A brief history.

Here's a fun piece of Hey Lola trivia: I’m a high school drop-out.

I only feel comfortable saying that now because I am also a college graduate. None of that is important, though…what is important is that employers tend to view high school drop-outs as…oh, I don’t know…like, uneducated or something and it’s kind of hard to get a good job. I’ve had a whole series of not-good jobs. Funnel cake maker at the fair? Check. Truck stop waitress? Check. General manager of the world’s worst strip club? Check. Cocktail girl at sleazy cockroach infested Los Angeles bbq joint? Check.

I’ve probably had more bad jobs than Beyonce has bad “my mama made this for me” outfits. The strip club job was the best though…that was the one that finally convinced me it was time to go to college. There are really only so many times that a one legged, snaggle toothed stripper can threaten to beat you with her curling iron before you start thinking to yourself, ”you know…this kind of really sucks.” I was “lucky” enough to get that job when I was calling around looking for a bartending job. A friend of mine owned a club and said that although he really didn’t need a bartender, he could certainly use someone to boss everyone around and look important. Ta da! Sign me up, I’m your girl.

It was not-awesome from the moment I walked in the door. There wasn’t really any security so much as there was me and my computer behind the front desk, doing paperwork in between checking IDs and trying to explain our dress code to local gangster-types. Occasionally I would take a break from the front desk to make sure that no one was snorting Ajax in the dressing room, that local drug dealers weren't hiding drugs in the ceiling tiles again or that our resident “chef” had washed his hands after one of his many visits to the bathroom. As bad as all of that was, it really wasn’t until I had to go to court and publicly identify a local thug as being the guy who was randomly shooting things in the parking lot that I thought to myself, “you know…not only does this kinda suck…but I’m also kinda fearing for my life a little bit.” (did you know that when you’re identifying a gangsta-thug in court that they actually make you point at him! Just like on t.v! Only it’s not t.v. and it’s scarier than s%*t and I came close to passing out and I tried to make the whole situation better by smiling at the guy when I pointed at him which in hindsight was probably not the smartest thing to do and whenever I’m out in public now and I see people who even vaguely resemble him, I hide behind a bush) Shortly after, I threw a dart at a list of possible college majors, came up with biology, and embarked on a new career as “the oldest kid in every single class at college who who somehow managed to escape without a ‘kick me’ sign on her back or being shoved in a locker.” It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be...the end result was a super-sweet degree, a real job that I actually love, and not nearly as much fearing for my life.

…I think I had a pretty good conclusion to this post but someone just told me that my purse looked like a giant vagina and now I can’t remember what I was going to write…


So I guess the lesson to be learned here is don’t write about really empowering things like going back to school when you’re in coffee shops where people you know work and they can distract you by comparing your purse to genitalia.

The End.

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