Happy Birthday Jamie

Jamie and I have been friends for a long time. Our friendship is based entirely upon our shared love for mint chocolate chip ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. You might think that is a slim foundation to build a relationship on but it has sustained us for 13 years.

I met Jamie on my first day at Trinidad-Benham. I was a smart ass college nerd and Jamie was a tiny blond fresh out of high school. I'm pretty sure we didn't have a lot in common and both of us seemed out of place in that grubby little factory. We were thrown together that night due to a screw up on the production line. For several hours, one of the machines had packaged two pounds of dried rice into a bag that should have held 3 pounds. When the mistake was discovered, Jamie and I were sent to the back of the packing room where we perched on the edge of a giant metal hopper to salvage the rice. For eight hours we slammed rice bags against the side of that hopper which fed the rice back onto the production floor to be repackaged. I cannot remember anything we talked about that night but I know we laughed...a lot.

We worked together for several more years and between us, I think we worked every job they had. It was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. On one side of the plant there was an ever present layer of dust. It hung in the air and basically covered everything. On the other side, we packaged cooking oil so you can imagine the mess that involved. Regardless of all the discomfort, we always managed to have a good time.

Jamie and I spent a lot of nights fixing mistakes there.We spent a lot of nights making mistakes there too. I often joked that we were "Lucy and Ethel" because we could turn a seemingly simple task into screwball comedy of epic proportions. Jamie once helped me push a giant trash can across the factory to the dumpster. A completely routine trash run completed at least four times a night without consequence by others. But by the time Jamie and I got halfway there we had managed to overturn the can spilling at least 500 oily, plastic bottles over the floor of the warehouse.

I left that job a few years before Jamie and luckily we've been able to maintain our friendship without seeing each other daily. We've been through some times in the last few years that weren't so fun and against our best intentions, we've grown up a lot. But even after all these years, we still laugh more than we cry.

So I hope you have a great day today, Jamie. And I really wish we were sharing an ice cream cake to celebrate :)