I love orchids. I have them all over, and I am a sucker for searching them out anytime I go to the garden store. I immediately look for the broken, half dead orchids I can bring home and get them to gloriously bloom again.
But it wasn’t always this way.
I never got flowers. Ever. From anyone. Except one orchid…….. once.
I don’t know why, it seems like it’s some normal custom in modern society, and of course in movies… but never for me. Somehow I escaped the custom and never got any.
Sad but true. But there are a lot of things other people do or are part of a normal life, that somehow I never got exposed to.
I’ve never been to a bar.
Never been to a club.
Never went to prom, an American staple of culture.
Never went to my graduation.
Never been on a real date….
Nope none of it.
I escaped culture somehow.
But in terms of flowers, well that one always bugged me the most because I absolutely love them.
So I buy them for myself. Potted or cut, I buy them and always have blooms somewhere in my home.
Even when I travel, the first thing I do is search my Airbnb for a vase. If none exists I buy one on the first day. Then I find the nearest market and buy glorious flowers to make my temporary place home.
But orchids are especially dear to me. See I was given an orchid once. It is the single exception to my “never got flowers” story.
I was working in a very prestigious job in Chicago. Managing a department in a very posh studio. The owner was an older gentleman who was a famous photographer. But there was a problem, he was a colossal dick.
Oh there are no words for how much of an ass this man was.
His wife worked in the office, and he screwed every pretty young girl in the studio two walls away. He screwed the interns, he screwed the clients, he screwed the assistants to the clients, I think he would have screwed a dog if it was available.
Now I was an overweight bleach blonde 20 something. Not much to look at, but that didn’t stop him. When I said no. Well my job wasn’t that secure anymore.
He tried, and I said no. He persisted, and I stood my ground, ethical to the end, to hell with the job, I would never compromise my self-respect.
The only thing that saved me was the fact I was exceptional at what I did.
I could save his ass over and over.
This guy would take a $500,000 job photographing some high powered wedding, and because he was so vain he wouldn’t wear his glasses. And this in the day of using all FILM cameras, not auto focus digital, but old school medium format film.
Well as you can imagine all the photos would be shit.
So my job was to find faces in focus and literally rebuild important wedding photos of the rich and famous. I had to be so good nobody would know their half million dollar wedding was botched.
And I was that good. I could digitally retouch anything and make it work.
Well one day a high paying client needed help.
The boss wasn’t around, so I took the call and helped the client. I went above and beyond to deliver exactly what the client needed before the deadline.
This client was so happy. She was over the moon.
Her products would launch, contracts would be signed, and success in the multi-million dollar range were all but guaranteed because I could get the job done.
So in came the gifts. Baskets of goodies, and one absolutely spectacular orchid.
I had never seen an orchid before, but I was in love.
And the boss was furious.
He didn’t care about the fact I pulled off the impossible…..
He cared that I received the gifts and praise and he didn’t.
I was fired that day.
I was not allowed to take my gifts, my orchid, or anything of my personal belongings. I was allowed to grab my backpack and told to never come back.
It was then I decided I will always have orchids no matter where I lived.
Not just to spite this colossal ass who fired me, but because it was something of exquisite beauty, and I always wanted to be able to look over and see something that lovely.
It reminds me that there are shitty people in the world, but no matter what, kindness and beauty will always win in the end.