Sad I missed this. I was playing games with the kiddos to keep them from each other's throats.
I started my first business when I was 10, selling gum or of my backpack to kids at school. I branched it to have breakers, fireballs, and all sorts of stuff pretty quick. I was pulling in $50-100 a week in profit, which was pretty sweet for a 10 year old in the early 1980s.
I got shut down after a couple months after a girl told one of my teachers what I was doing when the teacher caught her chewing gum in class. Thank you, Blue Falcon...
My first real job where someone was paying me was as a paper boy a couple years later. Mel Manerick hired me. He was driving around the neighborhood for several days in a large black van, hanging out where us kids were playing ball, scoping out little boys he could pimp out to Gannett Publishers and the Democrat and Chronical newspaper.
After the third day of seeing this creepy black van scoping us out, I decided to go up and ask this 50-ish years old dumpy guy why he was stalking us. I approached his van and, rather than kidnapping me, free offered me a job as a paperboy. In hindsight, that could have gone much differently...what can I say? I've been gunning for a Darwin Award since I was 12!
Anyway, that led to me getting a morning route that had me up at 0600 (0530 on Sundays) every day for the next 2.5 years, running papers around the block in every weather situation, sickness or health, and facing down seriously menacing dogs.
One Sunday, I was near home and almost finished, so I loaded up my bag and sent my dad back home (he drove Sundays and days when it was terrible out). I was walking toward one door when I saw a vicious Rottweiler that had broken it's chain and jumped it's fence come charging down on me from 70 yards out. I bolted for a car in the driveway, but the dog got my leg and pulled me down to the ground.
I thought I was dead, but he let go for a sec and I was up and leaped up on top of the roof of the car in two bounds. The dog was circling the car, snarling at me, when the owner of the car came out of his house. He looked up at me angry and about to start telling at me when he saw the dog. His demeanor changed and he said "You just stay where you are!"
Finally, an unfortunate cat walked past and the dog was gone for an easier meal. I finished up the last three papers, shaking like a leaf, and scanning for the Beast before running home.
The paper route was followed by a 5 year stint at McDonald's, two seasons with the Opera Theater of Rochester, a couple years as a missionary (no pay, it was a volunteer gig), a few years in a Chinese restaurant, internships (including at the Asian Wall Street Journal where I wrote a front page article), construction worker, handyman, manager of a farmer's market stand, and several other gigs trying to put myself through college and grad school...
Lots of good stories and fun times in every job... Except the construction and handyman jobs... Nothing but pain, massive 2nd degree sunburns over my head, face, neck, back, arms, and shoulders, and my first taste ( more like a feast) or carpal tunnel syndrome...I learned I am not built for a career with my hands, no matter how much I enjoy it
