16 Comments
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Betsy's avatar

You mentioned the teens in the video store before but I don't think you told us the whole scene. How incredibly moving. Thank you.

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Some Guy's avatar

It stuck with me and I didn’t even realize why at the time.

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E2's avatar

There are definitely drug-test outfits with policies to avoid you smuggling in a baggie of somebody else's clean urine. I undetstand this is because there are workers-comp. insurance policies that incentivize such policies.

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Some Guy's avatar

So I guess the person who replied to this blocked me (I think?) but literally everyone out there was on meth except for a handful of people.

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Alyson's avatar

People cheat on urine drug tests all the time. It’s only legitimate if it is witnessed.

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Dana Kim's avatar

Awesome story

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Some Guy's avatar

Thanks Dana

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Carl Voss's avatar

it's "911." "9–11" is a different thing

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Some Guy's avatar

Well shit. Updating now.

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Carl Voss's avatar

you missed "the 9–11 operator"

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Anna Trombley's avatar

I fucking love this story 💙

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Some Guy's avatar

Thanks Anna. I’m trying to be true to the not very happy voice in my head at the time. This may make it a dull read for others.

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Ofifoto's avatar

Great piece, especially this:

"I wanted to tell him a lot of things, but none of them had anything to do with greasing gears or tripping pipe or digging trenches. I wanted to work on a drilling rig because I hated the part of myself that even felt pride at such things."

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Some Guy's avatar

Self disgust is a heckuva drug.

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RDM's avatar

....definitely want to hear more about the roughnecking, but that might be just a personal problem.

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Some Guy's avatar

They might be less frequent, but I’ll crank out the whole summer at some point.

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