I work in a brutal job. Long hours, hard work difficult conditions with great people. Best job I have ever worked because of the people. First and only job where I have a nickname based in fun rather than derision. Big Cat or Gato Grande in Spanish. So I returned that favour I called him Gato Papá also Gato Padre, but you know. There is also Cool Cat, he is a musician. The people are great.
I got to know Gato Papá, which means Daddy Cat, he is not older than me but you know, it fits. I got to know him by working closely with him for a few weeks. We might have been a close match out of work, but no in work, I am too clumsy and the idiosyncrasies of me are great and cause difficulty for all people, but for some reason they like me. I am constantly paranoid that it is about to fall apart, but I am reassured that it is not. In a landscape company focused primarily in interlock, pool building and hardscaping, I feel a constant drain, but I have more experience with planting, or rather more knowledge of planting if less experience than some; I know why one way to plant is bad and why another is good, I know what you need to add to the soil and why. So there is a bit of give too besides take.
The Boss gave me $200 cash the other day, he said it was for taking the lead in a planting job a few weeks ago, but I know the truth, that was the excuse he was using. The truth was that I got to know Gato Papá and he told me that it was his birthday in a few weeks, a month and a half ago. He told me that it was completely unimportant. His last birthday proved his point, he went to dinner with his family and they celebrated Father's Day and he said that his entire family forgot that it was his birthday. He told me the day before, all his friends dropped by and had forgotten it was his birthday. He did not tell them, he told me that he did not care. Sometimes people say things and they mean what they say and sometimes they say them and don't mean them. For me with Autism I treat everything as fact, I don't see the emotional slant that things are said.
The boss came around as he often does to job sites and he was leaving. It was a Thursday. I had gotten all week a story that there was supposed to be a party, a barbecue on the Friday night after work. I got this from the Guatemalan who I worked with talking on the phone. I was not told, so I treated it as unconfirmed irrelevant. Anyways, the boss asked if there was anything I needed. Said, no, because I am fiercely independent, but I asked him if there was a barbecue that the Guatemalan was talking about. He said that I was not to be told about that as i did not need to be told, which I accepted as fact because he said it, but then changed and decided it was a joke. I stated then that he should not do anything special for Gato Papá. Which made him curious. They were friends for eight years and worked closely together, but GP never made a deal out of his birthday so, he never did. I told him about last years birthday and how disappointed he was. Boss left thoughtful.
Party day. I gave my boss a receipt for something I had to buy to get the job done, and he gave me the $200. He said for the job I did a couple weeks before, I told him it was my job and I did not need it because I was doing my job and I get paid for that. That is who I am. He insisted. It was $200. Secretly I used the money to buy stuff for work— I think I have passed $300, so I better start saving the receipts again, that's who I am you can't give me anything I don't think I deserve. Anyways, after work, I arrived back last. I hate parties and I wanted to go home, but work parties are mandatory social hell, so I stayed and I had a gift to give GP that I did not want him to not get, because personally I think he was important to me being in the company. You know the person that allows you to overcome your own personal image of yourself. It was weeks ago, I think he has somehow missed it or it was thrown out… this is a risk of my forced social passivity.
The Barbeque was a standard yearly affair, someone said it was Half Christmas… anyways it turned out to be a surprise birthday party for GP. Everyone sang Happy Birthday. And the real surprise was that the boss went away and drove a front end loader around and came back with a Birthday Cake and Candles on it with writing and everything. Afterwards, the boss came over and told me that this was my doing, I told him not to tell him.
I tell you not because I want accolades, but because it is part of me. I don't want praise or anything, I just wanted GP to have a great time that he missed the year before. To know that the people who work with him value him, which he needed to know. I like that I allowed his friends and coworkers a chance to remind him that it is so.
Then I got paranoid, and began to think that that was the real reason why I got the $200. Doing that stuff is what I am about, but I also want to not be around for it. Do you understand? I want people to be happy and I want to be ignored.
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