Well, I am in Wilson- September 3rd and 5th 2002
Mini Character List
Mister Ghost and Mister Superficial- are featured in my book He Seemed Normal…
Rose/Monte/Stephen- we allmet in undergrad at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Unfortunately, I never did meet my farmer charming in Roanoke Rapids. However, I will keep an eye out for him because maybe he is visiting Wilson? My first rotation ended with my preceptor telling me, “I don’t have a problem with you.” He told me to fill out my own evaluation and fax it in. He never even looked at it. This last rotation confirmed that I am still a horrible judge of character. My preceptor turned out to be a good guy just with a ton on his plate, and in the end, I have a lot of respect for him. Owning an independent pharmacy in a small town in NC makes me think of that line from the song from Cheers, it “takes everything you got” and in this particular case everything your wife’s got and your two life-long loyal pharmacy technicians, and probably a few more people I never met.
Maybe this rose-colored view of last month is because after my second day in Wilson I am asking myself if pharmacy is even for me. This is the first time in a while I have asked myself this question. Basically, I shadow people all day long doing jobs I can never see myself doing in a place I will never live. WHAT am I doing here? I feel so alone now without Monte. Shannon K. was here in the AHEC housing moving out the night I was moving in and she is exactly my speed. We talked for hours while she tried to pack. She is in my pharmacy school class but sat on the other side of the room so this is my first time speaking to her which sounds silly given our pharmacy school class size. I graduated high school with over 600 people. I worked at Eckerd all summer with a girl I went to all four years of high school with, and we had never even seen each other before our time at Eckerd. Shannon K. I have seen a million times but the way our pharmacy school class works is that we are together all day every day and for the most part we all sit in the same spot with the same people. During the first week of classes at UNC, Rose came up to me before class and said we have every class together so we should be friends or will be friends I can’t remember exactly what she said only that I smiled and said OK. She had met Stephen already, so I became friends with him and Stephen had met Monte already, so he introduced us to Monte and we had our base crew which only grew from there but with people we sat next to on our side of the room. We just never crossed the room to talk to Shannon K. This goes back to my theory that my entire life so far has been shaped by who I voluntarily or involuntarily sat next to in school. In Catholic School we sat alphabetically and Gulla sitting next to Gaylord in every class made us friends for life. During our high school graduation sitting alphabetically for the first time was the first and only time I spoke with a guy named Guglemann. All I knew about him was that he wrote the horoscopes for our school newspaper and one time my very specific horoscope was exactly right. He said I would meet a one-eyed man, and I did, which I could not wait to share with him and oddly he had no follow up questions. I was so glad we didn’t have to go through high school sitting next to each other. Anyway, I really wish Shannon and I had ended up on the same side of the room but for now we had to settle for one night of us catching up on three years of not being in each other’s orbit.
Well, now I am alone and am going to use this time to focus on pharmacy and the future. I am a sponge! Mister Superficial must be feeling alone too because he called me which was perfect because I am still trying not to call Mister Ghost. It took me two plus years to figure Mister Ghost out and to see him for who he is and I don’t like it. It is not what I want to be associated with. He is a lot of things, but I don’t think he is a nice person, and it turns out that is something I am looking for. I want better but for now, I just need better distractions.
For some reason I just brought one CD with me to sustain me musically in Wilson, and it is Justin Timberlake’s solo album, Justified. I even have a little Justin Timberlake bobble head that I put on the rear dashboard of my Honda Civic. I got him at the Dollar Tree. I listen to Justified every morning while I am getting ready but just between you and me, I feel like I might be developing a taste for country music.