Remembering Cool: Resharing Some Posts for an Old Friend

Posted on September 25, 2016 by Scott D. Southard

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A few days ago I learned that a friend from my college days died.

Sue was one of the heroes in a two-part comedy story I did about my awkward time working in a grocery store bank. Here are the links:

Sue was an artist. She was hilarious with a very dark sense of humor. She was wicked smart. It took me a few months to figure out when she was actually caring about what I was saying or when she was just saving it away for a story she would tell others later. Of course, either way you had her undivided attention.

One of the valuable thing she did for me is show me how someone who is more on the artistic side of things can survive in the real world. And many times since then whenever I was in an office setting I would wonder if I was acting like Sue at that moment.

I lost touch with Sue after college but then a few years ago she found me on Facebook. I verified that everything I said in these two blogpost were correct with her. When she said they were and said how much she liked them I couldn’t stop smiling for days. I felt like that was something I earned. She went on to also read some of my books which made me soar.

Today, I regret not reaching out more outside of Facebook. It would have been interesting for me to see her life since our bizarre banking days. But like most people I always felt like there was more time.

I hope you will check out these blogposts.

Goodbye Sue. You were one of the coolest.

My Lost Years in Trucking (Part 1)

Posted on January 13, 2014 by Scott D. Southard

For two years I had the awful song “Convoy” stuck in my head. I hummed it as a I went into work, sometimes sang the chorus out loud on the drive home, and had even been known to mumble it under my breath while walking down hallways.

[On a side note, did you know the creator of that song is Chip Davis? For those that don’t recognize that name, he went on after that success to create Mannheim Steamroller, which was formed on the bad notion that 80’s synthesizers would sound great with classic old instruments like a harpsichord… and then put it to the test with Christmas music. It’s astonishing the amount of musical torture that man has to answer for once he makes it to the pearly gates.]

My wife was in graduate school, and it fell on my shoulders to pay the bills and the rent. We had just moved back to Michigan from Los Angeles. On the day we arrived back in my home state there was a major power outage throughout the region. I made a joke to the movers that our return must have caused it. The movers actually believed me (thinking I did something with a plug, I guess) until I explained it was a joke. That failed joke moment, as well as the power outage, were both foreboding signs for the two years ahead that my wife and I should have taken.

While I thought having an MFA in writing from one of the best writing schools in the country was pretty awesome, most businesses didn’t agree with me. Actually, I could see the expression of confusion cross over employer’s faces each time it came up and I had to on numerous occasions answer the question, “Why are you here?”

A very good question, Mr. Employer! Of course, a better question I have tried to answer since then is where does such a person with such a degree belong at all? Continue reading →

The Night I Stopped Being a Model

Posted on January 9, 2014 by Scott D. Southard

From around the age of 8 to about 13, I was a model. Yes, I once worked it.

Before anyone gets overwhelmed by images of catwalks, raining money, national commercials, and maybe bulimia, this was all local stuff; the work was not even unionized. And, to be honest, even locally I was not very popular. My brother was the popular one. He even had an agent before me. He is six-years younger than me, did a lot of local theater and had cute long curly hair. He played the camera, I stared dumbly at it.

So in a way, I was the twofer. “If you need an older brother for the cute kid, we have one ready for you!”

The first ad, I ever did was for a holiday commercial for Meijer. It was around GI Joe action figures, and for some reason they had me and this other boy dress in matching camouflage (because boys did that, coordinate their clothing with their toys). And for about 15 minutes, this stranger and I played with army toys on the ground (that was turned into less than five seconds on TV). Knowing me as a kid (and now), the image of me dressed like that playing with that kind of toy is kind of hilarious. That’s acting, that is!

Most of the work I did was around print ads, I would be brought into a photography studio, put on shorts or a shirt I would never consider wearing and pretend to laugh with strangers. Then on Sunday, my family and I would grab the newspaper, and scan for the local ad and image…. That would be followed by phone calls with family, pats on the back and then the ad being cut out for a scrapbook.

I didn’t like being in the spotlight (still don’t to a certain extent), but I liked the check. Sometimes I would buy a toy or book with it, many times I put it in an account (I would use most of it later in high school to buy a new alto saxophone). It was all a perfectly fine arrangement… until the night I decided I wouldn’t model again. Continue reading →