others due to deep-seated insecurity ... but it was still a really nice thing to do :-)

But the real "head scratcher" was her fiance:
Sugar had started working at A-1 roughly the same time as I did and word got around that she was from a really small town and had just recently moved to the big city with her high school sweetheart... So as time went by some of us (primarily Jim, Ivan and I) got to wondering exactly what kind of guy had the "right stuff" to capture her heart...
Then one day she was late to work because she had to take her car to the shop, and she mentioned that her fiance was going to be picking her up that afternoon.  So - when quitting time rolled around a few of us just "happened" to be looking out one of the side windows as he pulled into the parking lot...

When he got out of his car (a 68 Olds 442 as I recall) we were all surprised - and puzzled... Judging from the letterman's jacket and the "swagger" he had probably been the "alpha jock" at whatever high school they went to - but he looked like he had played goalie for the dart team (I'm talking seriously bad complexion)... Now - I'm not really qualified to judge whether men are good looking or not (I don't swing that way), but we were all pretty darn sure this guy was butt ugly. It was like "You have got to be kidding me!!!"

You know - If I'd had more than the slightest interested in "Sugar" I probably would have gone "obsessive compulsive" trying to figure out exactly what she saw in him and what the basis of their relationship was. (Lots of possibilities there.) But some puzzles are best left unsolved ... and she was one of them....