Stolen: An Essay on My First Job
**Disclaimer**
I wrote this piece as an assignment for my creative writing class. I am finding creative writing to be not only fulfilling but theraputic as well. This disclaimer is for anyone who is related to me who might find reading this essay troubling because they know one or two of the real-life characters. If you find this essay troubling, all I can say to you is that this is my experience, as percieved, written and recollected by myself. Sometimes the truth is a very difficult thing to look at; we realize only after staring down the truth in the eye, that we have found liberation.
*****So, read on, if you dare****
Growing up the oldest of six children, in a family which lived well below the poverty level, I was given the opportunity for my first paying job at age 11 when the neighbors needed someone to keep an eye on their children for a few hours while they went out and did whatever it was parents did when they left their children at home in the hands of the 11 year old neighbor girl. I returned home that night with ten dollars to contribute to the cause of feeding and housing us all. My parents were delighted and eagerly took the money.
This was the beginning of my career as a babysitter for anybody my mother could convince of my virtues and skills, these skills not only involved children but also housekeeping, and cooking. And because I ran my mother’s home for her while she worked and did whatever she did when she was fed up and need some time out of the house, I did have skills. I got plenty of jobs. My jobs would always end in the customary way, after having done miscellaneous housekeeping, cooking and child care, I would be sent off with ten, fifteen or even twenty dollars in my pocket to lie at the altar of the greater good of the family. I was not, however, a saint. Sometimes someone would give me twenty dollars in the form of one ten, one five and five ones and I would take whatever I thought would not be noticeable. This I would set aside for my walks home from school where I passed a circle K and could buy a cold soda or a bag of Doritos to share with my friend. I was happy enough with this arrangement for many years and the pilfering of my own wages was never detected, whew! What a disappointment I would have been then.
My mother was the sort who believed that teenage girls are not capable of maintaining their virtue in any situation, and there were always those ready to help her out of her virtue at a moment’s notice. “No, you cannot go to that football game with your friends! You’ll be off in an empty school bus or under the bleachers having 6@* with some stupid boy!” So, going off and getting a real job by myself in the dangerous world of men and boys, was out of the question.
It was out of the question until I turned 15 and my step dad was moonlighting, in effort to add to the family income, at Arlington Stadium where the Texas Rangers played ball. In the state of Texas you had to reach the age of sixteen before you could get a real job, a regular paycheck sort of job; that is, unless you knew someone or could fudge the date on your birth certificate convincingly enough. I don’t remember applying for that job but before I knew it I had a job there under the watchful eye of my step father.
It seems that Ranger Stadium needed a travelling Cracker Jack representative. I was to cover the entire stadium with a case of Cracker Jacks, holding up a single box while shouting “Cracker Jacks!” I, like the other travelling salesman, wore the most blindingly awful combination of bright yellow and orange uniform shirt, so people could spot us I suppose, with a Texas Ranger baseball cap which was not nearly large enough to hide my shame and humiliation at having to sport this fashion atrocity. But, I had no choice, my family needed money and my parents arranged the perfect situation in which I would contribute and be under supervision.
Cracker Jacks sold for two dollars and fifty cents a box. I had to bring my own change, that way any miscalculations in my mental math would cost only me. I worked on commission. After several weeks of performing this task I realized that I was not even making minimum wage. Not that I really cared, I wouldn’t see the money anyhow, besides I was out of the house and I wasn’t babysitting anyone either. But because of my meager checks, my parents wondered if I was working at all. I was. I walked up and down each and every isle in the stadium, including the nose bleed section, which was a monumental sacrifice due to my fear of heights.
I hated this job. It turns out that selling Cracker Jacks was the lowest of the low on the stadium salesman totem pole. The people who sold beer were at the top, hot dog commissions were second, both scoring tips. Cotton candy was in third position, though kids never tipped sales were high. Popcorn and peanuts were tied in fourth place. So few people actually bought Cracker Jacks that I was beginning to think I was just wasting my time; I believed I was just a token to make the song “take me out to the ball game” true, when it was in fact not true. People bought cotton candy for their kids, not Cracker Jacks, the song lies. I complained. I wanted to sell hot dogs but, that was out of the question. The people who sold beer and hot dogs had to carry large stainless steel boxes by a strap around their neck and I was deemed, “not strong enough, not old enough and I did not have the seniority required to fill that position.” I was given a large canvas bag full of plastic packages of roasted salted peanuts, in the shell, and told that I could sell them in a section designated for me. If I had overstepped my bounds at any time the other salesman would promptly correct me.
Peanuts started to bring home some money, in the form of a paycheck. The bad thing about paychecks was that I couldn’t smuggle out any money for myself. I simply signed my name on the back of the check on payday and off it went. This was a service which was expected of me. I didn’t dare complain lest I have to suffer through a lecture from my mother detailing, “how expensive it was to raise me and how my dad did not pay child support that month. Did I realize how much it cost to feed me? Did I fully comprehend how expensive the rent was, how behind we were because of my dad?” Lucky for me though, when the games would go into overtime and beer was being consumed liberally, I would make some tips. My favorite tip was from a drunken man who paid me twenty dollars for a bag of peanuts that cost four dollars and twenty five cents, mumbling “eep the shange.” He was sitting in the cheap seats so I knew I should have confirmed that he in fact meant for me to take the fifteen dollars and seventy five cents left over, I didn’t though. I took his money and left before he changed his mind.
The summer of my seventeenth year I earned a cosmetology license. At the insistence of my parents, I juggled working my new job in a salon with one last season at Arlington Stadium. I never was given the freedom to utilize the money I earned at my own discretion, and like a broken animal, I simply complied.
Until the day I decided I would no longer comply. On that day I listened for the sounds of my mother leaving the house. I heard her footsteps grow faint as she walked down the hall past my room. I heard the engine of her mini-van roar into action, followed quickly by the sound of her backing up and driving away. I looked out of the window just to make sure she was gone, she was. In her room, I found the check book I was not allowed to use, with the checks that were in my name, and took it. I also took my social security card and my birth certificate, items she would later claim I “stole” from her. I went to the Winn Dixie grocery store, where I asked the clerk for the maximum amount I could write a cash check for, “one hun-dred and fif-ty dollars” the clerk said with her thick Texas accent. I wrote the check. I went to one more Winn Dixie and wrote one more check for the maximum amount of one hundred and fifty dollars. I was sure that there was much more in the account but, that was all I dared take, and hopefully it was enough. I took that money, loaded up my twenty year old car, and sought my freedom in Arizona.
Michelle
Randon
Kelcie
Morgan
Scott
Addison
Charis