Hum a Few Bars and I'll Fake It

This month's Create theme hasn't attracted many takers – not even the guy who inadvertently suggested it. So I guess it's my turn to come up with one, although, to tell the truth, I'm sort of spoiled for choice. I have had so many weird jobs over the years that it would be hard to single one out as the strangest. The years I spent in western North Carolina in the early 90s, however, were particularly productive. At any given time, I had up to six different jobs simultaneously.

There were the Saturdays that I spent in a department store demonstrating the latest in cooking gadgets. I sold a lot of stovetop grills. The trick, I found out, was to put a garlic clove in the water well around the grill. The smell drew customers like flies. The roasting kebabs and cheery patter did the rest.

This went fine until one day when a German couple showed up and I did the demonstration in their language for them. When they found out my other identity as a mild-mannered college professor, they were disgusted. I shrugged: adjuncts do whatever it takes. I didn't tell them that my other gigs included playing piano in a restaurant bar. I would've liked that job better if they hadn't routinely paid me off and sent me home early whenever there was a basketball tournament on the tv. I disliked playing second fiddle to b-ball, which I wouldn't watch on a bet.

Around the same time, I also worked as a radio announcer for the station run by the local community college. Most of the student deejays were volunteers, but I managed to get paid for a couple of gigs I did, such as my online language course. Then there was the newspaper reading service the Dean came up with…but let me back up a bit.

'Hey, you,' the Dean said. 'I have an idea and it involves you because you work cheap.'

'I'll bite,' I replied. 'What is it? And can I please pick the textbook this time?' The Dean's last project for me had involved teaching 'German for tourists' to adults in the night school. The 'textbook' he'd preordered was an overpriced 'teach-yourself' job with more pictures than text. It had also featured a double page insert of German-language stickers for learners to put on ordinary items around their home, such as lamps, the refrigerator, the telephone, etc.

The students who'd showed up turned out to be an educated lot – a retired meteorologist and his wife, a PhD candidate in papyrology on hiatus due to a family emergency, a severely underemployed woman who'd lived in Germany, plus a couple of stray students from nearby colleges. They found the book worth a laugh, but the underemployed woman (she worked at Bali boxing up bras, which paid more than I made, and read Nietzsche in her spare time) said her cats wouldn't sit still for the 'Katze' stickers. I'd apologised and spent a lot of time making up worksheets, which was why I was leery of the Dean and his ventures.

Of course, the Dean had found the spare money to let me offer the German lessons over the radio. They'd been fun to do – fun for me and my students, anyway. The broadcasting students didn't really enjoy running them because FCC regulations stipulated that they stay in the booth while the programmes were running. They didn't want to learn German – they wanted to play Dr Demento. I sympathised: I was a Dr Demento fan myself. But radio stations do not live by Weird Al parodies alone.

If the student deejays didn't put the German lessons up on time, or if they started to broadcast the wrong one, which happened because they were too lazy¹ to check the schedule, Mrs Adams would call them up and yell at them. Mrs Adams was the wife of the retired meteorologist. Mrs Adams didn't suffer fools gladly.

'That lady was rude to me!' complained Bubba the student deejay.

I had no sympathy. 'That lady was not rude. She's from New York City.'

'Oh,' said Bubba. 'I'm sorry, I didn't know.' Bubba was more tolerant of regional differences in future. He also sobered up and became the very responsible single father of an adorable baby girl. I had never seen a motorcycle gang raise a baby before. They were wonderful at it, although by the time she was two, she was raising them.

The Dean, however, had become enthusiastic about the educational possibilities of the radio station in our small community. He ran his latest proposal by me. 'I've got to do something with the drunk driver money,' he explained, sort-of.

'Drunk drivers give you money?' I tried to sort this out in my head.

'Not them, but the state. Drivers with too many points on their licences have to take a remedial course. Basically, they just show them a horror movie about car wrecks in order to scare them straight. The fee they pay – a fine, really – goes to the community colleges and is earmarked for special programmes. So I want you to do a special radio programme,' he finished. 'What can you come up with?'

We batted ideas around for a bit and came up with a reading service for the visually impaired. They'd give me a free newspaper every day and pay me a whole $15 an hour to read selected bits over the radio every day at noon. This was a better rate than teaching, but of course I was only reading for half an hour every weekday, so seven-fifty a session, but money was money and this was actually a half-decent idea. I got into the habit of picking up my newspaper before my morning class, tearing it up during breaks, and running over to read before lunch.

The Dean kept telling everyone I was doing a 'radio reading service for the hearing-impaired.' When corrected, he'd laugh and bellow, 'Harhar, what would you do, shout into the mic? Harhar.' I sometimes wondered about the mental processes of administrators and managers: they seemed to be cut from the same cloth.

The early 90s were busy years. I did a lot of odd jobs while teaching at up to four different educational institutions at the same time. It all ended, alas, when my main employer, a four-year college, made the decision to terminate its language department in favour of 'an expansion of physical education.' We wondered how many new volleyballs they could buy with what they saved. We took our books and workbooks, our notes, our one computer (privately owned), my word processor (ditto), and all the knowledge in our heads and moved on, leaving the institution with some bare concrete walls and a couple of sticks of cheap furniture.

Anyhow, I moved to Philadelphia and new adventures in underemployment, including fun with dot-coms and the wonderful worlds of baby and dating-service photography. But those are tales for another time…

If you've got any stories to top this, send them on in. We'd love to hear them.

Dmitri Gheorgheni

24.04.23 Front Page

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