Lots of people talk of the best day of their lives -- it's a phrase that pops up a lot on social media, especially -- and it was one such random post on Facebook that got me thinking about the best working day of my life. I'm lucky in that I've had a lot of jobs that have felt more like fun than work, but there were a handful of days where all that blissful joy just came together in a way that sticks out of the pack. This is a obviously flawed and biased recollection of one of those days, over two decades ago, but aren't most recollections a bit gauzy and half-full?
As I remember it, it was a warm mid-April morning in 1996 -- 4/24, to be exact -- just before 8am when I pulled into the Stadium Mall parking lot, and I grabbed my keys to unlock the front door of the Michigan Wherehouse Records for another first shift Wednesday. We always opened at 10am during the week, but there’s bookkeeping and bank deposits and a gentle entry into the day to manage across those two hours. Once the doors were unlocked, the music playlist at the store hopped from employee to employee in a system of relative equity, but as the opener, what I tried to push down people’s throats at that time got top billing. (That particular day featured a lot of Just Fred by Fred Schneider, an album that I convinced exactly one person -- a semi-regular who I believe wanted to bone me -- to buy over the next few months.)
The day’s order usually arrived at the back door just before noon, so I'd leave the kids to check in the stock and put it on the shelves while I'd pore over the new imports to purchase that just came over the fax line. You always had to be careful to avoid fax smudge on your fingertips while you glanced at the latest British CD singles, too. Around lunch time, I'd open the door to the office – the door that had the 45 vinyl single of “Let My Love Open The Door” by Pete Townshend stapled up in the corner – and read my horrible album reviews in CM Life, the college newspaper and my sporadic part-time employer at nearby Central Michigan University, while I ate foodstuffs rich in sugar and empty calories. (On that particular day, my editor at this newspaper is called Rachel, and by the end of the year, we’ll start to date. When we break up three and a half years later, we'll both wonder exactly why that happened.)
At just after 5pm, I'd depart work and head home to my apartment at The Forum, where I'd take a quick nap and study for a bit for my CMU PSY grad class (Attitude Formation and Change!) before I headed over to Boomers, the night club in the now-vanished Holiday Inn of Mt. Pleasant, for my weekly gig as MC of our Comedy Night. On nights like this, I'd show up at Boomers just before 8:30pm and start playing music before the 9:30pm start time just to hear some loud tunes on a decent sound system. In fact, this was my favorite time to DJ, as I had a captive audience that just wanted to hear some interesting songs, so I got to play whatever I wanted, along with the occasional request from my seated patrons. At 9:30 sharp, I'd bring on the opening act with his or her 25 minute set, then I'd chat with the crowd before I brought on our headliner. (Over the 4+ years I MC'ed our Comedy Night, I can count on one hand the bad comedians, and they were usually people with subpar material who paradoxically felt they were too good for the room. We had two of those bad comedians in one day, so our batting average for quality entertainment and nice people was pretty high night in and night out.)
The headliner typically did about 45 minutes to an hour, and afterward, people usually made their way home pretty much immediately, but that particular night, I had a few of my friends and some adventurous strangers who decided to stick around and dance. So I played some Prince along with some other funky stuff (Gap Band, Dazz Band), along with a few newer electronic songs circa '96, and we reached midnight pretty quickly. Afterward, I headed home after the best work day that I’ll ever remember having in my life. And why wouldn't it have been great? I was 25, I had a full head of short brown hair, I could dunk a basketball with about a 34-inch running vertical, and while whole other lives were ahead of me, that 18-hour-ish stretch was more sheer pound-for-pound pleasure than some people get their entire lives. I’ll always be grateful for it. And I'll always have Fred Schneider to remind me of it, too.
As I remember it, it was a warm mid-April morning in 1996 -- 4/24, to be exact -- just before 8am when I pulled into the Stadium Mall parking lot, and I grabbed my keys to unlock the front door of the Michigan Wherehouse Records for another first shift Wednesday. We always opened at 10am during the week, but there’s bookkeeping and bank deposits and a gentle entry into the day to manage across those two hours. Once the doors were unlocked, the music playlist at the store hopped from employee to employee in a system of relative equity, but as the opener, what I tried to push down people’s throats at that time got top billing. (That particular day featured a lot of Just Fred by Fred Schneider, an album that I convinced exactly one person -- a semi-regular who I believe wanted to bone me -- to buy over the next few months.)
The day’s order usually arrived at the back door just before noon, so I'd leave the kids to check in the stock and put it on the shelves while I'd pore over the new imports to purchase that just came over the fax line. You always had to be careful to avoid fax smudge on your fingertips while you glanced at the latest British CD singles, too. Around lunch time, I'd open the door to the office – the door that had the 45 vinyl single of “Let My Love Open The Door” by Pete Townshend stapled up in the corner – and read my horrible album reviews in CM Life, the college newspaper and my sporadic part-time employer at nearby Central Michigan University, while I ate foodstuffs rich in sugar and empty calories. (On that particular day, my editor at this newspaper is called Rachel, and by the end of the year, we’ll start to date. When we break up three and a half years later, we'll both wonder exactly why that happened.)
At just after 5pm, I'd depart work and head home to my apartment at The Forum, where I'd take a quick nap and study for a bit for my CMU PSY grad class (Attitude Formation and Change!) before I headed over to Boomers, the night club in the now-vanished Holiday Inn of Mt. Pleasant, for my weekly gig as MC of our Comedy Night. On nights like this, I'd show up at Boomers just before 8:30pm and start playing music before the 9:30pm start time just to hear some loud tunes on a decent sound system. In fact, this was my favorite time to DJ, as I had a captive audience that just wanted to hear some interesting songs, so I got to play whatever I wanted, along with the occasional request from my seated patrons. At 9:30 sharp, I'd bring on the opening act with his or her 25 minute set, then I'd chat with the crowd before I brought on our headliner. (Over the 4+ years I MC'ed our Comedy Night, I can count on one hand the bad comedians, and they were usually people with subpar material who paradoxically felt they were too good for the room. We had two of those bad comedians in one day, so our batting average for quality entertainment and nice people was pretty high night in and night out.)
The headliner typically did about 45 minutes to an hour, and afterward, people usually made their way home pretty much immediately, but that particular night, I had a few of my friends and some adventurous strangers who decided to stick around and dance. So I played some Prince along with some other funky stuff (Gap Band, Dazz Band), along with a few newer electronic songs circa '96, and we reached midnight pretty quickly. Afterward, I headed home after the best work day that I’ll ever remember having in my life. And why wouldn't it have been great? I was 25, I had a full head of short brown hair, I could dunk a basketball with about a 34-inch running vertical, and while whole other lives were ahead of me, that 18-hour-ish stretch was more sheer pound-for-pound pleasure than some people get their entire lives. I’ll always be grateful for it. And I'll always have Fred Schneider to remind me of it, too.
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