Back to the Future: The Cover-Version
(The more I mine my past for a story — and a gag — the more I find myself becoming a dime-store Jean Shepherd, and that’s not the worst place for a writer to set up shop. This story is if not in that ballpark, at least in the parking-lot of the same park. For what it’s worth…and, enjoy.)
As the sun sets earlier in the West, as the evening-air cools with the onset of Fall, as the leaves blaze in their final, multicoloured glory, Halloween, the second event of the marathon holiday-march through the months that mark the changing of both the seasons, and the year, ending that calendar’s year away on Valentine’s Day, looms.
Halloween was never much of a childhood-event of any import for me. There were the occasional moments that have stayed in-memory. (One Fall when I was perhaps eight, or nine, I went trick-or-treating with my friends Oran and Wesley in Oran’s Dad’s apartment-building, where — if I remember correctly — he worked as a maintenance-supervisor, and as we were besieged by a torrential — and expected — rainstorm, we spent the entire afternoon riding the elevators up & down, gathering our haul one floor at a time. Somewhere as well from the same juvenile-era is a snapshot, its yellowing image taped into a photo-album, of me in full Groucho Marx attire, candy-cigar and all.) I remember fondly the Halloweens taking our daughter trick-or-treating in the 1990’s (she made an excellent zombie) through the local mall, when the changing habits of the age made the best trick-or-treat run a jaunt from store-to-store in the nearest shrine to consumerism. In between, my first year in college marked the beginning of my forty-six year (to-date) relationship with my wife on the 28th (Happy Anniversary, Karen), my getting a throat-infection the next day, said infection lasting four months and permanently-ruining my once-light-operatic singing-voice, said infection also meaning that two nights later — that year’s Halloween — I butchered my only lead-vocal on “Playing With Fire” in my band, No Exit’s, first gig. (Fortunately — if oddly — a knock-down, drag-out fight, thrown chairs, overturned tables and all, broke out between two fellow students, Mike Bush, and Dave Catell — yes, dudes, your names will not be withheld to protect the guilty — just as we began playing the song, so no one was paying any sonic-attention to my vocal-evisceration of a Rolling Stones classic.) My most-memorable Halloween, however, came decades later, when I was given an unexpected opportunity to indulge my retired struggling-actor persona when — and where — no one was expecting it.
In the Fall of 2011, I was working in an emergency-job of sorts while we the family were planning sending our daughter off to college, and pondering as well when, where, and how to follow her, as both my wife’s and my previous jobs had come to unceremonious ends. Earlier that year, I had turned fifty (“The old age of youth, the youth of old age”, as William Powell remarked in 1948’s “Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid”: a line that has always stuck with me from one of Tinsel Town’s more-obscure films), and was working as a mattress-salesman at Sears. The very job-title sounds like a cliché, a nightclub-comic’s set-up line, but after having been turfed out of my previous job for being a whistle-blower, it was the perfect antidote. We were not held to any of the obsessive-requirements of other salesmen in the store, we made an obscene amount of commissions on some of what we sold, and largely, we were left to our own devices. (We also had the advantage of being in the then-regional-flagship store for the company, which meant across the aisle from us was an in-store golf-shop. When not trying to sell the latest advance in sleep-technology, we played on the virtual driving-range, sank ten-footers on the putting-green, and as the manager of the golf-shop was — like me — a serious anime-nerd, we sat around watching shows and films he would download on his iPad. His full-time salesman was a veteran, semi-retired computer-designer, one of the people who was a pioneer in the development of the internet, so we too had plenty of topics to discuss and digest during a work-day. When the store moved the furniture-department next to the mattresses and golf-shop, and we had access to the recliners, we couldn’t resist taking advantage of them. Essentially, we got paid to get away with murder.)
Quite quickly, we developed a reputation as the marquee employee-hangout in the store, and I developed a reputation — fairly, or not — as the intellectual sage of our domain. From first the warehouse-employees (they discovered lounging on the mattresses was far more-preferable to hiding in the corners of the stock-rooms), and then across the employee-spectrum, I earned the nickname “Doc Brown”. (I’m still not certain why; perhaps it was my grey-hair growing out, perhaps it was my animated way of speaking, perhaps it was because I fed into it by putting on sometimes a just-barely-passable Christopher Lloyd impersonation.) I had started in the job on Halloween of 2010, so I was not eligible to take advantage of the store’s participation in the mall’s Halloween celebrations that October (all our employees were given the option to dress up in-costume on that day), but I thought the next year, I might take advantage of it. As the year progressed, and as my family’s plans took root, I knew I would be leaving that following Fall, and the day to for me to lounge in the recliners one last time would be the 30th: one day short.
My section-manager, Bill, came up to me a few days before, and said, “Iain, I’m really sorry you won’t be here for Halloween, because I was kind of hoping you could come to work as Doc Brown.” (I had been considering it, and everyone knew it. The warehouse-crew had even said, “You gotta be Doc Brown this year!”)
“Yeah, a missed opportunity, I know.”
“How about the Doc showing up on the 30th, your last day?” Bill asked. “It’s close enough.”
“Really? Sure”, and thus was the plan hatched.
Over the next few days, I hit up a local costume-shop for a lab-coat, rummaged through my old make-up kit from my stage-days for some industrial-strength hair-spray, and age make-up (to make me look a bit more-haggard and “Doc-ish”), and went to work reminding myself how the pros (or at least, the semi-pros with whom I once shared the footlights) put on the greasepaint. (It had been a good thirteen years since I had been on-stage.) After a few trial-runs, I got my mojo back such that I knew I could bring “the kit” to work, and use the employee rest-room to transform into my alter-ego.
That afternoon, as I was making myself up, Bill came into the rest-room. “Looks good. So, warehouse first?”
“Um…okay…I wasn’t sure where I should go…”
“The warehouse-guys gave you the nickname,” Bill replied, “so you should jump out of the freight-elevator and ‘go Doc’ on them.”
“Most excellent!”
Bill took me to the freight-elevator (which I had never used), and, once we hit the warehouse-level, I burst out of the gated-door in full Doc-mode. They loved it. I spent a thoroughly-enjoyable ten or fifteen minutes overacting shamelessly for them, and figured that would be the highlight of my last day on the job. As Bill and I headed back up to the employee-area, though, we passed one of the conference-rooms, when a group of seasonal-employees were being run through orientation-training. (An aside for anyone fortunate-enough never to have worked retail-sales, fast-food, or any similar form of customer-service: such employees are known as “four on the floors”, a nickname which really only works for people old enough to remember automotive manual-transmissions. The explanation is simple: too often, those poor souls get only four hours of training, and are then thrown to the consumerist wolves. It’s a lousy life.)
We listened at the door to the orientation-lecture in-progress. Bill turned to me, smiled, and said, “The Doc deserves a second act.”
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“Really? In there?”
Bill, everyone knew, had been a retail-manager most of his adult-life. He had hoped for, dreamed of, more, but the job was steady, it paid him enough to raise his family, and before he knew it, he was old, in failing-health, and like far-too many people, asking himself, “Was this all there was?” As such, he had one overriding principle to which he adhered, and to which he hoped all of us would adhere: if you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, the least you can do is have a little fun along the way, or what’s the point in even showing up?
“You know my mantra…” Bill said.
“We’re cool?”
“Oh, yeah. We’re cool. The stage is yours.”
As another group of young-hopefuls, aged-veterans, the desperate, the bored, the soon-to-be work-a-day throng dove into a chance at a paycheque, the door to the conference-room burst open. In barrelled a crazed, wild-haired, lab-coated, would-be renegade-scientist on a mission.
“Marty,” he screamed, his hands waving in-concert with his exclamations, “the vortex is closing! Our fuel is almost out! We’ve got to get back to the DeLorean, NOW!!!”
To a man, woman, and if not child, teenager, the new employees turned to look either at me, or at each other, each face wordlessly enquiring, “Is this how orientation-sessions go here?” As for Sylvia, the head-trainer (and head of human-resources for the store), she merely sighed, and hid her face in her hands. She had hired me a year earlier, and knew of my sense-of-humour. As well, working as I did under Bill, she knew what Bill brought out in people.
As quickly as Doc, as I, had barged into the room, I backed out, slamming the door behind me. Turning to Bill, I said, “Thanks. That made my day.”
“Mine too”, Bill replied.
“Well, off to the rest-room to take off the make-up, and head out to the floor.”
“Y’know,” Bill said, an amusedly-evil gleam in his eye, “you’ve been a really good salesman, a good employee, here. You should make your last day on the job special. Don’t bother clocking in to work as…well…yourself. The holidays are upon us, and I think the store could use more Doc today.”
“You mean…”
“Yep, Sears is your stage. Let the Doc run wild.”
What one-time struggling-actor could resist an offer like that? It had been thirteen years since I had trod the boards. (In truth, two months earlier, I had wrapped up reshoot-filming as the co-star of an independent-film — a dark murder-mystery — but that film, “The Victim”, would never be released.) My guerrilla-theatre days were far behind me, and I missed them.
For the next five hours, my last shift in the store before my move south and my newest great adventure began, I ran riot, from one department to the next and back, as filmdom’s favourite time-travelling mad-scientist, amusing, confusing, and entertaining employees and customers alike. It might have been the best performance I ever gave, but only those who saw it would know, even if their only memory of it is, “Why was that guy?…”.
Everyone deserves a day at work like that. Everyone deserves a day anywhere like that. Very few get it. I was lucky. Thanks, Bill, and to all of you, Happy Halloween. (Now, off the to storage-closet to see if I still have that lab-coat…)
