Pink was the Color of My Itchy Discontent: My Colorful History of Insanely Odd Jobs

Happy 11-11-11 ... to mark this monumental day, I have decided to post a story from my youth.  No restaurants, no product placements, no tales from exotic cities.  Unless you consider Winona, Minnesota to be an exotic city.  And if you do consider it to be an exotic city, I strongly urge you to seek help.  I hope you're spending 11-11-11 doing something revolutionary!  I'll be spending it eating sushi.  Viva La Revolution!

And now our main story ... Pink was the Color of My Itchy Discontent:  My Colorful History of Insanely Odd Jobs

Creative resume writing.  Overstating one’s qualifications.  Hyperbole.  Little white lies.  To embellish.  In this day, age and unemployment rate, the probability of people padding their curriculum vitae with “a little something extra” runs high. 

My resume, on the other hand, has been carefully streamlined to remove the superfluous jobs that detract from the main focus of my corporate career.

What am I talking about, you ask?

I was a migrant farm worker.

YES, seriously!

OK, OK.  Here’s the full story - My Great-Aunt (who wasn’t that great!) owned a strawberry farm.  Each summer, she employed child labor to pick strawberries.  Her wealth was predicated on the sweaty backs of local kids.  I had the great misfortune of visiting my cousins one summer and suddenly was put to work on the farm.  I was a child labor strawberry picker.  It was a title I never wanted bestowed on me. 

I am a City Mouse, not a Country Mouse.  I am a Grasshopper, not an industrious Ant.  Despite coming from a very long line of extremely hard-working Chinese relatives, I was absolutely, perfectly, amazingly content to camp out in front of any size television with a bag of Cheetos and zone out during my spare time.  This is the divine right of any American middle schooler.  Look it up.  It’s in the Constitution!  Or at least it should be.

City Mouse swam in chlorinated pools and thought walking anywhere barefoot was just plain gross.  In my world, meat magically appeared in plastic-wrapped packages from the supermarket.  The whole messy killing business was not part of the food chain history that I learned in my local public school.  I lived in a web of apartment projects – a valley of concrete and grime.  I was as far from the farm as one could get.  In fact, I counted myself lucky that I even understood that the red parts of the plants in the field were the strawberries! 

Getting on my hands and knees to fill up large wooden flats with strawberries was as familiar to me as piloting an alien spacecraft.  And for the record, alien pilot would have been a more interesting job!  We would receive sixty cents after filling up a wooden flat that would hold about six quarts of strawberries.  City Mouse, well acquainted in matters of finance due to excessive coin hoarding in my bright orange piggy bank, knew that sixty cents for six quarts of strawberries was downright slave labor!

Every time I’d bring the wooden flat over to the two men who were “surveying” the workers – um, slave labor – um, child workforce – um, urchin army – I’d be told my flat wasn’t full enough.  Those farming bastards were trying to get eight quarts of berries instead of six for a measly sixty cents.  I was full of outrage and coated in strawberry juice!  I’d protest that this was already more than six quarts of strawberries.  And I’d whisper under my breath “And any freaking moron could see that!”  But my foot-stomping protests did nothing to move the task masters.  Back to the fields with me – no money until I brought in MORE BERRIES.

The seed of murderous rage had already been planted by sheer virtue of my being employed as a migrant farm worker.  But the demands for “MORE BERRIES” was nurturing that seed like a perverse strain of “Instant Grow.” 

The two elderly male farmhands overseeing the workers, were both named George.  The child workers would pass the time trying to guess which George was my Great-Aunt’s lover.  Now there’s no proof that my Not-so-Great-Aunt was bedding down either farmhand, but I guess this is what the working class does to kill the hours of migrant farm work.

The conversation over the two Georges was down-right riveting …

“I think she’s sleeping with George.”

“No, I think she’s sleeping with George.”

“No, she’s sleeping with George.”

“Really?  Because I think she’s sleeping with George.”

Scintillating dialogue here.  Obviously, the future editors of Us Weekly and the National Enquirer were working this strawberry patch.    

My second cousin – the Great-Aunt’s Grandson – was allowed to drive the farm’s pickup truck around.  I think he was only 12 at the time and he was never actually hauling anything around.  As I baked in the hot sun, arms covered in bug bites and scratches, plucking berries; the Little Prince just drove in lazy circles around the farm.  I wondered if he was getting sixty cents per circle.  City Mouse was learning the score real fast.  The closer you were in blood to the Strawberry Queen, the less work you had to do.  I was both City Mouse and Cinderella!

I’d stare at my two female first cousins – who were 2 and 3 years older than me, respectively.  Being as far removed in blood from the Strawberry Queen as I was, they were also relegated to working the strawberry patches.  How could they stand doing this, day after day, all summer long?  Summer break is supposed to be for fun, not migrant farm working!  On their knees, they silently picked strawberries in robotic fashion.  No complaints.  No chatter.  No discussion of which George was servicing the Strawberry Queen.  No surly complaints when a random George would declare that more berries were needed before sixty cents would be surrendered for a full flat.  At this moment, I determined that my cousins were either zombies or Stepford Migrant Farm Workers. 

I was alone in my farm furor!

Is this what would happen to me in a few years?  Would I be lobotomized in the strawberry fields so that I would pick berries without complaint or emotion?  Were there bits of cerebellum and prefrontal cortex spread about the strawberry plants?  Brains as compost?  Gasp!  Horror in the strawberry fields!  How could anyone endure this work without complaining?  City Mouse’s official assessment of this work – it sucks.  Big time.       

As I continued to thrust my hands into the strawberry plants, City Mouse day-dreamed of raising a revolt amongst the junior high kids, too young to get a proper paying summer job.  I’d climb on top of a wooden crate and throw my flat of berries to the ground.  City Mouse screams “UNION!”  We’d storm the main barn, running over the two Georges with mud-coated shoes.  We’d demand higher pay and Benadryl cream for our itchy arms.

 

As my young brain would continue to bake in the sun, my dreams of farm worker unionization would spiral out of control.  As my hands became deep red from repeated graspings of oozing strawberries, my daydreams would become equally as bloody.   

I would personally vault through the air, sailing across the strawberry plants powered on the force of my rage and oppressed migrant worker soul.  I would pull the Little Prince from the truck, pummeling him with my puffy, insect bitten hands.  The junior high kids would lift me above their heads so I could climb on top of the truck’s cab.  “My Fellow Strawberry Workers:  Viva La Revolution!” I would scream!  We’d live like Strawberry Barons on the wealth of the land!  City Mouse would show all these country mice the way.  Prosperity for the working class!  Down with the Strawberry Queen!  Long Live Queen City Mouse!

I would go from meager farm worker to Strawberry Royalty with only a few riot murders.  Surely there have been more violent ways to seize the throne in history?  It was practically civilized. 

And really, wasn’t a little blood shed worth it to guarantee my agrarian ascension?

Each night, I would return to my Aunt and Uncle’s house and slather my arms with Calamine lotion.  Why, oh why, did they not have Benadryl cream or hydrocortisone?  My mother was in nursing school, so by association I believed that I was pretty much the equivalent of a pharmacist.  Did my Aunt and Uncle not realize I was an authorized medical expert?  Calamine lotion was just making me annoyingly pink.  Itchy, lumpy, bumpy, scratched up and now coated in pink lotion. 

Pink was the color of my itchy discontent.

I stared at the ceiling and wondered why my Mother had forsaken me to spend part of the summer in “farm country.”  Farmer was not in my dream career growth path or school career aptitude tests!  I didn’t spend hours playing “Farmer Ken and Barbie.”  Reruns of “Hee Haw” just made me sad.  Disturbingly sad. 

When I returned from my time in the slave labor camp – ahem, my wonderful summer visit to my Aunt and Uncle’s house – my mother cheerfully grinned and said she had bestowed upon me a great lesson.  That I had helped eliminate “farmer” from my list of future job choices. 

“Now you’ll know that you don’t want to be a farmer when you grow up.”  She said in a happy voice bordering on her hysterical laughter.

I stared at her like she was on crack.  “I could have told you before I went there, that I didn’t want to be a farmer!”  I seethed with as much fury and indignation as a middle schooler could drum up.

“Well, now you really know!”  My Mom chortled as she left the room.  I swore I heard her cackling laughter from the other room.       

This was no way to treat the newly mob rule-annointed Strawberry Queen City Mouse!!!