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.