way older 12 years older than me. Smitty served in the US Army during the Vietnam war. He was a paratrooper. And my hero. I was 10 years old and in the 4th grade when he came home.
Never one to miss an opportunity to make life easier for himself, Smitty hired me as his personal slave assistant for $2.00 a week. It was this period of my life that formed the strong work ethic that I bring to the table these days.
For $2.00 a week, I would do WHATEVER my brother asked me to do. I was at his beck and call. It was, “Kid, make me a sandwich.”
“Hey Kid, I need a refill.”
I could be upstairs in my bedroom and he would call me to the living room to change the channel on the television that was six feet away from him. I was his remote. And I did it because it was my job. Hey, $2 was a lot of money to a 10 year old back then. And there were all those Donny Osmond records to buy.
It wasn’t long after he came home from the Army that he moved to Illinois for a job. He would have liked to have taken his slave assistant with him but there was that pesky problem of finishing elementary school.
That was how I lost my first job. My mother insisted that he pay me two weeks severance pay. It was only fair, after all.
So what was your first job?
Hugs,
