#10 Certified Balloon Specialist

I had 80 hours of training to become a Certified Balloon Specialist. It seriously started out as fun as it sounds. A small group of young people, myself 18 or so, in a classroom type situation, learning everything there was to know about balloons. From the different types of balloons to the various balloon bouquets that can be made, we learned it all. At the end of the two weeks we had to re-demonstrate to the owners that we could make a decent bouquet and various other balloon designs, like how to put several mini balloons inside a large clear one. For the life of me I can't recall how to do that.

After I became certified, I helped set up and then worked in a small corner booth in a large miscellaneous gift store Aahs! in West Hollywood. I worked all day selling balloon bouquets and individual balloons. I enjoyed the job, I mean what's not to like? I made pretty bouquets all day and sold them to lots of mostly boring people.

Of course being that I was in L.A. I did sell a few to famous people. A couple lovely soap opera actresses, whose names escape me, Phil Collins, well his wife, and Adam Ant to name a few.

An interesting side note: Back in the early '80's, before I moved to California, I went to an
Adam Ant concert with my high school friends Stefanie and M. We were actually there to see
The Romantics "you're one in a million, baby you're the one..."
As soon as Adam Ant started singing that changed for me. Believe it or not, and as ridiculously embarrassing as this is to admit, he rocked! A little secret about me, well not going to be a secret anymore, is that during that concert, I learned what general admission, concert induced, , anonymous, dry humping is.(well, I did look behind me to make sure he was cute!) What fun! I know, your thinking, wow, she was such a bad bad...no my husband doesn't read my blog...but he does know what the dry hump phenomena is... actually has done it or heard of it... there are no secrets at our house! Heh heh. In the end I think Stef and M "saved me" from spending too much time with this stranger and from taking off my clothes in public. Always looking out for me they were.

Back to the job. I worked selling balloons for a couple months before I got fired. There were a few reasons my employer could have picked to fire me. One, I was using the merchandise on my break. I enjoyed writing short poems or letters, inserting them into a helium filled latex balloon and sending them off to some unknown destination (soul mate), hopefully not the ocean where a dolphin might choke on it, on my lunch break.

I was rude occasionally to customers. I still didn't have any patience yet.

I did something behind the counter that I wasn't supposed to. It was something that involved a rolled up dollar bill and a mirror.(Might explain some of my irritability and impatience.)

What ended up being the actual reason I was fired, was because I was almost always late to work.I didn't have a car and could not always catch the bus on time.

I'm still more of a late person than an on time person and I'm almost never early.

I was told once by a shrink...

Late=Avoidance
Early=Anxious
On Time=Obsessive

What's your diagnosis?