Sometimes when I think that school is getting to me, I think of my other jobs.

I think of that summer in the sunbaked desert of southwestern Wyoming. I was covered in the gooey gray pipe mud, redyed in the wind, inspecting piece after piece of drill collar and pipe for the oil wells. There was no one but the roughnecks, and the boss who told me alcohol and heroine were the same to talk to. I remember driving home over the dusty roads; nothing green anywhere.

Or, I think of that winter at the feed store in Montana. There was snow on the mountains for a month before it really came in town, all dry and grainy. It blanketed the town, so white in the sun it stung my eyes. My forklift tires spun in it. It was so cold the padlocks on the warehouse froze and I did not feel my fingers and toes for hours after I got home.

I was still there when it all melted to mud in the spring, unloading the two-fifty pound Crystalix barrels and the freight cars of fertilizer. I remember the chemical smell while it churned away on the auger to be stored, and pushing the cars to the auger with Jerry and Cory, two man mountains. Sometimes I fell in the mud, almost breaking myself trying to push with them.

Now, I feel like I am almost spoiled.

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