When I stopped taking substitute teaching assignments back in March, in order to be available to watch my grandbaby Freya while her mom and dad dedicated themselves to their college studies, our household of seven humans, two dogs, two cats, and a half-dozen fish become a one-income household. (Thankfully, my lovely wife earns enough of a salary to keep us all from starving.) But as the spring semester draws to an end and the time for finding summer employment has arrived, ours has suddenly become a four-income household.
I am not among those who will be earning a paycheck this summer. My compensation as a stay-at-home grandparent is exactly the same as when I was a stay-at-home parent. Zero dollars per hour. However, in lieu of a paycheck, I shall continue to accept a steady dose of snuggles and naps instead.
Having stepped away from their high-risk, frontline jobs during the height of the pandemic, my son Alex and his girlfriend Sarah are now inoculated and ready to get back to work. Both of them accepted job offers last week, and they hope to be able to afford to rent their own place soon, although I keep reminding them that they (let’s be honest—Freya) are (is) welcome to live in our home as long as they (she) want(s). Nevertheless, whether they live in our house or their own, they will still need me to babysit Freya while they are at work or school, so there won’t be any shortage of snuggles or naps in my future, thank goodness.
The fourth gainfully employed member of our family is my daughter Tiana, who just got her first job. She’ll be working at a fast-food restaurant. At seventeen, she is the same age I was when I got my first (and last) fast-food job. I hope her experience will turn out to be much better than mine. To give you an idea of how bad things got for me; I was scheduled to work a grand total of three hours the week I finally took my manager’s hint and handed-in my grease-infused, polyester uniform.
Tiana is excited to begin earning her own money and learning new skills. She said she already feels older because she has a job. Her positive attitude and her desire to prove herself will serve her well at work. Her mother and I are so proud of her.
Truman, at age fourteen, is a little too young for most lines of work, although he wants to find a job, too. He is old enough to deliver newspapers, and were it not the case that we live two miles outside of town on a gravel road (and that the Journal is delivered by mail instead of by paperboy), I would encourage him to hop on his bike and sling newspapers like I did when I was his age.
Prior to my brief and miserable stint as a burger flipper, my first-ever job was delivering the Quincy Herald-Whig with my younger brother Blake. The truth is, Blake was the one who wanted the job, but because he was only eleven at the time, my parents insisted that I accompany him on his route. I resisted this arrangement with every fiber of my being, likening the situation to involuntary servitude, but my protestations fell upon the deaf and unsympathetic ears of both of my Marine parents.
Delivering papers up and down the long, steep incline of hilly Hannibal’s West Ely Road every weekday afternoon was pure torture, especially while pedaling single-speed, BMX-style bikes in the sweltering summer months. To add insult to injury, we also had to deliver the paper on weekend mornings, which meant that during the school year we never got to sleep in—ever. To a teenaged boy, this was egregious, outrageous, and utterly unacceptable. I brought my complaints to my parents, but the Jarheads were disinclined to show me any mercy.
So, I stuck it out, and eventually I saved enough money to buy a ten-speed mountain bike. I had to admit it felt pretty great to buy something nice with my own money. A year later, I got my driver’s license and started delivering the papers by car. By the time I rode that bike again as a college student at Mizzou, it had become rusty and obnoxiously noisy, no matter how much WD-40 I soaked it with.
My bike was stolen within months of my arrival in Columbia, which absolutely infuriated me, and when my roommate heard a hideous, yet familiar sound as he walked home from class a week or two later, he watched as the thief parked my bike at the fraternity house directly across the street from our dorm. I marched over there in a blind rage and reclaimed my bike, only for it to be stolen a second time later that year. (Yes, it had been locked up both times.) During my sophomore year, I returned to Columbia with the bike my brother bought with his paper route money—only for it to be stolen as well.
As it turned out, that paper route taught me more about hard work and the value of a dollar than all of my other jobs combined.
I guess I owe a “Thank You” to my parents (and Blake) for the forced labor and life lessons. I would also like to offer congratulations to the newest, gainfully-employed members of my family. May your work experiences be rewarding, and may your bike locks be much stronger than mine.
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