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HOW THE BURACRACY STOLE MY LIFE By Ronald C.

My life started out normal enough. I was born on December 1, 1956. My parents were Junior Eugene C. and Phyllis Jean S. They married on April 29, 1955. They rented a few different houses in the Oak Forest-Midlothian area. The home they first owned was at in Oak Forest where I grew up with my sister Debra Ann, born on September 3,1 958, and my Brother, Larry Alan, born on February 28, 1963. My Mother still lives there. I attended Grade School at the Forest Ridge School District, High School at Oak Forest High School. During 7th and 8th Grades and all through High School I was a Paperboy (I delivered the Chicago Today and the Chicago Daily News newspapers to customers homes) and had my own afternoon paper route. Shortly after my 16th Birthday I started looking for a job other than being a paperboy. I found a job at the Ponderosa Steak House in Markham, Illinois. I started out as a Dishwasher, moved up to Potato Boy (the person who put racks of potatoes into the oven to cook, took them out when they were done, sliced trough the tin foil and skin, squeezed the potato open to expose the guts, dabbed it with butter with a brush, and for frying French fries). Then I moved up to being a Cook. However, growing tired of all the late night closings, cleaning up the Steak House after it had closed, and too many non-returned favors, I quit in the fall about a year after I had started working there. The next Spring my Parents bought me my first car, a 1968 Chevrolet Bel Air for $600. I think the main reason they did was to urge me to go back out and find another job in order to earn money for gas and other expenses relating to the car’s upkeep. I must have filled out 100 different job applications. But I wound up taking a job at the same old Ponderosa! This time I started out as the Head Cook. That same night that I had started back to work at the Ponderosa, someone from Coon’s Variety store, the local Ben Franklin Dime Store, called me about a job there. I had wanted to work there instead of Ponderosa, but I did what I thought was the right thing; I turned that job down and stuck with Ponderosa. If I had only known back then what I know today, I would have had said, “To heck with Ponderosa and taken the job that I thought I’d be happier with!” Shortly before I was to graduate High School (the first graduating class from Oak Forest High) on June 6, 1974, I made a mistake. I took on the full-time job as Janitor of the Ponderosa in order to earn more money for when I was going to further my education at MacCormac Junior College that Fall. Shortly after I started as the Janitor I was informed that it would be my job to paint the broiler vents black. They stuck about 6 feet above the roof. The only problem with that was that I knew that they did not have a ladder to reach all the way up to the vents. I also knew that the Management was too cheap to allow me to rent an extension ladder that would reach the vents. Speaking of being cheap, not only was the Management cheap, the Corporation was also cheap! They wouldn’t let older Restaurants like ours order Soilax, a cleaning detergent for the floors. So whenever I needed Soilax I had to take my bucket to one of the newer Restaurants (they always had big drums of it) and borrow from them. I even remember once when the soap dispenser in our Men’s bathroom was missing a little plastic tube. I had to replace it by going to a newer Restaurant and stealing the little tube out of the soap dispenser in their Men’s bathroom. Then word came down from the Area supervising Manager that it would no longer be my responsibility to paint the vents. Professional painters would take care of that when they came to paint the rest of the outside of the building. I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. But when the painters came in July, they called the Regional supervising Manager to find out if they had to paint the vents also, because I guess they did not have any black paint only green. He told them that they only had to paint the outside of the building. Leaving me the responsibility to paint the vents again! Then it happened on August 8th, a day I have absolutely no memory of. I only know o through my Parents telling me what happened that day. For instance, my Parents have told me that before I left for work that day that day, that I should try go up on the roof to paint the vents early in the morning because that day was supposed to be the hottest day of that Summer according to the Weather forecasters. I probably thought to myself, “How in the hell am I going to do that when it takes me most of the morning just to get the Steak House ready to open?” My Parents have also told me that I had a huge argument with the Management before I would even go up on the roof. Why I didn’t just take that job and shove it, like in the Johnny Paycheck song, I’ll never know! Anyway, I fell that fateful day and got a Head injury for my trouble. When the Management called my Mother to report the accident and to tell her which Hospital I was taken to, they tried to tell her that I had broken a leg. She called them a liar right then and there, because she knew it had to be more serious than just a broken leg. One thing my Parents taught their children was that if we ever needed to go to the Hospital and we’re conscious, we were supposed to ask to be taken to South Suburban Hospital, not to Ingallis Memorial Hospital where I was taken to! A blood clot formed in the right ventricle in my brain and had to be removed resulting in Brain damage. The whole right half of my brain is missing, the left side of my body is partially paralyzed, and I am unable to walk or talk. Remember I told you that I have no memory of the actual accident? Still today I have the same recurring nightmare. Where I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, I experience the middle of the fall and with the thud of the landing. I realize I’m in bed, that it’s only a nightmare. Over the years since the accident the nightmare has remained the same; the only thing that has changed is the frequency of those nightmares. Now I said that the Bureaucracy of Ponderosa stole my life. But since then fighting with the bureaucracies of Chubb Group of Insurance Companies (Ponderosa’s Insurance Company) and the Government jus to get the things I need to make my new life more bearable, is not helping either.