Like my friends, family, classmates, and acquaintances, all of us worked as children and then into adolescence for real. Because of the depth behind the dependence that tied me to my working class family, I simply didn't know any other way to live, and because my family fears the bankruptcy of Social Security, Disability, Medicaid/Medicare and Public Assistance from their near-constant use of such services, they always leaned too heavily on the shoulders of their healthiest family members, like me, leaving them trapped in a cycle of abusive neglect and intentional indifference that's coupled with violent outbursts in between their deliberately cold silences.
They are an extremely sick group of people, and they openly encourage(d) anyone who seemed to be stronger, smarter, and faster than them, and while I was certainly all of that out of sheer necessity, they never acknowledge my gifts (as if I don't know), so as to keep this system of societal dependents who lean on the healthy in place, in lieu of any better ideas, but that's madness for you. Troubles at home? Hey, get a job, Marie! Don't like your abusive neighbors in the next rental apartment you move to? Hey, work harder and get a second job! Bad marriage? No problem! Become a traveling salesman! See? Problem solved! Jobs solve everything.
It became their dysfunctional answer to anything in their lives that was wrong, and like the worst that the working class has to offer, most of my family are trapped in either soul-deadening jobs for the obsessive compulsive/ADHD/dyslexic, or corrupt corporate gigs that pay well but sicken people and the entire planet, in direct violation of their Holy Roman Catholic faith. My friends and I, as the highest functioning family members of our particular units, had no such illusions about our self-worth. They needed us and they hated us for it, which is the essence of every abusive relationship. My poor brothers thought I was mired deeply in their patterns, when really, I was just a single working woman dating from a bad pool of "candidates".
Not even manic depression and alcoholism could ever deter me from fighting back, nor did it save me from the domestic violence that's typical for the severely sick, drunk, and Irish, but that's a Gerritsen Beach millionaire at nineteen-years old for you (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerritsen_Beach,_Brooklyn). My friends were/are intellectually gifted, and unlike my mother's pseudo-brainiacs in "science" who never really went anywhere with it (besides getting by on low-level lab tech jobs), me and my friends knew that we had to be better than that which we hoped to change. We had to lead others out of it, like we had with ourselves, and we had to talk about it. Quickly. Nothing is more clarifying than a punch to the face, and I learned over time that I could take that like a champion, too. It was a deadly combo.
Backed by my innate savoir faire, I entered one of the most corrupt working environments on earth, Midtown Manhattan. Of course, it isn't designed for you to feel that way immediately. No, there's a gradual "easing in" process to their abuses, like a man looking to score with a hot chick who hides his cigarette smoking habit; everyone's on their best behavior at first, except for "Mama Marie". Because I do what you can't, it means that I have a line outside of my office the first few months, after the crazies have figured out that I can outwork them (without recognition or a pay raise), but I am kinda stuck, you know, because of the whole female working class thing. Uh, no, bitch. It actually simply meant that I won, albeit after a few hard rounds.
In case you've ever wondered out of curiosity what those childhood/teenage jobs were, here's the list. Excuse me if I missed a few, or left you off. I was a kid, you know? Oh, wait...no, you don't. You didn't have to survive that! OK, here we go!!
Unpaid:
A) Everything a full-grown woman who runs a household does, as a child and young teenage girl. Everything.
Semi-paid/unpaid (if my brothers "gamed me" right):
A) A work permit from my elementary school principal at Chestnut Grove in New City who gave signed consent to child labor, because if I wanted money from my brothers to help them with their paper routes, I needed to have it to work with them, which they would immediately begin attacking by criticizing my on-the-job performance (I was too weak as a young girl to help them out much, anyway), so as to have an excuse for whittling down my cut.
B) Collecting cans and newspapers to recycle for the money.
Paid:
1) McDonald's at 15, with signed parental consent on my job application (and mocking abuse to go with the free food I pulled off the line at the end of the night shift for me, my brother, and my mother).
2) Fancifoods, a "gourmet" food shop that catered to the wanna-be upscale yenta. I did food prep for the trays of free samples we gave out, in an effort to convince some hideous loudmouth from the Bronx that marzipan from Austria was "an acquired taste", because you know how tacky bourgeois desperate housewives are from t.v. nowadays. Yeah, we didn't have that then. All the managers slept with each other and did coke, which means they went out of business very quickly.
3) A clothing store in the old Nanuet Mall that made me take a polygraph test, after my friend Donnel was discovered shoplifting and tried to pull me into her scheme. Thanks for that, home-girl. I needed clothes for school, yo!
4) Random and intermittent babysitting jobs that I didn't like because I was too young to care for yet another baby that was outside of my huge family circle. You know? Oh, wait, no, you don't. Rich white people don't change diapers! They hire people to do that for them!
5) Mowing the lawn and shoveling snow for neighbors.
And that was elementary school, junior high, and high school.
In the future, we can dive into all the part-time jobs I had during college, too, while I became the first scholar/artist at both of my schools and certainly within my family.
Then, I began working at your companies at, what was it, 22? Yep, I think that was it. Oh, and I attended my R.I.S.D. graduation already employed because I graduated mid-year to help my family with my college bills, you know, like the loan I took out for my mom at Oneonta to help with her expenses, like cars, houses, clothes, vacations, and medications tied to her psychosis that she still lies to me about. So, yeah, bitch, I know how to do your fucking job...and about 10-30 others at the same time, too. Any other questions? No?! Good! Let's move directly to the "shut the fuck up" stage of my directions to you, because I fucking earned it. Just shut the fuck up and do it.
