When Your Past Smells Like Grease & Gravy

You guys must have figured that I'd go and order business cards ten minutes after scoring the big monthly gig with Chicago Parent*, right?  After waiting nearly 40 years to call myself a professional writer, I had to make it official.  I wanted it in writing.

For the record, here is but a sampling of the titles I endured along the way:

• Old Country Buffet: Bus Boy (nobody cared that I had boobies).
• Chuck E. Cheese:  Serving Staff/Costumed Idiot.  Kids kicked me every day, as though big giant rats do not have feelings or nerve endings.    
• Denny's: Waitress.  I actually met a lot of nice truck drivers here.  Truck drivers are very good tippers by the way. 
• Eastern Illinois University Food Service:  Line Server (but I eventually was promoted to payroll clerk because the large German woman who ran the joint loved me.  Like loved-me/loved-me).  
• School District 140: Substitute Teacher.  This job reminded me how much I don't enjoy working with children.  
• Sakura Bank: Accounts Receivable Department.  Once a week, the Japanese managers asked that I dress up as Godzilla and take pictures with the staff.  It was kind of like being back at Chuck E. Cheese but without tokens.

Yup.  I certainly paid my dues.  I paid them in smelly aprons and in polyester pants.  I paid them in rotten kids and in hours of wiping boogary balls from the play pit.  I paid them in public humiliation and in sore shins. 

All to get here:

The New January Re-Launch of the Magazine

Page 34!  Click HERE to read what I wrote.

Totally worth it.

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*Chicago Parent is a free publication circulated throughout the Chicagoland area.  Paid paper subscriptions are available by emailing: 

circulation@chicagoparent.com

Electronic versions can also be accessed at iTunes and Kindle through the newsstand.  I will also link to any articles made available on chicagoparent.com here on my blog.