Since I posted pictures from the greenhouse I used to work
at yesterday, I thought I’d blog about the job today. The alumni association
asked me what my favorite memory from my undergrad days was, and honestly it
was working at the greenhouse. We had a very entertaining boss (let’s call him “Mo”)
who was originally from Iran. I remember one time he was telling me about his
grad school days in Tehran, when a bunch of botany grad students were driving
in a beat-up old van to the research fields outside of town as they passed
around a joint. I was totally following his story, thinking it could have
happened here in Madtown, until the part where the Iraqi fighter jets flew
overhead and bombed something less than a football field’s length away from
them. Since they were stoned out of their minds, they got out of the beat-up
old van and ran all over the place. “Huh,” I thought, “I can’t really see that
happening here.” Which isn’t to say it never could – we have been so incredibly
lucky not to have a war on our soil for so, so long.
One December day Mo got his car stuck in a snowbank, and
I went out to try to help him, but I was very tiny at that time. Fortunately
two big football players happened by, and I explained the problem. When they
heard he was Iranian, one said, “No wonder he can’t drive in snow. Ain’t nothin’
there but sand, baby!” But I maintained that he had lived here for twenty
years, he had no excuse. They quickly got him unstuck, and he gave each one a
poinsettia from the greenhouse. He told me, “I love Christmas! Everyone is so
happy! I may be Moslem, but Christmas is my favorite time of year!”
When my guinea pig died unexpectedly, Mo took me to lunch at
a Mideastern restaurant, then he told me a crazy story about how the place used
to be a Chinese restaurant, but the owner brought over his son-in-law from
China and used him as slave labor. One day the son-in-law escaped, so the
restaurant owner hired a hitman to kill him… only the hitman was an undercover
cop. “The deal could have gone down right at the table where we’re sitting now,”
Mo told me. Anyway, that was the end of the Chinese restaurant.
We also had a couple of “responsible adults” who were our
supervisors, and I remember one used to do crazy stuff like sneak cannabis plants
into the greenhouse. Once he was really bummed out because his fiftieth
birthday was coming up, but everyone was busy that weekend, and even his wife
didn’t really want to do anything. I said maybe they were planning a surprise
party for him, and of course that was what was going on, so I accidentally
ruined the surprise a little. They gave him tickets to a Grateful Dead show,
and the timing couldn’t have been better because Jerry Garcia died not long
after the show.
My fellow student workers could be a lot of fun too. One
asked me to water her plants while she was home for Christmas break, and she
said she would leave “a little something” for me. For reasons I cannot explain,
I thought she was going to leave me a cupcake or something, but on her fridge
she had taped an envelope with my name on it. It was awfully fat to contain
money. I opened it to find the fattest spliff I’d ever seen in my life. My
roommates were not coming home for weeks, so I smoked it at home. Previously
marijuana had always underwhelmed me, but this time I was stoned. Really,
really stoned. “Oh well,” I thought, “there’s nobody here to see me in this
state,” but then Ma Hat called. I have always wondered if she could tell, but
she never mentioned it. I can’t remember anything about our conversation except
that I laughed a lot. But at the greenhouse we laughed a lot even without
herbal enhancement. It was just the most fun place ever.
Famous Hat
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