Summer Job

I spent the summers of my teen years mowing lawns: $5 a pop for the small ones, $10 a pop for the larger ones. I was the Official Peach Street Lawnmower Man, or I would have been, had Peach been more of a street and less of a packed-dirt rut that connected Harbert Road and Red Arrow Highway. Back then, having a summer job meant independence (I got to drive Dad’s Ford Escort station wagon all by myself once I turned 16—I could fit the push lawnmower in the back) and, of course, money. I mowed a lawn, I got cash, half of which Dad insisted I put in savings. I hated it at the time, but when I finally went to college and had enough for a Macintosh LC, it all seemed worth it. But the feeling of independence the summer job gave me was paramount.

I haven’t felt the same about a summer job since.

In college I had a motley assortment of summer jobs: doing morning delivery for a bakery, working as an office peon for the Central Michigan University Health Sciences Department, stocking shelves and helping customers as a sporting goods associate at Meijer, helping maintain one of the safety systems at a nuclear power plant (it wasn’t nearly as glamorous as it might sound, or as dangerous). Some of the jobs were cool (the nuclear plant), some were hellish (I had to be to the bakery by 4 a.m. every day), but they were all means to an end—getting out of college and getting a real job.

The problem was, I didn’t really want a real job. I would have been perfectly happy as a professional student, and I prolonged college as long as I could by sticking around an extra there years to get my MA in English Language and Literature (had I been serious at all about finding a real job, I would have gotten some other kind of degree).

Random Person: “So, what’s your degree in?”

Me: “English.”

Random Person: “Oh. So you gonna teach in high school?”

Me: “Hell no. I hated high school the first time through. Why would I want to go back?’

But, the job market being what it is for someone with a degree in English, I eventually did get my high school teaching certification. The number one reason I decided setting foot in high school again wouldn’t be so bad: I’d get my summers off.

Granted, that’s one of the worst reasons to become a teacher. Teaching is about so much more than getting two or three months of free time in the summer. But I’m a die-hard outdoorsman, and the prospect of spending weeks out in the wilderness without having to coordinate with some corporate vacation schedule (or spending years accumulating enough vacation time to take the kinds of long trips I had in mind) was vastly appealing.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you know the rest of the story. I enjoyed my one summer off while it lasted, but since I didn’t know at the time that it would be my last summer off, I hardly made the most of it. After the hell that had been my first year of teaching, I figured I had earned the right to slack off for a few months.

And now I work a full-time (although temporary) job for a corporation, and while I have managed to finesse my summer hours so I work more in June in July in order to get every Friday in August off, I know it won’t be the same as having my entire summer to myself.

I do sometimes regret walking out on my students and fellow teachers halfway through my second school year. I let a lot of people down. On the upside, I saved my sanity. I’m much calmer and more relaxed these days. I don’t come home from a day of proofreading, for example, and immediately drink two glasses of strong red wine.

But on summer days when the air is warm and dry, when the sky is brilliant blue and smudged here and there with the white cotton of cumulus congestus, when the trees are replete with leaves and lawns are vibrantly verdant—on days like that, I wish I still had my summers off.

All the same, however, I’d rather have my sanity.