"One of these things don't belong. . ." -- did that song come from "Sesame Street"? Well, it applies to the photo above. Alan was wearing two different shoes on his feet. "The right foot looks like a club foot, doesn't it?" he grinned. He pulled a pair of shoes from home to wear, but didn't notice that the shoes didn't match each other until later.
"Wasn't that fight terrible?" Alan said, speaking of the fight Saturday night between Demetrius Andrade and a former fighter of Alan's, Rudy Cisneros. Cisneros was knocked down and out with a one-two combination at the very end of the first round. That was a rough scene to watch. The man had to be carried out on a stretcher. I didn't see the other fight of the past weekend -- between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Miguel Cotto -- but it was just as well. I knew "Money" was going to win, just like I predicted that Saul "Canelo" Alvarez would win over "Sugar" Shane Mosley on the undercard.
A lot of sparring went on Monday night. Alan jumped into the ring with Andre Two. Before he stepped through the ropes, he told me, "If something happens, come in with a baseball bat." I laughed, knowing he was referring to the sparring war that Andre Two had with Jake awhile ago. Andre Two wasn't connecting many punches in the first round, and when the bell rang, Alan told him that he could hit harder. I watched carefully from the sidelines, just in case I had to call an ambulance for Alan. Alan did hit the ground once, and he tumbled over.
Before Jake got in the ring with Andre Two, Alan told the both of them to "be nice". The two men worked together as they traded punches.
Andre One and I sparred for two rounds. I kept thinking, "Don't chase him," because I knew I wouldn't catch him. Alan must have been reading my mind because he told me not to chase him as the action went on. Afterwards, Andre One told me that I nearly gave him a low blow. I apologized. I don't like when I do that to guys during sparring. Honestly, I'm not trying to hit any guy there (without a good reason, anyway), but sometimes, my hands are too low.
My third round was with Paul, Alan's boss at his day job. Paul is taller and bigger than Andre One, but I managed to catch him with several hooks. "See, doesn't she hit hard?" Alan smiled at his boss afterwards. Paul was laughing that I was going for blood. "I have my father's hands," I said in explanation.
Jake and Paul had a good session when they were in the ring. In fact, Paul kept jabbing Jake, and he got some good shots in. They were pretty evenly matched up.
I was highly irritated before I reached the gym. Earlier in the day, I called Simons Park and casually asked if I could speak to the boxing coach. "Oh, he's not in yet," I was told. Further questions revealed that the guy just started there -- the person who answered the phone looked on the payroll list for his name -- and he had previously trained at another field house boxing gym. I hadn't received a phone call or a reject letter from the Chicago Park District. Really?
The good news is that I can continue to be at Loyola Park. But the very bad news is that I've been pushed all the way back to square one of the game. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.00, or any other money, for that matter. I needed that job to make up for the gaping hole in my finances that's getting bigger by the second. It never fails. Jobs that I really want, the ones that I would enjoy going to every day, I chase them but never catch them. But I always attract the jobs with difficult bosses, annoying co-workers and irritating customers and clients, and salaries that don't reflect what I'm worth. I've had too many of those bad jobs (my current part-time day job is one of extremely few exceptions) since 1977, and I'm damned tired of it.
"Think outside of the box," a social worker at a neighborhood community center told me concerning looking for a job. The coach's job was representative of that sort of thinking on my part, but that didn't pan out. I'm stalled at this point. I'm fighting an ongoing match with a dismal job market where computers banish resumes to cyberspace hell if they don't find the right keywords, where "pounding the pavement" doesn't exist anymore, and I'm feeling the sting of age discrimination. The score cards are not in my favor, and the referee -- who looks suspiciously like my dwindling bank account -- is about to stop the fight on me.
After all that, I have to end this entry on a positive note. The photo above features myself on the left, and my stepmother on the right. The young lady in the middle is my niece Jalissa, a former Miss Black Illinois, who graduated last week with a masters degree in Integrated Marketing. I'm very proud of her.
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