EARLY WORK ADVENTURES

We’ve all heard ‘em – the “Hard-Knock Life” work tales of previous generations. When I was little, every waking hour of my childhood seemed to be punctuated with terse stories (usually very true) beginning, “You don’t know how good you have it. When I was your age, I milked cows at the crack of dawn and hiked to school in blizzards. In the Depression we didn’t have a dime to our name. Not like your cushy life without even a moment’s worry! You don’t know what hard work is at all.”

Now that I’m older, I feel it’s time I set down my “Hard-Knock” work story. Even though I didn’t grow up in the ‘30’s, working hard was a big, big deal. To wit:

The very first work that I remember is babysitting: a lot of it. And having to “set an example for the younger ones” morning, noon and night. One of my earliest memories involves my charging across to the neighbors to snatch my sister from what I thought were the jaws of perdition. She had joined a merry band of riffraff in sliding on the brand-new lawn of a crotchety neighbor. Sure that all the kids’ days were numbered, since said neighbor was now advancing on them with a broom, I practiced true PC parenting skills by shouting at my sister, “LINDA!! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?? GET AWAY FROM THERE BEFORE YOU GET KILLED!!!” Just like any hysterical housewife, right?

I was five.

It wasn’t as though we had sixteen children in our family or lived in a one-parent household or my father didn’t have a good job. There were only three of us kids and our dad was an engineer. Also, this was real Leave-It-To-Beaver time when many moms (including ours) stayed home during the day. Yet, for some reason I was never supposed to take either my eye, or my mind, off my younger siblings. By the time I was school age, I worried about them constantly. Before school in the mornings I would seek out other girls in my class who had younger siblings and we’d hold these earnest little conclaves: “How do you stop them playing with their food?” … “What do you do when they just won’t go to bed?” I truly thought that I had “failed” as a big sister because I couldn’t quite get my sibs to “mind!”

Imagine that today!

By then, I was nine.

At ten, I had my first “outside” babysitting job, watching the toddlers next door at lunchtime. In late middle school, I graduated to “night” jobs. I felt so grown up! Fortunately it was less worrisome than babysitting at home, since the parents of my new little charges really appreciated me. Still, I took the work very seriously, comparing notes with other young sitters and reading stacks of books about child development(!) I invested part of my wages in Parents’ Magazine and bought Dr. Spock at a garage sale.

Also during this time I worked in a daycare center, taught Sunday school, cleaned house for people, and shelved books in a library, all while continuing to help with chores at home. Not to mention going to school, making my own clothes and writing.

People my parents’ age who told me I “lived the life of Riley” didn’t seem to realize that for someone with such a cushy life, I lived with an awful lot of anxiety – the world of “Achieve more/Do more/You’re not good enough” intruded on my awareness more and more. Although none of my activities were unusual, I can see now that my stress level probably was. In a way I saw it then, too – I was just too afraid to verbalize it. Fortunately I did make it to the college of my choice.

After college I worked as a librarian in a public library…nice, peaceful job, right? Wrong! Doing a good job as a librarian (and I got to be very good) involves a certain amount of hustling. How many books can you buy/critique/promote/share that are “Best of the Best?” How many customers can you serve in a day? How many schools/PTA’s/churches can you visit? How can you design programs (frequently on very little money) that are better than any other programs around?

Though not a hustler by nature, I learned to hustle with the best of them. I lived, breathed, ate and slept book displays. I foraged constantly for new ideas, and found them. I pushed, pushed and pushed myself and got a fair amount of kudos. But somehow, no amount of work that I did ever seemed anywhere near enough.

Now I’ve switched fields and work as a teacher in a Vocational Rehab program. I still try extremely hard, and I push my students to try hard, too. But never do I suggest to them that they have a “cushy life.” Really, no one has that, no matter how things appear! Nor do I ever imply to my class that they’re only as good as their performance. I just coax them to give their best at all times without eating themselves alive.

Once when I was attending a “Reduce-Stress-In-the Workplace” type of seminar, the facilitator made us do an exercise “charting” the intensity of our family work ethic. I “charted” my parents’ background, my parents’ and my own work history beginning with my sitting-for-pay-at-ten. When the leader saw my paper, she whistled, “Wow! Your work ethic is off the chart.”

You think??