PERSONAL ESSAY | MEMOIR
Pardon Me, My Immature Work Ethic is Showing
Learning to wear the uniform is a lesson that takes time
Mom called out, “If there’s time to lean, there’s time to clean!” My sister and I flew out the door. Our destination? Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour at Washington Square Mall, ten miles up the interstate.
When I was sixteen, I worked many jobs. I needed money for clothes and gas. Playing foosball, a new popular game. Not to mention cigarettes, Marlboro 100s in the gold pack. It was the ’70s, and times were different. My priorities were my social life, boys and drive-in movies. I wasn’t working on essays and the quadratic equation, that’s for sure.
I was a teenager with an immature brain. Fortunately, my parents didn’t tell me what to do. They let me fail and make poor decisions. No doubt, they struggled to stay quiet. I needed time to grow up, several years of it.
Farrell’s was one more rock on the giant pile of my failed endeavors!
Looking back on my longing for the glamor of a service industry job, I’m reminded not all that glitters is gold. My career — short-lived — at Farrell’s was pyrite (fool’s gold), as it turns out. Nothing about standing in one place for eight hours was glamorous, I learned. I wasn’t…
