I really had to scratch my brain for this one.

I'm what people call a kid, pretty much.

At that strange stage between the point childhood ends and adulthood begins...?

I don't like how at eighteen, everyone seems to act as if some magical flip has switched and we are suddenly "adults".

But I'll be flipping that switch in a couple of weeks, don't think I'll see myself in adulthood till I'm in my twenties or thirties though.

Anyway, I really had to think about this.

My father came from a less well-off family and lived in the village.

He took care of his siblings, did photography, sold sachet water and fruits, all from a really young age.

My mother never needed to do any of that, her father was an army man and a rich enough one at that.

And then, there's me.

Both worked hard and because of them, I've never really known the pains and pleasures of hard labour.

My father moreso, because of the past he had.

All that working is part of the reason a distance has grown between us, now.

One holiday, we were playing around making necklaces we wouldn't even wear and my mother decided that if we made enough, she'd sell them and give us the profit.

So my twin and I worked pretty hard, through the entire holiday.

Slipping that small string through that small hole, perched in bed and not using our phones for once.

I think she was more pleased we were doing something else that seemed productive than about the beads themselves.

For some reason, we made some real bank on those beads.

Imagine a child making necklaces and getting paid so much.

Maybe she was trying to teach us the dignity of good hard work and how it reaps rewards... Not sure capitalism would completely agree with her on that.

I did have fun, that holiday.

It was a nice break, a nice little blip of time between the years of cracking under pressure where I felt a strange sense of comfort hunched down, messing up my back as I do now with my phone, staring intensely with pure frustration at times as I tried to loop on another bead.

I would say I'd like to go back but I don't remember enough of my life to tell you whether I actually enjoyed it or not.

All I know is that, for once, my brain latched on to the positive feelings rather than the negative and I'm rather lucky I remember it at all.

Work seems a negative thing for most and I'll be doing that too, quite soon, once all the drag of studies is done.

Maybe I'll look back and miss this part.

If things were better, perhaps I'd believe that to be true.

My inner child still clings to hope.

May life get better for us all.

I was 12 when I started working for real. It was 1982. My old man was getting his life together. He’s kicked the coke and was on a slow burn of Valium and dope. It got him through the day. He was talking to Uncle Charlie at the time, and Charlie’s ex-parents-in-law needed a new roof.

Deddy, Charlie, Great Uncle Tom – a mean old bastard- Roger, and I worked up on that roof. The house was pretty big, just a single-story ranch house in the middle of the country. Rectangle with a hip roof.

Only two sections of roof had to be torn off. The rest could be nailed over. We took flat nose shovels and pried the shingles up in batches, sometimes singles, sometimes one little square about 3 x 3 inches at the time. It was slow work, and hot. It was summer in Teer, NC, dairyland, corn, and truck gardens are about all there is out there. Its right peaceful though. Hot up there.

Thing was, didn’t nobody know shit about roofing. Deddy and Charlie were siding men, tin men, flim-flammers, storm doors and windows. Nailing on shingles was hard and hot. A bundle of shingle weighed 80 lbs. and had to be carried up one at a time. Roger and I broke them in 2 or 3 parts to carry them up. Heavy as all hell.

The other thing that was funny. Real roofers will spread out tarps so they can catch all the trash from the tear-off. Hundreds, no thousands of nails, and as mentioned huge chunks of asphalt fiberglass, down to one-inch flecks. We dumped it all in the bushes. 10-15-25 lb. chunks slid off the roof and crashed into the shrubbery. Deddy said, “You ’n Roger go on down there and pick that shit up.” I was 12, Roger 14 and we did it, hated it. Even though had gloves. Lots of cuts and scrapes, holes poked in our hands. Countless nails and tarry fiberglass chunks got left behind. The lady on the house huffed and puffed but couldn’t say nothing.

Roger only came 3 days. He would prime tobacco stooping endlessly in the fields for his brother for no pay, but he only came Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. It was hot on the roof. We drank water, but not enough. I was a pudgy kid. Skipped lunch most of the year at the Middle School. Ate 2 Nutty Buddies and drank a lemon drink instead. I sweat a bunch off that summer.

A little boy came over one day. He was the lady’s niece’s kid or something, maybe 4 years old. He kicked himself around on a little toy tractor, a red International. Some other fellow was over there talking to William, the man of the house. The fellow leans down to eye level and shouts in the little boy’s face, “ISSAT YOR TRACTOR!?” The little boys face cracked like a spider-webbed windshield. He bellowed tears, eyes closed. his face towards the sky. The man looked up befuddled and laughed nervously at William. William, a deadpan expression, looked out over the wheat field.

We laughed about that for weeks.

There was a bug zapper. A purple light in a decorative plastic case, made to look like a streetlamp. Rabbit wire covered the purple light. Bugs would hit it in swarms. They crackled and popped like giant insects in a horror movie. I was napping at lunch one day on a pool chair under the carport. I didn’t know the bug light made the sound. I thought giant wasps were growing under my chair, like monsters under the bed. I kept my hands well tucked.

One day at the end of the week, I think the job took only 5 days, they were resurfacing the road. Tar and gravel, that’s all. Except it was about 95 degrees out. The tar didn’t harden. Deddy had a ’65 Ford F-100, still in good shape, but the fuel pump was giving out, so it broke down in front of the house.

We stood around the hood trying to figure it out. A disconnected fuel line started spitting gas again. It was fine for a couple of days. The bottoms of all our shoes had a layer of tar and gravel on them. Mine were white high-top leather Nikes with a grey stripe. They were 6-8 months old already. That was about how long they lasted a young teen. I was young and a teen. Deddy and Charlie drank beer while they fixed the truck. Round about 4 o’clock it cooled off. I wanted a coke. Tom had some back at his house. He was mean as hell, bout all the time. He was nice to me though.

I gotta hand it to the owners, the concept was smart. They set up shop in tourist traps, usually outside of restaurants and family friendly areas. We kept the doors open so the smell of cooking chocolate wafted out into the walkways. A cashier stands at the door yelling "FREE SAMPLES" at every parent, child, spring breaker, or bachelorette party walking by. And to top it all off? The employees had to sing.

And not just for tips. All. The. Time. Mostly parodies of Motown and R&B classics.

"I've got hot fudge on a cloudy day...when it's cold outside, hot fudge is what we make..."

"You don't have to be good, you just have to be willing." They weren't kidding. I had a manager who ran people out of the door with her shrill vocals and off-beat snapping. For the most part though, the job attracted natural entertainers who could put on quite a show, and I liked the peers I worked with. Once a batch was ready to pour, an employee would go outside, ring a bell installed just outside the door and yell "FUDGE SHOW, FUDGE SHOW, EVERYBODY COME ON IN FOR THE FUDGE SHOW!" Tourists would pile in to watch a call and response musical comedy show courtesy of the candy-makers and the sales associates.

I was two months from eighteen and lived in Myrtle Beach at the time. The summers were hectic. Not long in, I ended up becoming a shift leader and keyholder, and was quickly clued into the expectations for the store. Sell, sell, sell. We were encouraged to be happy, charming, and to push profit any way that we could. Little old lady with a sweet tooth? Buy three slices, the fourth one is free. College kid willing to buy a milkshake just to flirt? Bat your eyelashes and make the sale. It'll get us seven dollars closer to beating the other locations. No one in the store? Go to the door.

"Oh you MUST just LOVE working here! It seems so fun!"

Sure, lady. You've sampled every flavor in the case, we're ten minutes from closing, I've been yelled at by three customers today, my manager just implied that we can't close until we hit our sales goal and we're probably going to have to clean the store off the clock. Again. By the way. You buy two of any flavor, and you get a slice of Creamy Vanilla for free. You don't like vanilla? Okay, well I'll give you the Chocolate Caramel Nut if it'll get you out the door. In fact, I've got a whole fridge of fudge at home that I'll never eat because I'm sick of it. HAVE IT. FOR FREE. Don't mind the scoop marks- they only let us take the sample pieces home.

Almost a year in, I called corporate. For most of the summer, we'd worked off the clock. The woman asked if I could give her specific dates. I said "Check the cameras anywhere from March to September." As it turns out, the Fudgery is a family affair. The head of HR is the owner's daughter. The CEO is his son. This call was followed by an awkward store meeting and ultimately nothing was done. I was finishing my last semester at tech, so I put in my two weeks and moved on with my life.

Last year, I went to the Outer Banks with my husband's family. We were in a tourist trap, and passed by The Fudgery. My husband's cousin mentioned wanting to go inside. Unthinking, I blurted out a puddle of word vomit about how horrible the company is. I saw rapid movement come from my left, and looked over to see a small family eating ice cream out of cups from the store. Their wide-eyes stares made me realize how intense I was being and I tried to backpedal so that I didn't ruin their vacation.

I wouldn't take the experience back, even though it turned out to be a crappy job. I met some interesting people, and the quick promotion I received led to other opportunities for me down the road. Not to mention, working customer service jobs has a way of forcing you to empathize with the people who are serving you when you're on the other side of the counter. But if you're ever in the Myrtle Beach area and craving fudge...go to River Street Sweets.

Ah, delivering newspapers. I believe we were 11 years old when my step-brother and I started our paper route partnership. We covered the new subdivision in our small rural town; he took the inner loop and I took the outer. Monday to Friday were a breeze and a nice bit of exercise after school, but when the Saturday edition came out with all of the enclosed flyers that sure was a burden on us young mules.

After two years though we'd proven to be top-notch delivery boys. We never missed a day, we collected all the monthly dues on schedule, and were always super pleasant with the customers. So one day the call came in from head office, "Congrats! You've won a mountain bike!". We jumped and yelled with excitement until one parent asked, "but how do you split a bicycle between two boys?". Oh damn...problems were on the horizon. Who would ride it on which days? Would we take turns? We're talking about two young men on the verge of puberty with all sorts of rebellious thoughts and actions. How could this possibly go well.

It didn't.

Being this our first "mountain bike" I looked for every possible thing to jump it over. My brother, the more, ummm, reckless one, thought it was cool to ghost ride it into other peoples bikes. It was his and mine, so who was right to say how the bike got used? Things came to a head one day when we equally decided to play a random game of chicken. He was on the new bike and I was on one of our old ten-speeds. Naturally you'd think he'd win but because I was almost twice his size we ended up doing equal damage to both bikes. We limped home with both our broken bikes and broken bodies.

Delivering newspapers was a great gig for me at that age. I learned responsibility, attention to detail, accounting, and dedication. But I also learned that you can't split a bicycle.