Dear fifteen-year-old me,
You’re about to have the worst two jobs ever. Seriously.
Doesn’t that sound like fun? It won’t be, but it will be good for you. Really. Let me tell you how.
You’ll do some insurance telemarketing and then you’ll work at a fish fry restaurant. I’m not which will be worse, cold-calling or fish grease, but they’re both pretty miserable. There are not many brain cells needed to slap three fish fillets and five hush puppies on a plate.
Next year, you will learn that the local mall offers retails positions that aren’t grease-related and pay more per hour. You’ll think folding shirts in the junior’s section is the best job ever. Then you’ll go off to college and work a whole slew of part-time jobs.
Some of your favorites will include a children’s contest coordinator, kitchen helper, and food server. You’ll feel much more comfortable in more people-oriented jobs, but you will still wonder what the future holds.
Along the way, you’ll learn a lot about people and see a part of our culture that I think every person should experience. Yes, I think that every adult should be a waitress, a retail salesperson, or a teacher at some point in their lives. The reason is simple: you get to see how crazy people really are.
You’ll get to see the people who make the phrase “the customer is always right” a laughing matter. You’ll see the man who walks into a clothing store and rudely demands that you bring him a suitable pair of pants with a matching shirt immediately. No, he won’t tell you what he likes. You’re just supposed to know. You’ll meet the manager who only dates strippers and likes to show off his vocabulary of everything obscene and beyond. You’ll also meet another manager who will fake a seizure to avoid work, leaving a very inexperienced you in charge of a group of immature teenagers.
It’ll make for some great stories.
Later, you will be offered a few jobs that fit your skills and grow new ones. You’ll write some, work in accounts payable, teach English, work a better retail job. It’s not great pay, but you’re young and you have no experience, so you take it and make it work. You’ll add to those crazy stories.
And a funny thing will happen on the way to adulthood: you’ll find you love working with students and bringing new information into their world. You’ll learn that you love being self-employed, that two part-time jobs create a vocation that provides something new every day of the week.
And then you’ll have Nate. And he’ll show you what a delight it is to see a mind unfold, develop. You’ll watch him learn anything and everything and you’ll want to spread that to other children. There will be some rough days ahead that will make that goal difficult, but you’ll find a way.
One of the best parts of being a little older is making the major questions in life and making them certainties. Who will you love? What will your kids be like? What will you do with your life? You’ll begin to see the beginning of those answers.
It’ll make for some great stories.