Babysitting a kid on Bermuda Avenue

Jobs I had
before I was eighteen,
starting with age twelve.

Babysitting a Kid on Bermuda Avenue whose name I forget. Boy, maybe five or six, possibly annoying, not sure. Had a dog. TV in basement. Nice parents. Went out a lot. Paid well.

Selling Regal Cards and Novelty Items door to door. Best customers in the high rise apartments over by Food City.

Selling Sarah Coventry Jewellery through home parties. Only ever had one home party -- hosted by my mum. I let her friends look at my samples plus showed them a few nifty tricks with a scarf I learned from the training brochure. If I sold anything, I don't remember.

Selling Avon. This was so awful I've blanked it out. All I remember is thinking the plastic turquoise case was a kind of grown up version of Barbie, where you, yourself, have become the doll. I still have a mild reaction whenever I see a stray catalogue or, worse, a Tupperware full of assorted 'product line' at a garage sale. It ruined turquoise for me.

Strawberry picking one summer; had to get up before dawn, walk to the Towers intersection, wait for a flatbed truck that would deliver me and the other pickers to a farm forty minutes (by flatbed) away. Ate more than I picked. Got a tan and a rash and a very small cheque.

Slicing meat and cheese at Tothe's Delicatessan. Also slicing fingers. Visits to emerg aside, I quite liked this job. Make-your-own free lunch included, which meant shaved Black Forest ham and smoked cheese on a fresh kaiser slathered with sweet butter and grainy mustard, a large dill pickle... and custardy, creamy slice of Napoleon, washed down with Orange Crush.

Receptionist at a denture clinic. Mostly what I did was take messages, make appointments and when people arrived with their broken dentures, pulling them straight out of their mouths to leave for adjustment, I'd grab a kleenex and carry them into the back room. I also paid myself because the denturist, a madman from somewhere in Eastern Europe, named Dr. P., did not know the going rate. Yoost write out some kind chick! he'd yell, so I multiplied my hours each week by the minimum wage, wrote a cheque to myself and he signed it. Sometimes he'd yell for me to go to the liquor store and get him some brandy. Only taking teaspoon for medeecinal! One time he yelled my name from the back room in such a way I thought he'd yanked out his own teeth by accident. I ran in to see and he was there in his big black dentist chair, leaning back, holding a huge butcher knife in one hand and a peach in the other. You vant peach? he yelled. Is good! I did not have peach.