I had a barracks roommate 25 years ago while in the Army, who for amusement broke down our lives into the varied job skills they contained. All the little stuff our days consisted of as soldiers that didn’t fit the job descriptions we’d signed up for.
I don’t remember how many line items he came up with or what all they were. But one still stands out in my memory: boot black. We had to shine our boots daily. Polish, rag, brush, water. Or at least find work-arounds to make their appearance passable enough for the next morning’s formation and ever possible uniform inspection.
So with that, I’ve been a boot black. Four years’ daily rubbing and brushing and shining.
I’ve carried many working labels over the years, and have earned dollars via many means. That started when I was at least as young as 11, collecting aluminum cans for recycling.
We had a recycling center in our small rural town where adults with developmental disabilities were given employment opportunities. A pound of aluminum soda cans taken there would return $0.32, weighed and paid on the spot. So I had an idea.
And this was long before recycling bins, with their symbol of three arrows chasing each other and folding into a Möbius strip, were ubiquitously marketed across the land.
I went to two grocery stores in town and asked if I could put a cardboard box in their break room where employees would put their empty soda cans. I’d collect the cans from those break rooms and take them to the recycling center.
I’d save the money I was paid for the cans to go toward buying my first car (gray 1990 Hyundai Excel, 5-speed manual, electric moon roof). The rule in my family, for my two older brothers and then for me, was that we had to save the first $500 before we could go look at cars. Down payment.
With that first $500 in hand, we each got a little added help provided by a grandmother. And then we were on our own for the rest. Car payments, insurance, gas, etc. I started working and saving early.
I was on a mission for 5-speed, windows-down freedom as soon as I turned 16 and got my driver’s license in the summer of 1992. Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” playing loudly on the radio.
Jobs I have held, starting with those aluminum cans:
Youth
- Collecting cans (age 11)
- Mowing lawns (age 11)
- Babysitting (14)
- Store clerk at Ben Franklin (five & dime) (15)
- Cashier at Hardee’s & then operator of Hardee’s satellite “food truck”(16)
- Stock boy at a grocery store (17)
College
- Office admin (18, college freshman work study)
- Mowing park and cemetery lawns for my home city (18-19, summer)
- J.C. Penney’s clothing & shoe salesman (19, college sophomore)
- House painter (very briefly, 19-20, summer)
- Door-to-door salesman of restaurant coupons (19-20, summer)
- Night shift inventory counter at retail stores (19-20, summer)
- Office admin for my basketball coach (20, college junior work study)
- Intern (incl. as mascot escort) for the Indiana Pacers (20-21, summer)
- Usher for Indianapolis Indians AAA affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds (20-21, summer)
- Campus newspaper business manager (21, college senior work study)
After College
- Sprint relay operator for the deaf/hearing impaired, (21-22, summer between graduating college and being inducted into the U.S. Army)
- U.S. Army, four years (linguist, analyst, boot black, landscaper, pool lifeguard, pusher-upper, runner, basketball player, weapons specialist, driver, general laborer … )
Graduate School (after Army)
- Pharmacy technician
- Plasma donor
- Street hawker, weekly magazine on university campus
- Teaching assistant for a marketing professor
- Freelance photographer (barely)
After Grad School, 20s into 30s
- Camera store clerk
- Corporate relocation resource coordinator
- Sports writer & editor, suburban newspaper chain
- Freelance features writer (magazines & newspapers)
- Freelance photojournalist (magazines & newspapers)
- ESL teacher at a community college
- Upward Bound teacher for so-called inner city youth
- Photo evaluator for stock photography website
- Freelance ghost writer
- Freelance travel website content writer …
Beyond that it largely gets into resumé speak. Corporate career stuff. Which feels kind of boring. At least the titles do. Jobs in communications and marketing, content creation and strategy. Always with writing at the core and photography nearby. Among other skills I picked up along the way.
There was a time I was a photographer of brides and grooms with my wife. And of bitches, too. Female dogs, that is. And male ones, of course. A dog photographer.
That included the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden and other highfalutin dog shows. Dogs and their people.
And other dogs doing their dog things from coast to coast and corner to corner, criss-crossing the country. For corporate magazines and print advertising.
From wading thigh deep into the swamps of Georgia with baying coon hounds and their Skoal-spitting handlers to riding horseback across the northern prairies, photographing bird dogs on point, hunters shotgunned at the ready.
Among other variations and locations of those dog worlds. From Tampa to Seattle, Los Angeles to Philly, North Dakota to New Hampshire. And many places up, down and between.
I’ve left out much of the past 20+ years of my working life. I’ve probably missed some earlier jobs along the way, too. The means of money that came along when they were needed.
Later came art shows and podcasting and portrait photography (40s) and …
A philosophical musing: Would I be a podcaster had I not been a boot black in the Army or learned to run the floor buffing machine at a grocery store when I was 17? Probably. Would I be an artist had I not had a tiny dose of entrepreneurial spirit as a kid collecting cans to save money for a career years later? I don’t know. And so on. Contrived questions, I suppose. But here’s the thing …
I don’t know what all the connections are that form the story arc of any given hero’s journey. But sometimes I think if one moment in our lives went differently, it all would be different. A split-second something that alters our universe. A “sliding doors” moment.
My younger son asked me just this morning, having no idea I was writing about this topic, if I’d ever wished I’d taken a different job than one I’d chosen. And I realized in my answer to him, that had I done that, my whole life could have turned out differently. That’s not a bet I’d like to take, even if it were possible.
Somehow the who, what and how of things are tied to the where I’ve been and what I’ve done. Even if I don’t know how and why.
The now: portrait photographer and conversational podcaster and newspaper columnist who digs into this human experience with strangers. A cool piece of the ever developing story, I think. Past mes would think so, given where else I’ve been.
I’ve mowed cemetery lawns and driven a bigass Army truck through rush hour in Seoul. I’ve ridden in a hot air balloon to photograph the pilot in competition and been paid for it by Sports Illustrated. I’ve sold my blood plasma for cash and had a nervous breakdown after a door-to-door day of 100+ straight rejections.
I’ve learned to install wood floors and to sand and finish them. I’ve been tasked with helping a deaf man curse out his passed-out drunk friend in the middle of the night. I was fired from my first “real job,” working retail at 15. And I fold my jeans the way I do, because nearly 30 years ago I learned to do it that way while working at J.C. Penney’s.
And on and on and on …
I think my long ago Army barracks roommate was onto something. The unsexy line items that don’t make it into the job description. Boot black, etc.
The resumé of a life just might be shadowed in the in-betweens where we forget to look.
The Jobs is #Eighteen in the weekly memoir series, Among Other Things. What’s it about? Read Introducing ‘Among Other Things,’ A Weekly Memoir Series.
