Another "All My Jobs" blog
Victoria posted the following on her blog. Cool beans. And even though I'm disturbed that Rob at Cockeyed has ended the long standing tradition of people always refering to me as Keith Lowell Jensen or even KLJ instead of Keith, this is still pretty neat.
All my Jobs: Volume One
While stumbling around one of my favorite blogs Cockeyed.com, I came across a link to this list of all of All of Keith's Jobs in order even!
I thought to myself: I have an uncanny memory, a variable employment history, AND a place to write things down! I should copy him! I'm not going into the amount of detail that he does--I mean, this blog isn't SOLELY about my past employment experiences. I have to talk about my current ones as well!
Aiight, without further ado...all my jobs. In chronological order. This is volume one, because there is no way I could do all of them in one go.
To make this ultra-long list more manageable, I am only going to list jobs I was actually paid for. Maybe another time I'll do a volunteer list.
Job #1: Babysitting a Baby.
When I was 9, my mom loaned me out to her one-armed friend Marilyn. My job was to mind a baby that belonged to one of Marilyn's friends while Marilyn and her buddies got trashed in the next room. I was NOT to come into the other room unless "the baby started on fire". It was a tiny baby still in the un-fun,"dribble-cry-poop-sleep" stages of life. Personally, I wouldn't let a 9-year-old take responsibility for MY newly born infant, but these folks were pretty trashy. Their friends were probably in awe of their responsibility for getting a sitter. My parents weren't in-home partiers, so I'd never seen adults reveling in debauchery before. Once I got the baby to fall asleep, I spent the rest of the evening peering through the keyhole, spying on the drunken antics in the next room. It completely altered my worldview. I'd always suspected that adults were idiots but after that night I was certain.
Job #2: Apartment Mucking Assistant.
I was about 10 or 11 when my mom started loaning me out to another one of her friends, Kim. We knew Kim from her gig at Joe's Donut Shop. This garish red-and-white building is a Sandy landmark and going there was a huge event in our young lives. We were wicked poor, but occasionally we'd have enough extra money to stop in and get a donut, scalding hot chocolate, or a pop. Kim was always so kind behind the counter, but in her role as my boss she was a completely different person. She had a side business cleaning out recently vacated apartments. I was hired as her assistant, which meant that I got up really early on the weekends and spent all day and night doing the shitty gruntwork while she smoked and read magazines. I got to hunch over toiilets that had black crunchiness caked onto the bowls--trying to loosen the rock-hard sludge with toxic chemicals and a butter knife. I also got to crawl into disgusting cupboards and scrub mystery stains in the carpet. Once, I found a pipe and a stash of weed on top of a set of kitchen cupboards. I didn't know what it was, but Kim was really excited to see it and had me rip the place apart looking for more. I had to peel up the carpets even. I'd end each day exhausted, with cracked hands and a headache. I didn't care though--I was SO excited at the prospect of having my OWN money. I'd daydream for hours on what I'd buy with my earnings. The harder I'd work, the more detailed my daydreams became, but weeks went by and she didn't pay me at all. At one point, I wanted to do something with my friend Kim Yandell that I needed money for--Skate World? State Fair? Something like that. I knew I had the money coming, so I asked my mom to get my pay from Kim and Kim got really angry with me for asking for it. She said it wasn't payday yet. I pushed for it, and I eventually got $10--total. I guess even $10 was too much to expect--because I wasn't taken along again.
Job #3: Babysitting for the VanEttens.
Bob and Nancy VanEtten lived up the street from me, and I caught the school bus at their house. I never really noticed the adults that hung around the stop until a day that Nancy came up and thanked me for continuously defending her daughter from from the neighborhood bully Zack Lemmon. After that, Nancy went out of her way to be nice to me. Every morning, she acted excited to see me, and listen to me and ask me all about school. I liked the attention so much that I started leaving the house earlier and earlier to spend more time with the VanEttens. I was over at their house every morning, eating breakfast and watching cartoons. This started a trend--I spent grade school mornings at the VanEttens, middle school mornings loitering in front of the school with hooligans, and by the time I was in high school I was leaving for school at 5:30am. In addition to Nancy liking me, Molly and Kari absolutely adored me. Nancy eventually gave me a job watching them--and after a while I started helping her manage her Daisy Girl Scout troop. I minded Molly and Kari for years and years, until high school. We'd dress up their long-suffering cat Oliver, play Nancy Drew, and make Rice Krispie treats. One year Nancy gave me a gold Girl Scouting locket for my birthday. I wore it every day until 7th grade or so. She was the BEST. The girls got older, the VanEttens moved down by the river and I started being really busy at school...they started calling me less and less and the job just fizzled out. They had my sister sit fot them once--but it just wasn't the same. Nancy was infinitely important to me. She died in a car accident last year and I cried and cried when I heard. That bully Zack Lemmon is also dead but I was not sad about his death AT ALL. (How would you feel if you were 12 and the boy that had been tormenting you for years suddenly died? I was totally relieved!)
Job #4: Babysitting for the people that lived next door to Zack Lemmon.
Through my job watching Molly and Kari, I got a gig occasionally minding these two other girls that lived at the end of Hall Court up the street. I don't remember their names. I only watched them a few times, and the distinguishing memories of my time there almost all involve that ASSHOLE Zack Lemmon making my life miserable. Once, he started a fire in the front yard and laughed when I ran outside in a panic. When I was 14, I was meant to watch the two girls, but when I turned up their mom had let them invite 4 neighbor girls over and told me they'd signed me up to watch all six. She'd promised all of them that I would take them to Meining Park. So, I led 6 girls down to the Fantasy Forest playground and tried to keep these hyperactive youngsters from dying or running off. It was so stressful. At the park, I ran into Bobby Perkins from school and he and his friends made inappropriate jokes about all the kids being mine and called me a slut. Then the little kids yelled SLUT! SLUT! at me all the way home. Good lord. I was pretty frazzled and pissed by the time the parents came back home--and was shocked to discover that they were only going to pay me for their 2 kids. That was the last time I sat for them.
Job#5: Berrypicking.
Ah, berrypicking. The realm of illegal immigrants, tweaked out hippies, and poor rural kids. Nothing like spending hour after hour of your summer "vacation" barefoot in the dirt, mindlessly picking berries under the hot sun. I did this every summer, usually at my Grandma's farm. All three of us kids would pick--and be bitter about the fact that our cousins Tara and David got to watch tv inside instead. Berrypicking can be pretty boring--especially when you are doing it under the watchful eye of your mom and you get busted every time you try to goof off by feeding the cows green apples or cramming berries into your mouth until your cheeks puff out and glops of berry pulp ooze out of your lips while you try to choke back laughter. You get paid cents per pint--and if you are family you get even less. I also picked berries at the Vollmer family farm--which was mortifying because I went to school with the Vollmers. Berrypicking is poor-people work and the Vollmers are one of the berry farming elite families of Sandy. Krista Vollmer was always nice as nice could be--but her cousin Ryan was the hugest dick and always rubbed it in my face that I was one of "his" employees. When I got older, I'd ride my bike out to Game Farm Road and pick with my friend Suzanne Skibba--but that was actually kind of fun. We were unsupervised, loopy from the sun, and scandalized (but flattered) by the attentions of the old Mexican guys.
Those are my first 5 paid jobs, and all pretty marginal. Next volume: legitimate teenaged employment with a paycheck and EVERYTHING!
Check out her blog for future installments. Find it by clicking here.
Read indy comic hot shot Jeffrey Brown's story HERE
My Cousin's brutal tale of being a beat cop in NYC is HERE
Swimming with dolphins in Gay Hawaii is HERE.
Being Will Ferrell is HERE.
And of course all of my own work tales are HERE!
and my home page is HERE.
While stumbling around one of my favorite blogs Cockeyed.com, I came across a link to this list of all of All of Keith's Jobs in order even!
I thought to myself: I have an uncanny memory, a variable employment history, AND a place to write things down! I should copy him! I'm not going into the amount of detail that he does--I mean, this blog isn't SOLELY about my past employment experiences. I have to talk about my current ones as well!
Aiight, without further ado...all my jobs. In chronological order. This is volume one, because there is no way I could do all of them in one go.
To make this ultra-long list more manageable, I am only going to list jobs I was actually paid for. Maybe another time I'll do a volunteer list.
Job #1: Babysitting a Baby.
When I was 9, my mom loaned me out to her one-armed friend Marilyn. My job was to mind a baby that belonged to one of Marilyn's friends while Marilyn and her buddies got trashed in the next room. I was NOT to come into the other room unless "the baby started on fire". It was a tiny baby still in the un-fun,"dribble-cry-poop-sleep" stages of life. Personally, I wouldn't let a 9-year-old take responsibility for MY newly born infant, but these folks were pretty trashy. Their friends were probably in awe of their responsibility for getting a sitter. My parents weren't in-home partiers, so I'd never seen adults reveling in debauchery before. Once I got the baby to fall asleep, I spent the rest of the evening peering through the keyhole, spying on the drunken antics in the next room. It completely altered my worldview. I'd always suspected that adults were idiots but after that night I was certain.
Job #2: Apartment Mucking Assistant.
I was about 10 or 11 when my mom started loaning me out to another one of her friends, Kim. We knew Kim from her gig at Joe's Donut Shop. This garish red-and-white building is a Sandy landmark and going there was a huge event in our young lives. We were wicked poor, but occasionally we'd have enough extra money to stop in and get a donut, scalding hot chocolate, or a pop. Kim was always so kind behind the counter, but in her role as my boss she was a completely different person. She had a side business cleaning out recently vacated apartments. I was hired as her assistant, which meant that I got up really early on the weekends and spent all day and night doing the shitty gruntwork while she smoked and read magazines. I got to hunch over toiilets that had black crunchiness caked onto the bowls--trying to loosen the rock-hard sludge with toxic chemicals and a butter knife. I also got to crawl into disgusting cupboards and scrub mystery stains in the carpet. Once, I found a pipe and a stash of weed on top of a set of kitchen cupboards. I didn't know what it was, but Kim was really excited to see it and had me rip the place apart looking for more. I had to peel up the carpets even. I'd end each day exhausted, with cracked hands and a headache. I didn't care though--I was SO excited at the prospect of having my OWN money. I'd daydream for hours on what I'd buy with my earnings. The harder I'd work, the more detailed my daydreams became, but weeks went by and she didn't pay me at all. At one point, I wanted to do something with my friend Kim Yandell that I needed money for--Skate World? State Fair? Something like that. I knew I had the money coming, so I asked my mom to get my pay from Kim and Kim got really angry with me for asking for it. She said it wasn't payday yet. I pushed for it, and I eventually got $10--total. I guess even $10 was too much to expect--because I wasn't taken along again.
Job #3: Babysitting for the VanEttens.
Bob and Nancy VanEtten lived up the street from me, and I caught the school bus at their house. I never really noticed the adults that hung around the stop until a day that Nancy came up and thanked me for continuously defending her daughter from from the neighborhood bully Zack Lemmon. After that, Nancy went out of her way to be nice to me. Every morning, she acted excited to see me, and listen to me and ask me all about school. I liked the attention so much that I started leaving the house earlier and earlier to spend more time with the VanEttens. I was over at their house every morning, eating breakfast and watching cartoons. This started a trend--I spent grade school mornings at the VanEttens, middle school mornings loitering in front of the school with hooligans, and by the time I was in high school I was leaving for school at 5:30am. In addition to Nancy liking me, Molly and Kari absolutely adored me. Nancy eventually gave me a job watching them--and after a while I started helping her manage her Daisy Girl Scout troop. I minded Molly and Kari for years and years, until high school. We'd dress up their long-suffering cat Oliver, play Nancy Drew, and make Rice Krispie treats. One year Nancy gave me a gold Girl Scouting locket for my birthday. I wore it every day until 7th grade or so. She was the BEST. The girls got older, the VanEttens moved down by the river and I started being really busy at school...they started calling me less and less and the job just fizzled out. They had my sister sit fot them once--but it just wasn't the same. Nancy was infinitely important to me. She died in a car accident last year and I cried and cried when I heard. That bully Zack Lemmon is also dead but I was not sad about his death AT ALL. (How would you feel if you were 12 and the boy that had been tormenting you for years suddenly died? I was totally relieved!)
Job #4: Babysitting for the people that lived next door to Zack Lemmon.
Through my job watching Molly and Kari, I got a gig occasionally minding these two other girls that lived at the end of Hall Court up the street. I don't remember their names. I only watched them a few times, and the distinguishing memories of my time there almost all involve that ASSHOLE Zack Lemmon making my life miserable. Once, he started a fire in the front yard and laughed when I ran outside in a panic. When I was 14, I was meant to watch the two girls, but when I turned up their mom had let them invite 4 neighbor girls over and told me they'd signed me up to watch all six. She'd promised all of them that I would take them to Meining Park. So, I led 6 girls down to the Fantasy Forest playground and tried to keep these hyperactive youngsters from dying or running off. It was so stressful. At the park, I ran into Bobby Perkins from school and he and his friends made inappropriate jokes about all the kids being mine and called me a slut. Then the little kids yelled SLUT! SLUT! at me all the way home. Good lord. I was pretty frazzled and pissed by the time the parents came back home--and was shocked to discover that they were only going to pay me for their 2 kids. That was the last time I sat for them.
Job#5: Berrypicking.
Ah, berrypicking. The realm of illegal immigrants, tweaked out hippies, and poor rural kids. Nothing like spending hour after hour of your summer "vacation" barefoot in the dirt, mindlessly picking berries under the hot sun. I did this every summer, usually at my Grandma's farm. All three of us kids would pick--and be bitter about the fact that our cousins Tara and David got to watch tv inside instead. Berrypicking can be pretty boring--especially when you are doing it under the watchful eye of your mom and you get busted every time you try to goof off by feeding the cows green apples or cramming berries into your mouth until your cheeks puff out and glops of berry pulp ooze out of your lips while you try to choke back laughter. You get paid cents per pint--and if you are family you get even less. I also picked berries at the Vollmer family farm--which was mortifying because I went to school with the Vollmers. Berrypicking is poor-people work and the Vollmers are one of the berry farming elite families of Sandy. Krista Vollmer was always nice as nice could be--but her cousin Ryan was the hugest dick and always rubbed it in my face that I was one of "his" employees. When I got older, I'd ride my bike out to Game Farm Road and pick with my friend Suzanne Skibba--but that was actually kind of fun. We were unsupervised, loopy from the sun, and scandalized (but flattered) by the attentions of the old Mexican guys.
Those are my first 5 paid jobs, and all pretty marginal. Next volume: legitimate teenaged employment with a paycheck and EVERYTHING!
Check out her blog for future installments. Find it by clicking here.
Read indy comic hot shot Jeffrey Brown's story HERE
My Cousin's brutal tale of being a beat cop in NYC is HERE
Swimming with dolphins in Gay Hawaii is HERE.
Being Will Ferrell is HERE.
And of course all of my own work tales are HERE!
and my home page is HERE.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home