Weekly Assignment

Yep - time once again for Mama Kat's weekly assignment. I chose the following prompt: Write about the event that was the end of your childhood.

Wow - tough call. I guess I could probably talk about middle school, or high school - those are obvious "end-points." However, the first time I "realized" that I wouldn't have the endless hours to enjoy being a kid was when I got my first real job. In prior years, when summer came, my friends and I would spend almost every hour of every day at the local swim club - playing drain tag, basketball, or just chatting with the girls. Ah, those days felt like they'd last forever. At night time, we'd hang out at somebody's house and watch movies whilst eating bottomless bowls of pop-corn. It was truly heaven.

Then, I got a job ... and things changed. I remember it well. My dad had a friend at a local waterbed manufacturing factory, and the friend agreed to hire me (an unproven talent). My job would consist of working from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM, putting together and boxing waterbed mattresses ... in a factory in which temperatures were always above 100 degrees. It was probably the least amount of fun I had my entire life. While most of my friends were still going down to the pool, I was laboring intensively, sweating like OJ in a courtroom. At night, I was too tired to hang out for very long. Plus, my friends mostly told stories that started with "You missed it, dude!"

As luck would have it, I only worked there for about 1 1/2 months, because my high school soccer team started full day practices in the beginning of August. That summer came and went, and was probably the worst summer of my life. What a rude awakening that was.