My Mother, My Career

My talented teacher mother has been chosen to teach a study abroad class in FRANCE! Next year, isn't that spectacular? Claps for mama. It is so depressing that my mother's career is taking off like all those planes in LAX while mine sags like an empty balloon. Dramatic. Actually, its more like an elderly man's shlong. It's feeble, it's trying, but its not quite there.

And its not depressing, its utterly amazing. I am so proud of you...Mademoiselle Mama.

Anyway, I am at post college job number two, trying to gain my footing. I am having difficulty sleeping because I have an interesting set of responsibilities this time around. I have been doing research, brainstorming, pleading with my bored friends for ideas, trying to "become the job." So far I am only half of the job, half Sonia, half uber stressed and getting fat because to deal with halving myself three times my carb consumption is, like, way up there. But I am actually liking me a little more this time around so I am hoping for the best. Who knows, perhaps next week I will be digging my own vocational grave, but for now I'm alive and kickin!

Before this blogage, I was laying in bed, kicking my sheets around and I kind of did a little in-my-head career montage of all my past jobs. The summer of my senior year my mother told me solemnly, "You will work." Okay, whatever Mom. I'm 18 and AWESOME and no longer a virgin, so whatever no big deal.

Having absolutely no job skills, I was lucky enough to get a job through a dear friend of my mother's. I was an office assistant at a dental office. What means is I did things like filing, recording Perio charting (that thing where they stick a pokey thing in your mouth and a mirror and call out 3,2,3...4,3,2...224 until you feel like your jaw in unhinged), recording X Rays, putting the cookies out for the patients in the lobby. But mostly I cleaned. I cleaned and sterilized rooms, tools, chairs, trays. Everything you put your mouth on at the dentist I cleaned. In scrubs with my hair undid, no makeup, and a bad attitude that I quelled by stealing the frozen cookie dough for the lobby cookies, storing it in my scrub pockets, and eating it in between cleanings. It didn't seems to phase me one moment I was putting a bloody tooth scalpel in the sterilization thing and the next minute shoving frozen caramel chocolate chip into my mouth.

One of my jobs was to set up the patient rooms according to procedure. Hygiene was cake, it was the same every time. But the "surgery" rooms where they fixed rotten teeth or bleached out the highlighted and large-breasted soccer mom's smile until her teeth looked like Chiclets called for different set ups. My enemy was the tool tray where, depending on procedure, I would lay out a set of 8-10 metal sticks. They were supposed to be in a certain order, and discernible by their tiny little "heads" or end points. These things cost big money, and I was supposed to handle them delicately. I could. not. tell. them. apart. Many an hour I spent squinting at the tiny little spoon at the end of the metal stick asking myself :

"Is this a blah blah blah spoon for smoothing the gums, or is this the blah blah blah hooky thing he uses to cut people? Fuck."

Needles to say, it wasn't my dream job. All I wanted to be doing that summer was make out with my first cool boyfriend and pretend to smoke cigarettes. I remember one time being very upset I had to go to work the next morning and therefore had to go to bed early. I was so angry, resentful, and upset. Why the hell do I have to work? Hello? I'm going to college. I know everything. I hate wearing scrubs.

I was busy moping when my mother probably called me out on it. I let loose 18 years of spoiling and sheltered-ness when I raised back my in indignant fist and...

Grabbed a pile of discarded bank statements and threw them about the room. Take that Golden 1! Not paying you on time Hawaiian Airlines Credit Card! What, USAA Federal Savings Bank? Yeah that's right, YOU GOT THROWN!

My mother watched me get in a bar fight with paper and to her credit, did not laugh. Rather instead, she followed me to my room (where I had stormed off to, duh) and calmly talked me down from stabbing her VISA statement with my scissors. She told me that you have to pay your dues in some way or another because they will give you the background and tools to get where you want to go.

Great lesson, huh? It's funny that I only remembered it now, dealing with shady ex-employers and feeling truly hopeless as my second security deposit in 4 months is hungry for the meager amount that resides in my USAA checking. Because at the end of the day, I no longer look like an extra from Grey's Anatomy and spend mornings cleaning up blueberry muffin puke. I paid that due. I am past the minimum wage job! Its time to accept me, real people world, I am one of the entry level big dogs now!

...Although I do miss the caramel chocolate chip cookies.