A Story for Daniel Wood into my Hand Held Recorder
Karim Dimechkie
And now the story of my first job ever, dedicated to my friend Daniel Wood. By Dryfus H. Stiglitz. September 19th 2006, 11:32pm and thirteen…fourteen…fifteen seconds:
I never had a job before that one; dad always said that kids with opportunities like me should just relax and enjoy the free ride. So I’d been riding for free, staying at home with my caretaker/ tutor Esmeralda for twenty eight years before I got to try out the real world on my own. Ezzie was hired right after mom died, I was only a baby. She’s always stayed at home with me and kept me busy with projects and games and songs and movies and stuff. She’s always run baths for me, cleaned up after me, and even cooked all my favorite foods. But ever since I turned 28 last month I started feeling different about everything. The animal puzzles and organizing my jars and even the holiday-cookies that Ezzie makes just perfect, all started feeling kind of old. I started feeling kind of old. My house has more rooms and slides and art stuff than anyone could ever want, but I still felt like maybe it would be nice to try something different. Something where I didn’t have someone watch me all the time. Something that made me feel like more of an adult. So, one day after snack, I called my dad and told him everything I was feeling and asked if maybe I could try something totally new.
And he said, “What did you have in mind little buddy?”
And then I said, “Well, maybe I could get a job.”
And then he laughed really hard cause he thought I was being a jokester. But when I told him I wasn’t being a jokester and that I was being serious, he got real quiet. Finally, he said that he’d need some time to think about it. When he came home later that night he told me he talked to some people at work and that they were going to see if there was something around the office for me to do, but that he wasn’t gonna promise anything yet. But he’s the Chancellor at the local university and he can do pretty much anything he wants, so I knew he’d find something. A few days after we had the serious talk on the phone, dad came home from work and walked into my arts and crafts studio and said, “Dryfus, champ, I got you a job as one of our phone operators in the information building.”
I looked up from the toothpick castle me and Ezzie were making and said, “Wow! Really?”
And then Ezzie said, “Really?”
And then dad said, “Really.”
He walked over to me, put his hand on my head and told me how proud he was of me already. Then he said, “Now you’re gonna have to take your new duties very seriously, ok tiger? This is your first job ever and I want to hear that you’re shining like the star that I know that you are.”
After squeezing me real tight and crying real soft for a little, he told me he worked out a deal with some of the technology guys in the Information building on campus. I guess they figured out some trick called, “sparse re-routing” where one out of 18 calls that went to the Bursar’s office would first go through the phone that I would be working at, then I would get to transfer the call to the Bursar myself. Dad told me it was a real important job but shouldn’t be too tough. Since it was my first job ever, I still felt a little nervous. But when I actually started the job the next day, I realized how easy-cheesy it really was. About once an hour, all I had to do was this:.....continued in print edition.
