When school let out this year for our neighbors’ adorable children, their oldest did not like that school was ending. He is a thoughtful child and often will do things like return our trash bin to our driveway after the service empties our bins.
His mother told me how much he loved school. I made a joke that I had senioritis starting in the first grade.
When I got to the age that I had a drivers’ license, I joined the ranks of my older brother and sister, who had learned that, once we had drivers’ licenses, we were expected to have summer jobs.
This was our dad’s mandate.
My brother worked construction every summer after 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades. He had some stories!
My sister started out with our dad finding her a job at (I’m sorry to say) the DMV Suspended License Division where three of the walls were rolling files of nothing but South Carolina suspended licenses. Her job, in part, was a lot of paperwork. She would later have a job at the USC realtor reel-to-reel tape library filing tapes.
I remember thinking when Dad got my sister a job at the DMV that I would need to have another plan. I would want to find my own job.
Nickie, Shufy and I all had driving lessons with the same lady (whose name none of us can remember). What I do remember is that she took me onto the interstate to practice in 5:00 traffic on day one. The parallel parking and three point turns were the techniques I worried most about on the driving test.
Right before I got my license at 16, my dad was looking at a 1966 beige on beige Plymouth Valiant with no AC and no radio. It was to be a choice for my brother to consider. He passed on that car.
I approached Dad with an idea. I said I knew that I had not saved the money that he had for me but, if he bought me that car, there were at least three kids in the neighborhood who I could drive to school and whose parents could pay my gas money. Dad appreciated that entrepreneurial approach and agreed.
I named my car Herman, and the day I got my license, he was parked in the sandy Wildewood parking lot at school for me to drive home.
This was in Columbia where it’s drippy and sweltering during the summers. I acclimated because I had wheels.
When it came time for me to have a plan for a summer job, I returned to Kanuga where I had been going since I was 11. Kanuga is a place where many of my life connections have been made.
Friends who had nothing to do with Kanuga traveled halfway around the world and ran into someone who knew me because of Kanuga. Some roads lead to Kanuga, and many have for me.
I applied to work at the conference center, which was going to be a different atmosphere than camp. This was taking care of adult guests and their families. First summers at Kanuga working on staff (for girls anyway) often meant waiting tables. It was family style. That was my job and then I got a two week extension (this was a big deal back then - everyone wanted one of these) working in the kitchen with the dish crew.
I would have stayed longer if they would have let me.
When I presented my summer job plan to Dad, I realized by the look on his face that I kind of upped the ante on his rule. I’d followed the rule, but I would be leaving town - in my own car - going to Kanuga - in another state - and staying in a girls’ dormitory and having no curfew. But I would have a paycheck. Dad agreed.
For the summers that followed, I would start to get this impatience in my spirit to get back up on the mountain. I would work there every summer I could all through high school and college and stay as long as they would let me.
Working summer jobs like that and then going on to have a job during college was foundational for preparing me to work with all kinds of people, all ages of people and all different kinds of groups of people. It didn’t make me an expert, but it gave me skills and tools that I would not have otherwise gained.
I’m so grateful for that. I feel certain I still rely on that foundation today.
Try this:
Write about your first summer job. What did you do? Where were you? Who were your coworkers? How did it feel to be working at that age?
What were the rules or conditions growing up about having a summer job while you were still under your parents’ roof? How did you follow them?
What is it like to think about this today? What comes up in your memory, in your heart?
I’d love to know how it goes. Feel free to send me an email at fsconsulting2013@gmail.com
