Payday

Today is a great day! This is one of my favourite. I have been waiting for 336 hours for it… today is payday or in my case pay-date! I opened Internet and log to my bank account… Yessss it is there! Again!

I am pay every two weeks… all I really need to do is sacrifice a little freedom. This is what I get for renting some of my life. Not a bad deal, and any way what are the alternatives? I also realize that there will be 45 more full paydates before retiring. Please don’t tell my bank manager… he could became really nervousJ

This really got me thinking about when I started to earn some income.

Before my teen, I was always on the lookout for some high values discard bottles. One person trash was a small boy treasure. I would get them refund at the store and get all the necessity of life. Of course, for a young boy the necessity was chewing gum, candy bar and chips.

I remember one summer day, I was 12, I was talking with my friends, and they were thinking about going to the movie. Apparently there was one playing in the evening where there was a peek at a women breast. Who care what the movie was about I want to go… but after doing an inventory of my pocket pants, other than some half way chewed gum… there was NO money! There would not be enough bottles in ditches to get me enough money to go sniff sniff. My friends had something call an allowance… didn’t get one of those, my allowance was more like 3 meals a day.

Sometime desperation is a good thing. I heard that at the golf course, young boy could carry a bag on grass and get paid. I didn’t know what golf was but ‘get paid’ was enough for me to go. Can you believe this, you carry the golf bags of people and at the end of 18 holes, they give you dollars. So what if the bags weights were over my own… you get paid! I had so much money, I was the one throwing my bottles in the ditch (it’s call now pay forward ha ha).

This was perfect, however, there is not much going on the green when the green are white! So for winter, I took a run of newspaper. My run was in apartment buildings. You would think that it will be several papers per building, but no, it was like one in this building, one in the next, and it seems that the people in the lower level didn’t want the paper, it only interest the one on the top floor. The paper I was delivering was a late edition, so I would come back from school and get them in my pouch and start climbing stairs. Of course, Saturday was a morning delivery.

Shortly after, I was talking with my buddy Réjean, and he was telling me that he was working at the colisé of Québec. This was where the Nordiques hockey team was playing. His uncle was managing the boys that were selling chips/peanut in the center. I want in… he talk with his uncle and I was hire! We were being pay commission on our sale. When the game was on, you were sitting in the aisle waiting for a off time to go an offer your goods. I could see all games, or any other events that were carry out at the colisé.

When there were not enough people in attendance, the boss would just tell some of us we were not working on that night. Suit me well because you could sit anywhere, and we will choose to sit close to the “ring”. The ring was a walkway around the whole center, and GIRLS, would just go around and around… It’s about the time, I started to buy my own clothes, nothing wrong with what my mother would buy… if you didn’t mind getting picked on at school.

At seventeen, I stopped buying my own clothes. I joined the military; they gave me all the clothes I needed! I have been working full time ever since.

Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

Today, my intention was not to give you my resume; I wanted to talk about the mental status before and after retirement. But I let my mind travelled on its own, and it brought me to this past time. I’ll post some other time about mental status.

If you are smiling… keep on working (for now)!