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Tuesday, November 18, 2003

every job I ever had

Daydreaming On Paper gave me this prompt this morning:


List all the jobs you've ever had.


Well, you know me, I can't just list, I have to discuss. Here goes. :)

1. When I was 11 or 12 I started helping out, for $3 a week, in the nursery at the Methodist church I grew up in. I wasn't going to mention this, but then I realized that it really did influence my life in a lot of ways. And it's shocking to see the near-adults who were once babies I cuddled and changed.
   
2. The spring and summer during/after eighth grade, I spent nights at the home of my great-great aunt who had Alzheimer's. At that point in time she was fine with just someone in the house with her at night; they just didn't want her to be alone, and I lived right down the road and knew her quite well. She had a different idea of who I was every night, and she always offered me raisin toast in the morning for breakfast. I can still remember the pleasant old-ladyish smell of her house, the strawberry shampoo she had, the letters I would write to my friends lying on her guest bed. It was while I had that job that I learned that I could just concentrate as I was going to bed on getting up at a certain time (I always forgot to bring my alarm clock over there) and it would work. I can still do that when I want to. This "job" paid $12 a night, and it ended at the end of the summer when Aunt Hazel's caretakers started having full-time professional nursing care for her. I got paid all at once at the end of that summer and bought my first "cool" expensive clothes for the next school year. This was also a huge lesson -- I could see why my parents shopped at bargain outlets once I put down a whole summer's work on about two outfits (including a red sweater! even then...) plus a pair of very expensive shoes.
   
3. Then during ninth grade I had a boring job at the local Frostee-type place, taking orders for hamburgers and fries, making milkshakes and ice-milk cones. It was my first time-card taxes-paid kind of job, and nothing interesting happened there.
   
4. The next summer, I babysat full-time for a local single dad with two little boys. It only lasted about a month; after that the dad remarried and I was no longer necessary. It was another job where I learned a lot about little kids, and it was my highest-paying job till that point at $5 an hour, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, under the table. The father worked in a shop right there at his house, and his assistant would pick me up for work every day as he drove past my house in his 1963 Dodge Dart station wagon. This is possibly the ugliest car ever created. It is at least in the top 3 ugliest cars.
   
5. The summer after tenth grade I worked as a maid in a hotel. This is simply not my kind of job. You don't mix with people, and you have to be so meticulous, and, well, I'm not and never have been.
   
6. In eleventh grade I had another frostee-freeze type job, at a different little diner in town. This job lasted six months. I gained 20 pounds in those six months; I developed the perfect (but extremely calorie-laden) burger; I learned to mop a floor properly and to flirt and to ward off unwanted advances (which was a heady feeling at the time, since I'd been a definite ugly duckling all my life). I went home every day reeking of bleach, and when I unbraided my hair and stepped into the shower at home there was a definite smell of French fries and grease pervading the air. It took a summer of being strict with myself and walking six miles a day to lose all that weight.
   
7. After that one, during the summer after eleventh grade and the beginning of my senior year, I had a job at a Mexican restaurant which was actually a lot of fun. The cooks and dishwashers were bona-fide card-carrying Mexicans, who sang to the waitresses and hostess in Spanish. The food was amazing, although I had learned from my previous job that sucking on the after-dinner mints all day and skipping my free meal would do my figure a lot more good than snacking from the nacho bin and eating a full plate on my dinner break. There was one night when the cooks and dishwashers all failed to show up; the owner cooked, the waitresses bussed their own tables and took over my hostess job, and I, in my silk skirt and blouse, ended up washing dishes. It was a very interesting experience, and it completely ruined that outfit in spite of the apron I had on.
   
8. had another brief stint after graduation at the second frostee-freez-ish place. It did not go well and I did not enjoy it.
   
9. I was rescued from that job by a family I had done a lot of babysitting for over the years. (I have neglected telling about all the babysitting I did; there were three or four families who used me a lot. It was a fun feeling to have them booking me for New Years' Eve two months in advance, before another family could get dibs. I loved all the kids and learned more from those jobs, as far as stuff I use now, than I did from any of the others.) Their in-home daycare provider had to have surgery and they asked me to take over. Thus began the best two years of my job life -- from 6 am to 6 pm, three days a week, I was in charge of three kids. When I started the full-time job they were ages 2, 4, and 7. The oldest, a girl, was the flower girl in my wedding. I worked there until I was pregnant with my son; the mother of the children was laid off work for a time, and when she went back, their previous provider was able to take over again. I see the children around town now -- the flower girl is now a senior in high school and a star on the volleyball team, the middle boy is a freshman, and the littlest girl (whom I held all night one new year's eve as she was teething) is in junior high and is taller than me. *sigh*. The scary thing is that that's going to happen with my children too, just as quickly.
   
10. During and after the time when I worked for them, I did a lot of substituting as a teacher's aide and secretary for the local school district. This was also a very interesting job and really informative and educational. I was an aide in a special education class, and I went with various kids as they "mainstreamed" into the HeadStart next door or into an elementary school classroom. Between that and the stint as assistant secretary in the special education department, I learned more than I ever thought I'd know about the workings of that system, and began to cement the thought in my mind that any children I ever had would be educated at home.
    
11. When my son was a baby I had a very brief child-care job with another family. I also spent a few days as a receptionist/hostess at my in-laws' microbrewery. Neither of these jobs were the least bit enjoyable or interesting.
    

And that's it. For seven years my job has been raising and teaching my own children. The pay is very low, but the benefits are just amazing. Best job I ever had by far. ;-)

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