Funny thing, friends have commented on my odd driving ability(okay so I've hit a few curbs), but I actually have been trained to teach Driver's Ed. Of all the endorsements I could have had to go along with my teaching degree, why driver's ed. Well, it's partly my husband's fault. He taught driver's training for a couple of years and wanted more "official" training...I needed some more credits to keep my certificate valid...so I remember making a few calls and we signed up to take a full year of Driver's Training in North Seattle.

I was working full-time and driving up to North Seattle twice a week. A couple months into the program I found out I was pregnant, so that certainly made this whole adventure a little less desireable. The first quarter was boring but gave us all the textbook information we needed. Second quarter was spent utilizing those stupid "simulators" and teaching young drivers how to maneuver on the road with the aid of a huge machine with flashing lights and complete lack of accuracy (circa 1972). Flashbacks of high school driver's ed came back to me as I tried to swerve the machine from missing two small children chasing after a ball.

Third quarter was the challenge. Each "team" (Ted and I were a team, isn't that cute) was paired up with a kid from a local highschool that had failed Traffic Safety and needed extra help. Third quarter starts in March, and my baby was born in May, so you can tell how I must have been feeling at this point. To top it off, I had started training for a new job during that time, to work from home after the baby was born. I'm not sure how I survived all of that. It's almost just a blur.

Teaching someone how to drive is hard enough. Yeah, we did get the fancy driver's ed car with the brake on the passenger side, but somehow it really seemed useless to me. And teaching someone to drive when you can't quite reach your shoes because of an impending baby is rough too. But teaching driving in downtown Seattle, with all the above factors, and a loud-mouth driver-instructor for a husband in the back seat really stunk. I'm actually surprised that I didn't just get out of the car at some point and tell them I was going to catch a taxi and go home.

The girl drove okay for the most part. I had to brush up on my own driving skills in order to teach her though, as my own classroom teacher would often ride with us to see how we were doing. No, I can't parallel park. No, I'm not any good at backing around anything. I failed these challenges during my own driving test. I learned the minimum amount I needed to know to make it appear that I was knew what I was doing, but that was it.

The girl passed, but not until her big drive through the U-district with me in the front seat. This was about the second week of May (baby born May 28). Maybe that's why my labor started earlier than planned, who knows. I still remember, we were almost back to the school, and the girl makes this huge turn through an intersection going way too fast. I had to utilize that dumb brake, and the teacher and Ted (both sitting in the back) made comments about how "Christine is finally getting the hang of this." Uh, right.

I passed the darn classes I needed, and now have an endorsement to teach Traffice Safety despite the fact that it's program was just dropped by our local high school this summer due to cost. I had a short stint of driver's ed teaching for a summer. It paid pretty good, but I really had no idea what I was suppose to be doing as the teacher was a real stickler for having things taught his way or it was wrong. For instance, I couldn't say "accident" -- it was "collision." The weird thing about teaching that class was that most of the "kids" in there were teenage boys that were a lot taller than me, and it didn't see approrpriate to use any of my "techniques" that I'd learned in college about teaching elementary children, like clapping three times for silence. I'd have to leave my colorful story-telling apron at home.

I didn't last there long as the owner of the business was getting divorced and needed the extra money for his attorney instead of paying me.

I don't regret taking those classes as they did keep my teaching certificate from expiring, but I sure as heck wouldn't consider myself able to teach anyone how to drive.
- posted by Christine @ 12:28 AM

 
:)
- posted by Christine @ 11:40 PM

 
Have extra time on your hands? How about making a huge ball made of rubber bands? A couple guys in San Francisco are.

The story reminds me of my stepson. When he was about 7 or 8 he came home from school, threw down his backpack, and out rolled this huge rubberband ball. Now it wasn't near the size of the gentleman's ball mentioned previously, but it was about the size of a baseball.

He didn't seem to notice it roll out, so I picked it up. I wondered about it. Where did he get all these rubberbands? And where was the teacher during all of this? Did she not noticed a HUGE supply of rubberbands missing? Didn't she wonder why Kevin always had his head held low as he appeard to be wrapping something over and over?

So I kept it. Since my tax money probably paid for all those rubberbands anyway, I could at least use it for ponytails. I put it in my bathroom, and slowly, over the course of the next year or so, I used them up for various things.

One day my husband needed a rubberband and I said, "Get it off my rubberband ball."

Kevin heard me. "Rubberband ball? I use to have a rubberband ball."

"No, this is a different one," I said.

"Oh."


- posted by Christine @ 5:32 PM

 
My mom reminded me the other day about my first real job. I was straight out of highschool. I was ready to work for the summer and start community college in the fall. I wanted to avoid any jobs working around grease, and I could type fast, so I went into a local agency called Kelly Services to find a temporary summer job.

I tested and was assigned my first job the same day--filling in for some unknown office job in downtown Tacoma.

I remember I dressed up and came in the day before I was suppose to start so the woman I was filling in for could walk me around the office and show me what I was suppose to do. It was never very clear to me what this business actually did, but they sure had a lot of files. She led me to this huge file room and started pointing out things.

All of a sudden mid-sentence she says, "I need to lay down" and she rolls down onto the floor of the room. She explains that she donated blood minutes before and hadn't eaten much. She begins to point things out from the floor for a moment or two before saying, "I need to leave. The other ladies will help you tomorrow."

Another woman escorted her out to her car, and I went home feeling a bit apprehensive.

I worked in this office for maybe three or four days. I'd go to desks, pick up files, return to that big file room, dump off files and retrieve more. Did this woman really do this for a living? I had access to a computer where I just entered names of people I knew to see if their name would come up. I spent a lot of time in that file room just wanting the day to be over. Is this how boring temp work was going to be?

Well part two of this saga was the second (and last) temp job they assigned me to. A new company needed four workers to get their business underway. All I had was an address to show up to, somewhere in the Tacoma Tideflats, at a specific time.

When I got there, it was just me and three other young people (about my age). We would become pretty good friends through this ordeal. We were in a huge open warehouse. Two men, who spent most of our working time inside a glass office drinking coffee and pointing at us, explained their new business. They received items from grocery stores that were past pull dates, destroyed, broken, or otherwise un-sellable and then return them to their original company. As strange as it seems, they would make money doing this.

Our job was sorting, stacking, scanning.

I can't remember how we each got assigned our jobs, but one guy would put the items on a conveyer belt. It would reach me and I would scan (as best I could) the item's UPC code. Many items had no code (cans without a label, already opened packages, loose dog food) so we'd have to figure out a way to determine what it probably was, or huck it in the trash (which was always my favorite option but frowned upon by the "men"). When I scanned an item, it would print out a corresponding sticker at the end of the conveyer belt for another woman to stamp. Then the fourth worker, a nice man who was supporting like 10 kids (and he was about my age), would put the items in the correct box and haul them away onto a palate.

It sounds horrible but I probably laughed more over the course of that month or so than I ever have. You just gave to imagine how bad something has to get in the stores before they finally throw it out. And it was a hot summer, so things that could smell bad, did.

Some days you'd get case after case of bulging cans of green beans. Other days would get a bit more exciting where it was hard to determine if the item was truly something from the store or a belonging of someone who visited the store. A dog leash wrapped around a bag of dog food. A condom over a toothbrush. It was almost like a grab bag sometimes. Sometimes I had to try to compose myself before I went over to see "the men" in their glass booth about an item that I just couldn't figure out. Sometimes we'd all lose it when the guy at the front of the conveyer belt would rip open a bag and maggots would come out.

It was truly an experience to remember.

I don't really know how long I would've lasted at that job if I hadn't gotten sick. I liked the people I worked with. The pay was awful, but I was being entertained. But unfortunately, all those handwashings in the filthy tub with no running water got the best of me. I'd cut my finger on something I'd scanned (I don't recall us wearing gloves; remember I was young and not very wise), and after washing my hands in that nasty water, something must have soaked into my body. I don't know what, but one day I was just too ill to go to work.

My finger (left hand, second finger--I'll never forget as there's still a scar there) started to swell. My finger got so big it actually pushed the other fingers over. I got sick too. Really sick. I don't remember much about it as I was probably the sickest I have ever been, but I went to the doctor a lot (I remember sitting in the waiting room crying) and they didn't know what was wrong. One doctor even suggested a liver biopsy in an attempt to figure it out.

My mom notified Kelly Services but I don't think they had much to say on the issue. Of course, if we'd really wanted to push it, it was their responsibility for putting us at risk in a business that obviously would've been shut down by the Health Department, but we didn't. My mom was just concerned about me getting better, and I honestly had moments I thought I could die. I felt horrible.

I finally was referred to an infectious disease doctor who ran some tests. But by the time I finally had visited him, I was starting to feel better. He ruled it as a non-specific hepatitis and sent me home. I was slowly able to start school in the fall and feel normal again without ever really knowing what I had.

So that was it. My first job. The best and the worst jobs I've had all rolled into one.
- posted by Christine @ 10:04 PM