Personal Narrative Essay: Skoal Long Cut Tobacco

Skoal Long cut Tobacco

Hot, humid, loud and caustic. Johnny Cash was buzzing through the 35 year old wood grained laminated subwoofers, only adding to my anxiety and frustration. Every time the bass guitar would twang ”Get rhythm,………..BUZZZZZ…BUZZZZZ….when you get the BUZZZZZ”, the entire hangar would shake and rattle, driving me insane. With a tight grip on the test, and corresponding paperwork instructions in one hand, my cell phone in the other, I was frantically flipping through page after page of information on my screen. My phone was clearly the only link to any logic; apparently mine had failed. The microscopic lettering on the paper instructions might have well been in Greek. As the beads of sweat crawled like ants down my temples, and dripped onto my grease covered Carharts, I felt the chew in my lip turn from satisfying, to a brick of cotton in my panic. Re-reading the pertinent instructions, blogs, and diagrams, repeatedly,

Since Fate had told me I wasn’t good enough to be someone’s Mom, I had felt at liberty to live a pretty unconventional life; a U.S. Marine, Operating Engineer on heavy equipment, Land Surveyor, a wife, and now an airplane mechanic. Life had afforded me so many great adventures, sometimes rationalizing their importance in lieu of motherhood, was soothing.

I mulled over all the times in my life I had hoped against the laws of nature and medicine; I could be that miracle case. Out of desperation, once spending thousands of dollars on In Vitro Fertilization; resulting in a failed marriage, and excessive drinking. I had hoped to be a character in one of those miracle stories you’d read about in Reader’s Digest, while muttering, ”yeah right” under your breath. The little inspiring pick me up stories you’d flip through for distraction in a dentists’ waiting room; where inevitably the Hero finally triumphs over