Wednesday, October 12, 2011

10/12/2011 TV Without the TV

One of my favorite jobs was working in the
terminal annex for the United States Postal Service
in downtown Seattle on 4th and Lander.
I was working late swing shift
which really agreed with me since I'm not a morning person.
I had washed out on the ZMT machines and was happy to have a job.
The ZMT machines were these giant mail-sorting machines
that looked like a type-writer had fooled around with
a giant mail-sorting machine.
I could only get up to 58 cards a minute
typing the first three numbers of the zipcode with my left hand
and the last two numbers of the zip code with my right hand.
Only Asian people were smart enough and coordinated enough for that job.
Luckily my supervisor noticed I was always on time and tried really hard so I
was hired as an NTE to sort flats. NTEs are ninety day temporary employees.
Every night my new buddy Sue Mercer and I
took our dinner break around ten PM.
The coolest thing was watching TV without a TV.
There was a mail-handler that could memorize the ENTIRE dialogue
from a TV show from the previous night.
Out of the blue, he would stand up
and start the dialogue of the two main characters.
He would move his body to face the air
where the other character was supposed to be.
I really enjoyed how he would raise or lower
his voice so we knew if he was a man or woman.
Usually after a few sentences we'd guess which show
and then the plot was really easy to follow.
We had some good entertainment those ninety days.

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