 Interview and intro by: Matthew Parrish / Photograph by: Matthew Parrish Kidstreet: "Owning My Own Computer"This story rules! Why? Cause it's about someone knowing what they want, figuring out what they have to do to get it and then going and busting their balls trying to make it all happen. Sometimes I just wanna tell all these rich kids who just snap their fingers and shit happens, to go fuck themselves. But I'm just some dude - so fuck it. --
Cliff Snyder: I was 17 years old. I had just graduated from high school and was going to university in the fall.
Truth.Explosion.Magazine: What were you into?
CS: Computers. Every month I would buy this 800-page magazine called Computer Shopper. I was the vicarious computer shopper. I dreamed of owning my own computer, but was nowhere near able to afford one.
TEM: I know that feeling! So what were you to do then?
CS: I formulated a plan at the beginning of the summer where I'd work telemarketing for as long as it took to afford a one-way train ticket out to Kelowna BC.
TEM: What was waiting for you in Kelowna?
CS: Once there, I'd pick fruit and with the thousands of dollars that I'd heard rumored that fruit pickers could make over the course of a summer, I'd buy my computer.
TEM: Well that sounds like a pretty good plan! Did it work out for you?
CS: Failure #1: I suck at sales.
TEM: Oh no! Why do you suck at sales?
CS: I get nervous on the phone, and nobody really wants to buy circus tickets to support the police retirees association over the phone anyway.
TEM: Haha! Very good point…
CS: Some people make money quickly telemarketing with sales commissions. I never made more than minimum wage and was actually fired after three weeks and only a handful of sales.
TEM: Dude that sucks!
CS: Fortunately I'd made just enough for the train ticket to the Okanogan.
TEM: So things are looking up then?
CS: Failure #2: I only discovered after getting to BC that cherry picking season ends at the end of July and apple picking doesn't start until September.
TEM: Really? What happens for August then?
CS: August is simply a dead zone for fruit picking.
TEM: Brutal. Did you get any days of work in?
CS: I made it out there just in time for the last two days of the cherry picking season. I enthusiastically picked fruit for those two days before finding myself out of a job again.
TEM: Worst luck ever it seems. That had to be the worst of it though?
CS: Failure #3: The only place I could afford to stay was a $10/night hostal.
TEM: Oh no!
CS: The $10 got me the top bunk in a firetrap of a room with five other bunkbeds and a rotating group of junkies shooting heroin and other drugs that I couldn't identify then, and probably couldn't still.
TEM: So sketchy! What was your plan now then?
CS: With my mind no longer focused on fruit picking and buying a computer, but rather simply on survival, I found a youth employment centre offering random day jobs to students.
TEM: Please tell me they had jobs available?
CS: There were only a couple of jobs available each day. I'd set my alarm for 7:00 each morning and walked downtown in time for the student centre doors to open at 8:00. Some days there would be a job available and some days not.
TEM: What sort of jobs would you work?
CS: I worked a bunch of odd jobs that I no longer remember. The ones that stick out were waxing a boat (a skill I’m sure I never learned properly and certainly didn't retain) and being a hotdog cart guy at a monster boat rally.
TEM: Really? Those sound pretty cool!
CS: The hotdog job was sweet because it lasted for an entire weekend. I can only hope that the hotdogs and sausages were precooked, though.
TEM: Eeep! Why is that?
CS: They sold so quickly that sometimes that I may as well have been serving them straight from the package.
TEM: Eww! Haha! But at least you stayed afloat!
CS: Not really. Overall my money dwindled and on days where there were no jobs to be had and I couldn't afford the $10 for the hostal, I'd pack up my belongings in a backpack and spend the night at the beach, again with my alarm clock set for 7:00, so that I could be first to the job center.
TEM: Yeah for sure! Was it bad out there at night?
CS: Actually one night it turned out to be a really good thing that I had run out of money and slept in the park.
TEM: Really? Why’s that?
CS: That night a biker gang showed up at the hostal in the middle of the night looking for the guy who had been sleeping in the bunk below me.
TEM: Woah!
CS: This guy got a tip just in time to get out of the hostal before the bikers showed up. Pissed off that they missed who they were looking for, the bikers ransacked the room and burned all of this guy's belongings in a garbage can in the middle of the room.
TEM: That’s nuts man!
CS: I only found out the next day when, having worked some job, I showed up at the hostel with my $10 for the night.
TEM: Sounds like it was time to get out of there!
CS: Yeah, I was rescued from my failed fruit-picking, computer buying, venture late in August when my family, taking a well-timed vacation out to the west coast, stopped by to pick me up.
TEM: Clutch! I have one final question – what is the “truth” about Cliff Snyder?
CS: A year later, having dropped out of university, I finally bought a computer with the first, and only, two welfare cheques I ever received.
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