A stay-at-home-dad offers thoughts on the joys and sorrows, and everything in between, of fatherhood.

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

How Dad Got Paid

My daughter may one day want to know what jobs her father has held. Thus, in the interests of both posterity and my beloved’s personal knowledge, I hereby admit that I have been employed by a tennis shop called The Green Squirrel (as a clerk), a gourmet food shop called The Cheese Works (as a stock boy), a silk importer and retailer called Exotic Silks (as a packager), a YMCA day camp (as a counselor), a daycare facility whose name I can’t remember (as a caregiver and a camp counselor), Dartmouth College (as a tour guide, a short-order cook, and a French drill instructor), Sharon Heights Country Club (as a lifeguard), a night spot in Paris known as Le Bar (as a bartender and a waiter), the law firm McCutchen Doyle Brown and Enersen (as a calendar clerk), Columbia University (as a teaching assistant for a Shakespeare lecture and a composition instructor), China Grill Restaurant (as a waiter), People magazine (as a copy apprentice), The New Yorker magazine (as a copy editor), The Narragansett Times (as a reporter), The Providence Journal (as a copy editor), The Fall River Herald News (as a copy editor), and Brown University (as a presidential correspondence writer and speechwriter).

I have also been paid for the following list of services: babysitting, yard work, catering, musical performance (including playing for tips on the streets of Chicago, Palo Alto, New York, Paris, Providence, and New Bedford), and Op-Ed column writing.

Whether my list is ordinary or extraordinary, I wouldn’t really know. I think that I have been given a good opportunity to learn who I am, and in that regard I'm fortunate.

I wonder how many of the things I’ve done for pay will be done by my daughter (if any)? If she gets a job working as a silk packager, I may start favoring genetics in the nature-nurture debate.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home