Member-only story
Featured
What I Wish I Knew About Money Before Getting Married
Lessons I’m still paying for
I’ve held a job since seventh grade.
Don’t worry, I wasn’t breaking any child labor laws. I wasn’t toiling away or breaking my back or supporting my family.
But I did work, as so many Gen Xers did right along with me.
Every morning when I was twelve, I got up at 4 a.m. to fold and roll the stack of newspapers waiting on the doorstep, then load up my bike basket and whiz around the neighborhood, tossing each like a pro pitcher onto the welcome mat of my subscribers.
If it snowed heavily enough, and without chains for my bike tires, my mother got up with me and drove me around. Not my father — no, no.
No one was poking the bear that early.
I loved my paper route — biking around in the dark while everyone still slept, the wind in my face on the downhill, pumping the pedals on the up. It was my first taste of self-employment, and I couldn’t get enough.
I won a “top carrier” contest, which came with a trip to an amusement park. I traded in my banana seat and bought my first ten-speed. And I saved enough for a plane ticket to visit my childhood friend, who had moved out of state.
