Photo courtesy of Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash
My first job at the age of 18 was assembling boxes of assorted chocolates.
OK, I know some of you are right now channeling the old I Love Lucy segment where Lucy and Ethel are working at a candy factory. They have screwed up several other jobs there, and the boss lady has warned them they have ONE MORE CHANCE in the wrapping department. If a single piece of candy on the conveyor belt gets through unwrapped, they will be fired.
They do a fine job until the candies start coming faster and faster. Lucy and Ethel pop some in their mouths, down their shirts, and into their poofy hats in an effort to disguise their shortcomings.
This is likely one of the most commonly recalled hysterical moments in the show’s history.
Well, my job was nothing like that. I stood at a long table filled with about thirty different types of filled chocolates. I’d take one of each and place it in a ruffled paper wrapper and gently nestle them beside each other to create a box of assorted chocolates.
Forrest Gump’s mama was right; life IS like a box of chocolates in that you never know what you’re going to get.
I worked at that job for just a couple months until I landed a “real” job as a secretary at a consumer finance company. When that company’s business didn’t grow as expected, I was let go.
I took the layoff quite personally. I cried, I begged for my job, sure that I had failed somehow to be perfect for the role.
I wouldn’t be consoled until the president of the company patted my hand and did his best to explain it was just an economic decision. He then wrote me my first letter of recommendation by long-hand, presumably because he no longer had a secretary.
Becoming unemployed led me to move to California to follow a high school boyfriend who had joined the Navy and was stationed in Long Beach.
My sister Bev’s family, my mom, and Linda (my best friend from high school) all saw me off at the Pittsburgh airport.
Unlike Forrest Gump’s mother, my mom wasn’t one to offer many words of wisdom. But Linda later shared that when I was boarding the plane, she said to my mom, “I hope she hates it and comes right back home.”
My mom’s response to her was something I’ve held in my heart all these years: “I don’t. I hope she stays and makes something of herself.”
Just think: Every step I’ve taken since boarding that plane has landed me here in my writing room tonight, preparing this story for you, my readers.
Like a box of chocolates, indeed.
