Treehouse

a brief encounter by Megan Fowler

The Daily Grind:                                                                                   

• I make coffee. I hear gossip. I help homeless people make telephone calls.  
• I keep up with current events in Small Town Friendly North Carolina. Last week’s headliner was “Cow falls into neighborhood swimming pool.” (He was rescued safe and soundly by the way).

Costume Shop:

• Sales associate. I helped drag queens find the tallest and most glittery stilettos. I heard the song “Monster Mash” at least one million times.

Kid’s Film Workshop:                                                   

• I helped a bunch of spoiled kids pick costumes, wigs, and props for a music video, but mostly just yelled at them when they climbed on refrigerators, couches, etc. so their parents wouldn’t sue us. I decided I would never work with kids again when one of them informed me that “no one uses the word cool anymore.”

Tour Guide:

• We led tourists through film sets. We pretended to know everything about the TV show One Tree Hill. When inquired on specifics about seasons and episodes we would strategically change the subject and reply with an anecdote about James Lafferty’s favorite waffles or the steamy Chad Michael Murray shower scene that in reality was just the guy standing in a kiddie pool being sprayed with cold hose-water (always a crowd pleaser). Movie Magic.

Internship:

• Film studio/warehouse. We accidentally broke a few really expensive lights, but sometimes we fixed things too. Only a few people were almost electrocuted. Sometimes we turned cartwheels outside, rode golf carts, and fed geese in the mud puddle behind the office. Mostly we just made the Darth Vader voice into fans and avoided the blistering summer heat. We watched carpenters build doubles of houses in the back lot so the writers/directors/cinematographers could watch them burn to the ground.