I’ve heard from some of you about your first job, or your strangest job, after my column a few weeks ago. I’ve learned there is a strict etiquette around busing tables, or more particularly the manner in which dirty cutlery gets placed slowly into the soaking tray and not tossed so as to splash everyone else in the kitchen. Lots of people had first jobs as ticket-takers at fairs and movie theatres, or as those bobbing up and down people holding signs for restaurants while they wave at passersby and point to the restaurant that is right there.
I also heard from my sister, who reminded me that my first money-making venture happened long before I started babysitting at the age of 12. When I was about five or six, her and I and our neighbour friend who keeps popping up in my tales, would prowl the alleys behind our house looking for flowers that were growing along the sides. Or those that were poking under fences or right through chain link fences that seemed ripe for picking and not really stealing since they were, like, in the alley and not the yard.
We would collect as many as we legitimately could and scramble home with the stash, plunk scrawny clumps of them into old empty soup cans (sometimes we’d rinse the cans, but not always) and set up a stand on the front sidewalk to sell them. And people would buy them! Ten cents per bouquet. Of course, we would take the profits right down to the corner store and buy chocolate. We’d sit on the grass and eat our treats, satisfied and laughing that making money was such a breeze.
A few summers later, we graduated to producing puppet shows. We outlined a pattern on Mom’s scraps of material and sewed our own puppets on her machine. We wrote scripts, coloured an old box to create a puppet theatre, popped some corn and entertained the neighbourhood kids for a 10 cent admission fee. Usually just one family’s three children from a few houses down would attend, so at the end of the show we would just pack everything up and send it all home with them. Puppets, theatre box, popcorn – it was a pretty good deal, we thought, although I’m sure their mom wasn’t as pleased with the arrangement.
This all came back to me last week when I was enjoying my favourite walk around the pond and two youngsters approached me. They wondered if I wanted to buy any of their art. I looked at their curled bundle of white copy paper covered with pencil sketches of airplanes and military-looking vehicles, some with juice dripped on them. Prices have gone up since the 10 cent tin can days, I’ll tell ya, but they seemed to have done well that day.
As I continued along my way, I passed a couple who were saying phrases like ‘happy childhood memories’ while they held their own white paper sketches. And as I turned to look one last time before heading back to my car, I could see they were making another sale just around the bend. Ambitious youngsters, supportive community neighbours – it’s all the same all these years later. Just ask the folks at one of the many lemonade stands we’re passing these days!
Sandy Bexon is stepping into retirement after over 35 years as a communications professional, reporter and writer. She lives in Red Deer.
