I got up this morning and as i was sitting at the kitchen table having my first cup of coffee and still in the half awake state and was starring at my coffee cup and i was looking at the way i was holding it and it dawned on me i had not held it that way for over 30 years and i starting thinking and it dawned on me a lot of the mannerisms that i had when i was younger are coming back without even thinking about it. One of the things i use to do was carry my books in front of me close to my chest which most of the kids did not say much at that time but when i went to high school it became something that i got teased about so badly that i forced myself to carry them at my side. It took almost 6 months to change that,but sometime lately i have gone back to carrying them in front again but i don't remember ever thinking about changing it back.
My thoughts starting going off in a different direction and for the first time in my life i am starting be able to laugh at all the dumb things i tried to do to appear normal. I was my own worst enemy. The sad part was it was all doomed to fail. LOL
The best was when i went to get a job at one of the factories in the area. I was working part time at the PO trying to get in full time as a rural carrier but i did need a full time job as 1 day a week at the PO was not a livable wage. I was only looking at being there for about 3-4 years before going full at the PO.
What they did at the place i was going to be working at they put the laminates on press board for furniture and cut it and shaped it.
I went and talked to the head of the department that was hiring and found out it was going to be in the press department. Didn't sound to bad. He did ask if i could lift up to 100 lbs and could i work 3rd shift. Try to picture this at this time i was 37 year sold i was 5 10 weighed 125 lbs fully clothed dripping wet. On a good day i can almost take my fingers and wrap them around my biceps. Size 10 AA feet and very long and slender fingers. I should have never been hired for this job in the first place. The lifting was not to bad if it wasn't for along period of time not something i could do all night. Needless to say the department head left out a few details.
  Got hired and went in the first night. The whole thing at this point becomes a really bad comedy sketch. LOL
Go in and here all these guys are fairly large and here i am this skinny wimpy looking thing. They all start giving me looks like what in the heck are they sending us now. LOL The foreman comes down looks at me and rolls his eyes like OMG. He gets his composure and then sends me up to the saw room. Get up and right away 2 of the guys start ripping on me from day one. I got all the nasty comments
as much as i tried i tried to hide who i was it not possible. One of the guys started calling me rendog. I had no idea what he was talking about till someone else pointed out that ren was a cartoon character that was very skinny. So the name ended up sticking. I don't think anybody in the place ever called me by my given name.
For the first 2-3 weeks the job itself was not to bad.It was at this point i was about to find out what the job was really all about. LOL
Came in one night and there was a number of orders that needed to be packaged for shipping. OK doesn't sound to bad. Come to find out that we have to stack 4 x 8 sheets of pressed board for a 10 hour shift. At this point i had already realized that some of these guys are wanting me to quit because they had already placed bets on how long i was going to last but i had already dug my heels in and i was not going to give into this. Great combination right?
For the first few hours they had  me taking out the cooling sticks which were placed between the boards after they came out of the laminating press. Then it came to be my turn to stack for  awhile. So what we had to do was flip the boards over and stack them on an over sized skid. Because of the length it takes 2 people to do this. I ended up with one of the guys that is really giving me a hard time,we go to pick it up and he flips it up so hard and fast i end up going with board. A number of the guys did do that so we flip the board and i would go with. LOL That ended going on for quite a while till i was able to finally able to really be able to handle them. I was bound and determined to not give in and i was going to stick this out till the end.
The second part was when i did actually end up working on the press. Turned out the presses were pre WWII vintage and the unloading had to all be done by hand. So what we had to do was pull the boards out of the press by hand into a cooling rack and then stack them on a skid so they could cool down. On one of the presses the rack was not a movable rack so when they were pulled out of the rack they started out above head level. Here again 2 person job. Here again the board would come out and i would go along with it. Somehow i ended up getting through all that and was able to handle the job. PO job fell through after 6 years and i ended up working there for 10 years. But now it's like what in the heck was i thinking of i put myself through all this grief and aggravation for what. I have been cracking up about this for 2 days now because it just seems so surrealistic

A bad time makes a good story!

I'm glad that you can laugh about it now.

I think we all have moments when we look back and wonder what we were thinking. As Renate said it is good to be able to laugh at ourselves. (That is the part I struggle with. I am much better at it now I am old.)

Hugs.
Patty

So the name ended up sticking. I don't think anybody in the place ever called me by my given name.

This is pretty common, very few people in my line of work get to use their real name, one of my buds, on his first day, hit a little person with a box - he's been called DT, short for Dwarf Tosser for the last 7 years now.  I got the name Kat (cat) because I loved to climb up on the high truss works, and back then we were non-union, and way too cool to use anything like safety equipment or fall arrests.

Lots of stuff has some sort of hazing deal, people need to know what you're capable of and what your limitations are, particularly when you have to work with other people, and any failure on your part can get them seriously hurt.  In any deal where two people are carrying something, or holding something, and one of them drops it, it's not the guy who drops it that gets hurt, it's the guy who is still holding on.

Thanks,
I did learn one really good lesson though about respect. It was a team job so everyone had to work as a team otherwise it caused a lot of problems. Even though at times the harassment got really bad after about 6 months i was able to start making a few friends. Not many but that was OK. I kept going into work and i kept trying,and i was getting better at doing the job. Most of the guys started backing off of the comments and it was basically down to 3 that gave me the worst time. They did keep picking at me but i did keep my mouth shut and did not lash out at them or take it to the foreman. After about 3 years of this one of the guys sat down and had a bit of a chat with me,he looked at me kind of shook his head and said i don't get you, we have given you more grief then most people that had already left,i don't know how you did it but you kept coming in and you are still here. From that day on he never put me down or anything. It took a bit longer with the other 2 because one of them harrassed everyone and the other just feed off of it. Once the one was let go the other finally stopped and we were finally able to get along.
  Was it perfect? No but it was a whole lot better. After that most of it ended up being teasing and not so much harassment. I was able to get to the point where they would say put some muscle behind it and i would come back with What muscles? LOL
The thing though that i learned about respect was that even though respect should be something that is just given it doesn't work that way in reality and sometimes you just have to earn it and it is not always easy.

sometimes you just have to earn it

Actually, I think you always have to earn it, if you're not earning it, what you are getting is not real respect, but something much, much less.

My you are so thin!  I am not sure if you switched hormones which further reduces your strength after a few years.  Now 20 pound dumbbells are heavy.

Although my strength has been reduced I still have endurance and can work hard.

Not quite so thin anymore But it's a bit weird where it settled LOL
I gained some in my face which was not a bad thing as it no longer looks as gaunt as it did. Most of the weight gain gain has been in my thighs,hips and butt. 10 years ago on my last doctors visit he did a hormone test and he did tell me my testosterone levels were on the low end of normal range then so......
As for the strength it doesn't matter anymore as i am on a permanent 25 lbs weight restriction due to the fact that my shoulder is basically worn out. They can try to correct the problem (Less then 50% chance) I don't have much cartilage left in it and it does have some arthitis in it and it periodically flairs up and my fingers go a bit numb,the shoulder pops and it's an annoying pain but livable.
It is what it is 

Well the weight has not gone to my behind but my calfs are enormous!  My calfs are bigger than pre-hormones!  My T levels have been near zero for a while.  I put on some weight during the holidays and it went to the top area which hurts.  I just need a partner that wants to be smothered.