Ice Cream, Boa Constrictors, Kinkajous and Science Camp
By Gwendolen Gross - March 28, 2011
When I was a kid, a read an article (probably in The Boston Globe, but maybe in Jama magazine, or some other refined bathroom reading) that suggested your first job will influence all other jobs in your future.
My first job was babysitting (a neighbor's infant; I was ten--he was about a month old and when he cried the alarm of it made me walk, and walk, and walk in circles around the house until the swaddled fellow finally fell asleep again. Then I sat in the same position for two hours, arms strong and numb, afraid to trip the wire, until his mother came home.), followed closely by the walking of a Rhodesian Ridgeback with my friend Lisa. It took both of us to be dragged around the block.
My following real jobs included scooping ice cream (my coworker and crush--who, incidentally, went to Oberlin--told me spumoni ice cream tasted like death), live animal and physical science demonstrations at the Boston Museum of Science (oh! I fell in love with the boas! The kinkajou! But porcupine rash is horrible.), and counselor at an Environmental Science Camp (reeds and rushes are round; grasses are flat). Do all those count? I directed the science program later on, and realized, atop Mt. Washington in charge of 30 junior high school students, that sometimes alarm doesn't sound like crying; it's just the Being In Charge.
Sure, there were more inbetween, but I'm running out of room. I just wanted to gather back around to the idea that first job influences the next, a sort of flow-chart of possibility. I think it does; I think all jobs change how we think of our roles and the frame of our version of life. Teaching writing workshops gives me a chance to listen. Writing gives me a chance to think about what matters most--and make up the colorful nest that surrounds those eggs.
My first job was babysitting (a neighbor's infant; I was ten--he was about a month old and when he cried the alarm of it made me walk, and walk, and walk in circles around the house until the swaddled fellow finally fell asleep again. Then I sat in the same position for two hours, arms strong and numb, afraid to trip the wire, until his mother came home.), followed closely by the walking of a Rhodesian Ridgeback with my friend Lisa. It took both of us to be dragged around the block.
My following real jobs included scooping ice cream (my coworker and crush--who, incidentally, went to Oberlin--told me spumoni ice cream tasted like death), live animal and physical science demonstrations at the Boston Museum of Science (oh! I fell in love with the boas! The kinkajou! But porcupine rash is horrible.), and counselor at an Environmental Science Camp (reeds and rushes are round; grasses are flat). Do all those count? I directed the science program later on, and realized, atop Mt. Washington in charge of 30 junior high school students, that sometimes alarm doesn't sound like crying; it's just the Being In Charge.
Sure, there were more inbetween, but I'm running out of room. I just wanted to gather back around to the idea that first job influences the next, a sort of flow-chart of possibility. I think it does; I think all jobs change how we think of our roles and the frame of our version of life. Teaching writing workshops gives me a chance to listen. Writing gives me a chance to think about what matters most--and make up the colorful nest that surrounds those eggs.
