New Year's and me

Here I am at 2 a.m. writing a blog entry. I liked some of my PD friends' blogs. They are good reading; funny and poignant. Everyone else has given up the ghost for January 1, 2009, but I'm still here. I can't seem to spend time relaxing when something may be happening that I might miss. I got to talk shop with a young lady from Clear Lake who works at a refinery in Houston area. We got to talk about what is known on one end of the totem pole as "management operations" and "strike breaking" on the other end. Both sides can be so obstinate.

When I garduated from college, I went to work at a refinery in the Golden Triangle, also known as the cancer belt of the USA. The custom each day was the first time you saw someone for the day, you shook their hand. It made for camraderie. But come time to renegotiate the contract, they would cross the street to avoid you. They wouldn't even speak to you. I was hurt. I didn't understand the protocol. Finally a peon of the union class took me, the peon of the management class, aside and said, "Look, it's nothing personal. You've got a job to do and I've got a job to do. I'll train you to take my place but I can't be fraternizing with you."

Funny, but I was raised to respect my elders and call people older than me "sir." I got a bad arting for being so formal and unsociable for referring to one of the electricians as Mr Nelson instead of "Nelly" like all his contemporaries. That was easy to correct. But it still rubs me the wrong way when a younger person calls me by my first name. They do but now that I had to opt for a moniker befitting a grandpa but not "grandpa," things are reaching an equilibrium. Now everyone is calling me Pop or Pops. PawPaw was already taken, Grumps and PeePaw as well. Luck I wasn't Pop2008. And with that I'll pull the curtain on this amateur hour.