"Confessions Of A....................."

                                                                       

I can't tell you how many times, during the eight year life of this blog, I've been solicited to write material for other web sites.  The internet is a hungry beast, constantly foraging for something new and interesting to fill the void of blog and news site alike.

Alas, so much of what we see on the internet is either some biased form of the news, or celebrity gossip, or just pure silliness.  

Still there are sometimes intriguing little tidbits that get my attention.  Of late I've been taking pleasure in reading those "Confessions of A ....................", fill in the blank....stewardess, hotel maid, window washer, public restroom attendant, etc.  Those articles provide a bit of insight into the folks who present one face for the public, another, quite different in private.

I can only imagine what hotel maids find when they go in the next morning to clean up the refuse of folks given free rein of a motel or hotel room for the night.  Having stumbled into a few homes in my time I am always a bit stunned by the less than acceptable sanitary standards that I might have.  Or I might feel claustrophobic when entering a home where folks think any available space not filled with furniture is a disgrace.  More than once I've pretended to drink from a coffee cup that had traces of lipstick on the rim, or forego a cookie that's being served on a platter with remnants of last week's meatloaf stuck just below the rim.

Has to be worse for room maids.  They have to sweep up french fries from the rug, used sanitary gloves to pluck used condoms or sanitary napkins from a waste basket, empty kleenex from a cold sufferer, carefully avoid semen deposits as they change the sheets, pluck pubic hairs from the shower drain, and a thousand other distasteful tasks.

I have read confessions of a window washer and flight attendants.  After reading about those misadventures I kind of wonder how folks who are so frequently mixing with the public manage to have a favorable view of their fellow man.  Cops have it the worst.  Day in and day out they see the worst of human behavior.  And in dealing with that behavior become the subjects of scorn if a perp is not treated with the utmost of respect.  I couldn't do it......nor could I teach history in a high school class.  I'm absolutely sure I would kill one of those kids before the term was over.

I guess I could probably write "Confessions Of A Career Military Grunt".  Except few of mine would make the cut for Reader's Digest's "Humor In Uniform".  Most of the humor in the military was pretty raw.  But I've also seen heroism, and cowardice, and heartache, and boredom, as well as some of the most bizarre behavior a grunt is capable of.