When I was Growing Up
Prompt #8: First Job
Leaving the house to watch my granddaughter at 6:00 A.M. this morning, I was reminded of my first job. When I was twelve, I would hop on my bike at 6:00 A.M. and cruise a mile and a half down the road to my babysitting job.
The job wasn’t hard; only one eight-year-old girl who liked to sit and read Nancy Drew books. I watched her 50 hours a week, for which I was paid $15.00. This figures turns out to be an hourly rate of thirty cents an hour.
The frustrating part of the job was that her house was a stone’s throw away from our community beach on Silver Lake. I had summer friends from a neighboring town that I never saw during the school year. One of them babysat four girls at the beach. The mom would drop them off at the beach every morning with a full cooler of food and drinks before opening her restaurant. My friend and the girls she babysat were fun and lively bunch.
I worked hard to convince the girl I babysat to hang out at the beach with the other kids her age. However, she had never learned to swim and didn’t want to be at the beach. So we stayed at her house reading Nancy Drew books all that summer and the next.
The paycheck was the tradeoff for not spending the long summer days swimming in the lake and playing games on the beach. (And looking at the cute lifeguard.)
I knew that the only way to have money was to earn it myself. My parents had sold the cows and equipment from our farm, and my dad had gone back to college to get his teaching degree. My mom was busy working low-paying jobs herself.
In the late 1960s, thirty cents an hour was enough money to buy my school clothes. I was able to buy my first pair of Levi jeans. It probably cost me close to one week’s wages.
Interestingly, I was faced with this same decision decades later when my husband’s company relocated to the West Coast. Similar to needing to choose a babysitting job over spending time with my friends that summer, we had to decide whether or not to leave friends and family behind and move across the country for a job.
We decided, rather than being unemployed, we would move to California. The move worked out well for us. We quickly made new friends. One of whom I started a business with. We explored the new and exciting things that the West Coast offered.
We never regretted our decision to relocate. However, reflecting back on my first job, I ask myself if I have any regrets. When I was twelve, I didn’t know how few carefree summers with no real responsibilities lay ahead.
If I had known what I know now, I wonder if I would have taken that job.
With Love & Energy by the Pond,
Laurel
