Meeting Relatives

Just before I turned sixteen years old my family moved from Langley BC to Kamloops BC. We had moved around a lot as I was growing up and I tried to look at each new move as a new opportunity. No one in this new town would know my history and hopefully no one there would pick on me. (I was an unpopular child that got picked on a lot.)

 

In Kamloops there were lots of new opportunities. Although I had babysat in the past to earn money I had never held a job. In Kamloops I got my first job at Wendy’s Restaurants. Because I had moved so close to the end of the year I had finished grade 10 early and could work the early morning shift. My mother would drop me off while on her way to the college and I would catch a bus home.

 

One day I got into work and heard on the radio that the buses were on strike so I had no way home. I didn’t have a phone number for my mother at the college but I knew that an aunt worked there. (She had been my uncle’s first wife and I had met her or my cousin.) I phoned my aunt’s house, hoping to catch her before she left for work. A very sleepy male voice answered the phone and I said it was his cousin Karen. He informed me that he didn’t have a cousin named Karen and I told him yes he did. He gave me his mother’s phone number and I called her to pass a message onto my mom. Then I went back to work.

 

That afternoon, just before my shift ended, I was called to the front. There was a tall young man wearing mirrored sunglasses and with blond hair glinting in the sun. He looked down at me and asked if I was Karen Magill. I said yes so he responded

 

‘You woke me up.’

 

‘Oh. You must be Walter. Sorry.’ I dashed back into the back service area of the restaurant with my cheeks burning. I finished what I had to do, got changed and left out the back. There in a Honda with the song ‘Tough Guys’ blaring was Walter. His mom had asked him to pick me up. We became friends after that but I was always careful about calling him too early.