Circumcision: a metaphor about the painful process of moving on

Well, the plan was to have Wednesday be my last day at McDonald’s, but that sort of backfired on me.

My manager, Chris, wanted me to finish off the scheduled work week and work six more days until Tuesday, but I refused to do that because that was right when my math exam was.

Manager Chris would say something like, “Why can’t you just finish out the week for us?”

I always had a coy response. “Look Boss, it’s been great working for you. I had fun, it was a good learning experience and all that. But honestly, you were just a fling. Don’t take this too personally. You’re a great guy Chris, and I’m sure you’ll find someone else who’s a little more committed, but trust me, it just never would’ve worked out.”

I don’t think he quite understood. “What? Why?”

I tried explaining it in layman’s terms. “Look at it this way…some tribes, in Africa, they have this whole ceremony thing when a boy becomes a man. They get circumcised. Then, they go out into the woods by themselves, dig a little hole, and bury their flesh. It symbolizes burying their old selves.”

Chris: “Uh…”

I exbound. “Chris. You are my foreskin. I am cutting you off. It’s a painful process, I know. I am burying you in the woods. My association with you, with this genocide franchise, and with all the rednecks on this mountain, is gonna suffocate six inches underground in the woods. Metaphorically, of course.”

“Alright, that’s all well and good, but you still haven’t explained why you can’t just finish out the week.” Chris thought he had me.

“Yes, I have. It’s all in the story, man. And we’re at the part where the boy is becoming a man. Working any longer would just be delaying the inevitable.”

Right here is when I got fired, or asked to leave, or whatever he called it, but in any case, the idea was that I wasn’t going to be coming back. I really didn’t see it coming. I mean, I’m pretty sure he was asking me to stay one moment, and then, a moment later, he was telling me to leave. Whatever though, I’m not complaining.

Maybe he’ll never get the pure poetry of the story, but no matter. I’ve grown up into a man and cannot be governed by children any longer.

And so ended my first job.