A History of Me Posts

Occasionally, you’re going to see a new kind of post. It won’t be about Shane; it won’t be about Roxy.

It won’t be about anything current, either.

It’ll be about me.

A part of me says “That’s so narcissistic!” I’m a person like anybody else, and it’s more than a little premature to start planning my autobiography.

However, one of the reasons I started this blog was to hold memories. If my time comes before Shane is old enough to ask me some of these questions himself, I figured I’d have a few things chronicled out.

The first post is going to be about my job history. The reason is twofold:

1)      I asked my parents about their career paths when I was a kid. Well, at least I asked Nana or she started volunteering information (I’m not 100% sure which!). I think it’s a natural question as a kid hits the teenage years and starts to think “What in the world am I going to do with myself?”

“What did my parents do? How does that compare to where I’m at?” may not be guaranteed to be the next questions, but I expect they’re not far after.

2)      Your job may not define you, but it does change you. That means stories! Understanding where a person comes from can tell you a lot about them. Even the most menial job can be a learning experience, humbling, and a fun tale (“Wait…you did WHAT?!”)

Everything seemed so permanent to me as a kid. My dad had his job, my mom was mom, and my friends’ parents did what they always did. Somehow everyone knew what they were going to be, because they were adults. I think it was Bill and Dan’s dad that first broke some of that illusion for me. He had tales of when a gun store he worked at was robbed (full with the owner grabbing a machine gun) and of fixing cars underneath a tree.  

Besides, I’ve always liked history. I think Shane comes from a very colorful family history on my side of the family. Papa was a lawyer; Grandpa Vern was a mechanical engineer at Cushman. Grandpa Vern’s father was a principal and the only other educator in my direct line I know of (there’s a great pidgeon prank story involving Grandpa Vern and his father’s school by the way). There are garbage men, loan sharks, and farmers smattered around, as well.

I think the moral is: respect your roots, work hard, and don't stop writing when you're on a roll!

So what about my parents?

Nana worked a variety of jobs you would never have expected. She exaggerated her typing skills to get a job as a secretary, one summer she worked at a theme park and discovered she was allergic to tobacco, and she was the model for determination when she took the CPA exam umpteen times. She worked as an auditor and “raided people’s underwear drawers” (financially) before she was hired by Mobil. Nana had also been eager to return to work after I was born. Motherhood tugged on her heartstring, though, and she was a full time homemaker when pregnancy with the twins saddled her on bed rest.

Nana’s managed to work more volunteer jobs/positions/opportunities since than anyone I’ve ever known. It’s almost like having an unpaid full time job with odd hours to allow opportunities to nap.

As for my dad, I spent most of my teenage life with gleaned bits of knowledge and assumptions about his career path. I knew he had a paper route and mowed grass at a cemetery as a kid. Pop told me that he also worked at a fairgrounds/race-track one year. He said, "I clean a lot of toilets!" Then there were a couple of summers working at the Cushman plant hammering nails or loading trucks. Pop was also a super-student who had a massive work ethic and stellar grades through high school and college. Companies flew him to interviews when he received his Chemical Engineering degree. It wasn’t until I was an adult myself that I asked him to fill in some gaps.

Boy, was I surprised. Pop filled me in about his first job out of college and the corruption he discovered. Ever decisive, he compiled information, let his superiors know, and when he didn’t approve of how everything was handled he wiped his hands of the company. He spent the next several decades working the job path I assumed had always been his. Then Nana told me that when I was younger, he also started to go to night classes when he thought about getting an MBA.

Carrie’s parents have a tale, too. I can’t go into as much detail, but Grandpa was in the Navy. He started on a ship, but became a “pork chop” and eventually spent more time on land. After he retired, he walked up to a defense supplier and said “You need me.” They agreed. Grandma has had a more steady career as a travel agent. She’s worked for many different agencies as the family relocated here there and everywhere, but now she and Grandpa have started their own agency in his ‘retirement.’

Carrie, Shane, and I come from busy stock! It always made me feel like I had a lot to live up to.