Today's rather an odd anniversary--it's 23 years ago today that I fractured my nose.

I was working out in East Providence, in the shipping room of the costume jewelry manufacturers Trifari, which by then had been "assimilated" by Hallmark. My dad had retired by then after working there for 29 years, from the time he got back from World War II. He'd worked upstairs in the factory, polishing the jewelry before it was plated, and we rarely saw each other.

While this wasn't the most mentally challenging of jobs, I was with a really nice bunch of people. We worked from an order list and packed the jewelry for shipping in boxes of orders that might range from six pieces to many thousands. I learned to put cardboard boxes together at the snap of a wrist. The only packing jobs we all hated were J.C. Penney's. Their jewelry had to be packed a certain way in long narrow boxes. This was called a "basic" and everyone would avoid the cart with a "basic" on it until it was the only thing next in the queue and if you were done you had to take it. You could work on packing basics and some of the bigger jobs for a couple of days. I used to like the smaller jobs, not because I was lazy, but because I got more of them done and it made me feel as if I'd accomplished something at day's end.

By the beginning of December the Christmas rush was over and things had slowed down. By the end of the month we'd be reduced to pulling labels off the earring cards so they could be replaced with new labels of higher prices (we did this every six months--why they put the prices on the label was beyond me; it seemed such a hideous waste of paper, plastic bags, and labor). Then if we were lucky, they'd put us "on stagger," working one week on, one week off. The women I worked with, mostly married, looked forward to this time to spend extra time cleaning house and being with their kids. Me, it was a week or two to be footloose and fancy free: I could go to the zoo, or downtown or to Thayer Street to visit the Brown Bookstore, or drive down to South County to see my best friend (she worked night shift at the hospital), even if you had to spend the Monday of every week you were off standing in line at "Security," which was what our parents and all the older folks called the unemployment office. Me, I brought a book and a good temper, since the employees at Security were only a little less grumpy than the infamous grouches at the Registry of Motor Vehicles.

Anyway, the big ordeal before peeling off earring labels and then stagger was inventory. Twice a year we had to count all the jewelry in stock. I hated counting. I would always have to watch myself because I had a tendency to go from 60 to 80 or from 79 to 90. And you could get stuck with the worst chore of all: chains!

You see, the tagged and bagged finished jewelry pieces were kept in bins, 48 trays to a bin. You got assigned a bin. If you were lucky, it turned out to be carded earrings or pins or cuff-type bracelets or the big chunky necklaces. The most earring cards/bracelet cards that could fit in a tray were about six hundred. Chain necklaces and bracelets, on the other hand, were simply packed in plastic bags, not carded. There could be six thousand (or more) chains in a tray.

And woe if you didn't count them exactly. A spotter would come behind you and pick three trays at random to recount. If more than one was wrong, you had to recount the entire bin.

It was then I decided I knew what hell was. It's Eternal Inventory, and what you're counting is chain bracelets...

To get to the nose part: I was headed upstairs to take my turn at counting. The morning shift was longer than the afternoon shift, but you got to swap around with the other half of the room the next day. I wasn't running, but I was taking very long steps, and my right knee locked; it was if my right foot was stuck to the floor. When I went to take the next step my leg wasn't there to land on and I fell face-first on the polished concrete floor. Astonishingly my glasses stayed intact, but I was bleeding copiously from a long horizontal cut on my nose. I can't even remember now who took me to the hospital; I had three stitches and a tetanus shot and they sent me home.

The impact also knocked my nose out of shape a little. People assume when they see the hump on my nose that it's the result of the fall. Nope, sorry, I inherited my Papa's big Italian nose--the hump's always been there. But after the fall, the hump was uneven; the right side is now a little higher than the left. Blue Cross and the Workmen's Comp folks sent me to a plastic surgeon to make sure I could breath properly out of it; I could, so they wouldn't pay to have it fixed. The right nasal passage has been narrower than the left since then.

It would have been simply painful and that was it; all I needed to do was stay home a few days and not wear my glasses, which had plastic frames and safety lenses, so were very heavy. But two days later was my birthday and my mom was treating me to A Christmas Carol at the Trinity Square Playhouse. This would be my first time in the old Majestic Theatre since 1970 and it was converted into a theatrical venue, and I sure wasn't going to waste it. A Christmas Carol was wonderful, but it was embarrassing going to the theatre with a big white blob of surgical tape on my nose and boy, did it hurt!

(If you guys are still around, this is a big "hi" to Eleanor Horton, Bernice and Claire, Terry, Lisa [Arnesia], Norma Carr, Natalie, Don Goss, Michael, and Denny--and everyone else whose name I've forgotten!)

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 8:49:00 AM

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