Ya Fur Shur Dassengood....My first official job in Miami when I was 15 was at Sweden House. Poor me. Busboy duties at a smorgasbord restaurant. Their catch phrase was, "All you care to eat", which I always thought was a strange paraphrasing to the more traditional, "All you can eat" mantra. Was this some subliminal message telling patrons that their culinary offerings were nasty, and perhaps one should carefully reconsider multiple trips to the buffet table? Well it didn't work. I must have cleared off a gazillion plates each shift.

From my first day there, it was my mission to get a "promotion" to the dishwasher department. I figured it was easier to toss those distinctive white plates with the blue borders into a big steamy contraption, rather than continuously clearing them off the tables, loading them onto a bus cart, then wheeling them back to the dishwasher guys anyway.

Man I was a lazy %^&%^(*!!!

I remember Fridays featured frog legs. Bleccccchhh. There was this one guy, he must've weighed 500 lbs....who would consume what I'd describe as, "An entire frog pond worth of legs". We would play a game of paper, rocks and scissors to see who would not have to bus his table. PETA would have had a field day with this guy. Amphibian genocide for chrissake.

Finally mustering up the nerve to approach the manager with my request for a dishwasher position, I was surprised when he agreed with no reluctance whatsoever to give me the gig. He was a German fellow with a somewhat cheerful demeanor, although like anyone, could be pushed to snap at any given moment, especially with me leading the revolt on a daily basis.

One time we were goofing off snapping dishtowels at the waitresses when, at about 200 decibels screamed, "STOP MESSINK AROUNT!!!!" I thought the Nazi regime had come to revisit. Next day I show up for my new job as dishwasher, dressed down for the occasion, when "Helmut" asked, " WOT ZE HELL ARE DOING NAWT DREST AS A BUSBOY?" I responded, "You said to come in jeans and a T-shirt to wash dishes." "I SET NO SUCH TING! SINCE YOU ARE DREST LIKE ZAT, YOU CAN VASH THE VALLS!" I said, "I ain't washing the walls!" His final words were, "YOU DON"T VANT TO VASH THE VALLS? THEN GET ZE HELL OUT!" Know what? I got ze hell out...then picked up a guitar.