I have had many, many jobs.
I have been a gas station attendant, a dish washer, a car washer, a book store clerk, an art store clerk, an environmental department cubicle dweller, an analytical lab tech chemist type person, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. But the last three I don’t get paid for, since they’re part of my wifely duties.
The thing is, I keep convincing people they should hire me, and these people continue paying me to work for them even after I demonstrate my total lack of common sense or normalcy.
I’m pretty sure if my husband wasn’t financially too invested in me he would upgrade, but I don’t know where else he’d find someone with such diverse experience.
Not only can I pump gas and wash dishes, but I can formulate scathing tongue lashings for the customer service reps that have screwed up our accounts, all while I’m on hold and playing Memory with the kids. I can analyze our drinking water for lead and also sew buttons back onto pants. I can write copy so hilarious and captivating that it sells a cheap, fake engagement ring on ebay. I can create truck routing schedules for hazardous waste pick-ups, a task that may seem irrelevant for a mother but believe me…it is not. I can count minuscule dead minnows in the bottom of a beaker. I can breed actual sea monkeys successfully, and then feed them to the minnows that did not die. I can fix Gas Cromatograph Mass Spectrometers that cost more than $100,000 each.
But now, my jobs seem so mundane. Wash dishes. Do laundry. Make appointments. Cook supper.
Where’s the glamor? The money, the glitz? I was destined for greatness, and now I’m…what?
Now I’m a model. A famous woman who is clamored over and stalked and hears my name shouted from everywhere, over and over and over:
“Mommy? Mommy? Mommeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!”