Job Experience #1

In my thirty-one years of life on this planet I have managed to obtain fifty-eight jobs. I think it's been that many, there could be more. I'm going to start at the first one and make my way every week through the list. I hope you find it humorous and, at the very least, interesting.

In order to explain the first job, I must first tell the story of the best friend I had growing up, Jamie. Jamie was about two years older than me and lived across the street from my family in Lake Orion, MI. She was a female, adolescent version of Dr. Dolittle. I swear the girl could talk to animals. This girl had a zoo in her house. There were dogs of all kinds; Great Danes, Terriers, Cockapoos, Cockalazapoos, you name it. She had cats and fish, turtles, snakes, flying squirrels, chinchillas, rats, mice and gerbils. There were over forty birds in her house, including a white Cockatoo named Snow that could scream her name exactly like her mother did so we often thought we were getting in trouble when, in fact, no one was home to catch us doing what ever it was we surely should not have been doing. Jamie grew butterflies in her bedroom and let them fly around in it, she introduced me to Sea Monkeys and Tent Worms. One time during a thunderstorm we were in her bedroom and a blue Parakeet that must have escaped from another house in the neighborhood crashed into her bedroom window. Jamie went outside and rescued it and kept it for many years. I suppose the bird had heard through the grapevine about the house with all the animals and the girl who could talk to them because how else could it have ended up there? Maybe the Parakeet had gotten news of the Seagull with the broken wing that Jamie took in. Her mother was an RN and helped Jamie amputate the wing that was broken beyond repair and they kept that Seagull for many years too, until it died from old age. Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up.

Just Like Me

When you were growing up did your parents ever say to you, "When you grow up and have your own children, I hope they are just like you!" Well my parents did. At least my mother did. I guess she must have rubbed the right lamp and met the right genie because her wish came true. This is confirmed every time I call her to ask what I should do about some situation or another related to my daughters and her first response is to fall over laughing. This isn't the sort of laughter one would expect to hear after explaining a humorous story, this laughter is much more maniacal, a pinch of evil and a tablespoon of "I told you so."