Lighter fare (nothing about unions!)

After a few intense days where I needed to vent my spleen on the topic of unionism today is going to be lighter fare. In fact I have spent the last few days percolating my thoughts on a far different topic. Today I am going to talk about the latest highly addictive thing to hit the worksite... Spitz! (aka: the humble sunflower seed) Years ago when my wife and I were on a very long drive we bought a bag of sunflower seeds to eat on the drive. I remeber a few things about that drive rather vividly. First thing was that once I started eating the buggers I simply couldn't stop! As I was driving I would grab a handful and jam them in my mouth like a chipmunk in a peanut patch and then would slowly crack them one at a time with my teeth spitting the shells out the window as I went. My wife was hooked as well so I can imagine the puzzlement on the driver of the car behind us us a steady stream of confetti-like debris blasted out each window mile after mile. The other thing that I remember was that the excessive amount of salt on the buggers burned a couple of neat little holes in the tip of my tongue!! So after we finished that drive we decided that our days of chewing Spitz was over! Fast forward a decade or two to our current worksite. I had noticed of the guys on the crew seems to always look like he had a month of plaque on his teeth thick enough that you could scrape it off with a spoon! He usually had puffy cheeks and spat a lot too. But until I worked beside him one day I never clued in to what was going on. Then my eyes were opened! It was Spitz! There have been lots of times in my life where something has occurred to me in a flash that has really opened my eyes to something I hadn't previously recognized. I think they call these moments 'serendipity' which is a five-dollar word meaning 'Holy shit!!!'. This is precisely what happened when I realized Jay's seed-secret! I immediately noticed that about half the crew had them on the go during the day. I also started noticing the little piles of sunflower seeds all over the ground throughout the entire construction site! My eyes had been opened and there was no going back! One day working with some Ironworkers I was offered a handful of Spitz and driven by curiosity (or possibly because I had just quit smoking and needed a distraction) I took them. The salt was yummy and they were dill pickle flavour which is a personal favorite. Mmmmmnnnn they were so good. Next thing I knew I was wandering around the site like a crack head looking for his next hit. "Hey man, you got any seeds?" Unknown to me there is an etiquette to getting Spitz out of the bag. When you are handed the bag you open your hand and pour out a few. NEVER put your hand in another mans bag! Of course I learned this the hard way. One day I got some Spitz from a guy and when I handed them back he said 'Keep them' meaning the bag. It was mostly empty so I thought 'how nice of him'. A month later I was working with the same guy and he offered me some more Spitz. As I opened the bag which was a zip lock one he said in a heavy French accent: " Don put your fuckin hand in the bag! One guy did that one time an I said fuckit and jus give 'im da bag!' he clearly didn't recall that I was the guy as the story was meant to illustrate to me how refined he was. So as I poured myself a handful while looking at the build up of seed residue on his teeth I played innocent and said "How terrible! Some people really are ignorant!!" I was working with another welder in the surge bin. He is a guy that I have a lot of respect for. I recall one day in the safety meeting him making the firm point to the group: "whoever is horking on the bin walls fuckin' stop it! I have to fit those walls and I find it disgusting!" So you can imagine my shock a week later when I noticed him working in the bin with a mouthful of spitz firing the seeds from his mouth in every direction. I chuckled to myself about this as it is an example of human nature that people don't know how to automatically categorize and reflect on new things and apply existing rules of etiquette to them right off the hop. But the same could be said of people who take and send texts while talking to you. But that is editorial fodder for another day. I have to go. Have a great day! :)