I was country, when D.Q. Country wasn’t cool…

It sounds so stereotypical that I sometimes hate to admit it, but then I remember all the fun I had at my first job. I grew up in a very small town. There were 3,149 people at that time, to be exact. I know this because my neighborhood was positioned just down the road from the city limits sign, and I even helped take the census for our town in one of my other teen work gigs one summer.

We had one traffic light, one flashing light, about 7-8 churches and, yes, one Dairy Queen. You know where this is headed, right? My first job was the summer after my freshman year at the local D.Q. Quite honestly, it was the only place where the manager would overlook the fact that I was not quite old enough and let me work anyway.

So, one of my childhood friends and I decided to apply. As it turned out, a neighborhood boy that I’d rejected as a boyfriend in the 5th grade but had remained friends with had turned in his resume, as did a burly fun-loving guy from the high school football team.

The uniform, a red pinafore and really cheesy bandana on my head, was really atrocious. And, working at the local DQ on display for the whole town was really quite public, especially for me in those still somewhat shy and definitely awkward years. But, something came together that summer in the fun department.

Maybe it was the ribbing we’d give my neighbor friend when he’d always get assigned parking lot duty. Parking lot duty was definitely the worst. Not only did you have to pick up other people’s trash and food that they’d thrown down rudely, but you had to hose down the whole lot. Washing soggy cigarette butts down the sewer drains near the ditch that bordered our D.Q. was a highlight. But, even worse than this was the prevalence of kid barf. Apparently, a lot of kids in my hometown overloaded on ice cream and liked to puke it up in the parking lot. And, we did enjoy making sure the manager knew within seconds of the upchuck hitting the pavement, just so our friend would have to “take care of that right now.”

You learn a lot about people, working in a fast food establishment. Even in my early self-absorbed life stage that would run from high school through about half of college, I found myself taking mental notes about behaviors and the little lessons I learned.

Like the strange supervisor we had who was the mother of the most ostracized boy in my class. Ms. Laura’s boy was the one who gave kids the cooties in Kindergarten, who picked his nose all through elementary school, who performed strange antics that were like dangling carrots to bullies looking to pick on him, and who would be seriously on drugs within just a few short years of our time working with his mom. 

Ms. Laura, oddly enough, was a cleaning fanatic. She was obsessed with vinegar. She cleaned every table, every counter, every surface with the sour-smelling stuff the second someone left them, humming or whistling as she worked. We started off chuckling at Ms. Laura, over our Blizzard making and cone dipping. She was a bit of an odd bird herself, so it was easy to see how her son turned out so strange. But, after awhile, we all kind of stopped the chuckling.

I never knew if the other kids came to the realization I did–that Laura’s whole life was so problematic that cleaning each counter 10 times an hour was her way of finding inner peace, even if it was just for a few hours on her lousy shift. While we all enjoyed our “hefty” paychecks and our ten cents an hour raises, and spent our money going to the movies, buying ridiculously-priced designer jeans or stereo equipment, and eating out with friends, her money went toward the heating bill, the taxes, and the gas to fuel her beat-up car that barely got her just blocks down the road to her job. It went to pay for the reduced price lunches her kids were always on at our school because they had so little and had no visible father figure to help pay for anything.

That summer went by quickly, but I remember it as the most fun job I’d ever have in high school. We would laugh and laugh with one another as we worked, playing jokes on one another. It felt more like hanging out with friends, not a job. It did feel good having a paycheck for the first time too.

I think about my girlfriend and I secretly jumping on the sealed bags of frozen blizzard candy bars when we couldn’t find the mallet to crush them “by the code” and then falling on the floors laughing at ourselves. When I didn’t tell people that I was scheduled to work on my birthday, my friends and the supervisor surprised me with a little cake and sang happy birthday, giving me a few hours early off. And, then I arrived home to find my first car waiting for me there. I still have a picture somewhere of me in that awful uniform with balloons tied to the antennae of my tiny new Dodge truck that I thought was so cute.

I realize now that these small moments in my life are part of the mix that has made up who I am today and I treasure them now. I still smile when I return to my hometown and pass by that Dairy Queen, where not even the drive-thru sign has changed over the past 20 years. I even still know what to order, when we go there.

Surely, the memories of those days are like those chocolate dipped cones we used to make. They’re part of the sweet shell that holds together all that I am and the person I would become. Had I not experienced that summer, I am certain I’d be altogether different today…

Today’s post was written for:

Today’s challenge at {W}rite-Of-Passage, is to write about our first job growing up. {W}rite-of-Passage is a community of bloggers focusing in on getting back to good blog writing and brainchild of fellow blogger, Mrs. Flinger. 

Check out these other great entries for this week’s challenge: