Brachiosaurus

After being hospitalized and being freed from the clutches of a man rent owned in my head, I was pretty lost. Nowhere to go, everywhere to stay. It wasn’t until I managed to threaten my Dad with a hypothetical of never working when he picked up the phone and called our landlord.

Wes Andree is a renowned man. An all rounded American citizen. Wes Andree is more than just a director of a museum, he is a discoverer. An explorer of the new and old. After many years of knowing each other one fateful Scout Sunday at a church, Wes has become owner of where my family and I live. For close to twelve years, a date engraved into my soul due to sixth grade being over, I never made eye contact with Wes. I made more eye contact with Nick Andree. Though he was more of my brother’s friend than my friend. We were stull good friends. Tall and intimating, Wes was a man’s manly man. A head of the family table. I never really knew the guy, I still don’t personally. But I can definitely understand him more.

My brother started working at the Jurupa Mountain Discovery Center at around eighteen. His first and only job at the time, he hated it. He would rather shove and kick rocks for Spielberg than shove and kick rocks in Jurupa. My brother was always pretty self centered. He was supposed to be a famous film director, not a maintenance man for a filthy museum. “Why would anyone want to work there?” Five other people asked themselves. Well around the pandemic, it was then four, when my brother quit.

Afterwards my brother went on to have a successful start to his career. Although he doesn’t see it that way. He is definitely not a no name in his industry and has a promising movie on the works. Today. Then there I was. Still battling monsters with a keyboard. Like I was Don Quixote with his windmills. I was my brother’s secondary character. Never meant to be something more. Trapped. But no. As a Clint Eastwood imitator once said, “No man can walk out of his own story.”

On April 17, 2023, my Dad called Wes to give me a job at the Jurupa Mountain Discovery Center. I was graceful but hesitant. Now I can add getting fired to my long list of failures. That was six months, a year and five days from today. The best and only job in the world has given me purpose. Seeing history before my very eyes, in all its unfiltered glory, no wonder my brother hated this job. It’s too perfect.

But that’s our relationship, if I like something, it is for certain that other will hate it. We are opposites of the same coin and flipped constantly at the drop of a dime. I like seeing the story of existence. The most unlikely success story of all. A story without an end yet, because it’s still being told.

Quickly after working as a maintenance man myself I worked up the ranks of feeding the critters like turtles and tortoises. I still play double roles, but that’s because five coworkers is all Wes can afford right now. They mind, I don’t. Soon I will do what they do. Talk to the schools who come expecting something interesting, not a lesson in paleontology. In fact no lesson at all. They get too much of that. Children are like tiny people, if you talk down to them, they’ll pick up on it really quick.

I had some falls, I wouldn’t say my placement in Jurupa has been perfect. I would say that the job is perfect for me, but I don’t always do what’s best for my work. I plan to make it my career. Something that works shouldn’t be broken, so why fix it. After working there enough time, I might even get to be Wes’s trustee foil. Like Sancho Pansa before me. No man can walk out of his own story.

It seems that the chaotic waves of life have simmered down for me for now. I am ready for the next batch of storms to come. After all that I’ve been through, it can’t do anymore to me than what I’ve already encountered. And I encountered some pretty heavy storms. I used to look down whenever I would have the unlucky displeasure of talking with Wes. Now when he looks down on me, I look up back at him, into his stoic eyes.