Backflip on Day 1

[Prompt: Tell us about your first day at something.]

In the first minutes of the first day at my job as a secretary to the supervisor of Meridian Township in 1967, I leaned back in my swivel chair and fell over so that I was still ‘sitting’ in the chair but my back was essentially on the floor, and my legs were in the air.

There were three people gathered to greet me to my new job. They included the township planner, assessor, and my actual boss, the township supervisor. They were all holding cups of coffee. When I went down, they looked at each other and said, “Well, time to get to work!” And left me to right myself without spectators. I took that as a kindness.

It ended up being an okay job. The supervisor called two half-hour coffee breaks every day when all of us would sit in his office and shoot the shit. This seemed weird to me, but I was nineteen and had just recently had my college education rudely interrupted by my father who had decided that college was corrupting me and he shouldn’t have to pay for it. So, after three semesters, I was back home, working as a secretary making $85 a week.

A few weeks after my fateful backward fall, I washed the office coffee pot with dish soap and then made a pot of coffee like I did every morning so that went my boss walked by my desk in the morning at 8:30 a.m. sharp, I could hand him his morning coffee. That morning it had foam on it. Suds. He talked about this on morning break, then afternoon break, and then every day thereafter until I left a year later. Never failed to get a laugh. I laughed. It was funny. Suds.

It took a while, but I bought at car, an adorable green VW bug for $600. It was a sweet car and I loved it so much. My father told me to have a mechanic check it out before buying it but I didn’t want to wait. It was so sweet a car, the little radio with the tiny dial, the toy windshield wipers. The transmission blew the first night. So after showing off my new car to a friend I had to drive in second gear all the way across town.

It was not the greatest time in my life. But it got better. Then worse. And then better. Like now.

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Photo by Persnickety Prints on Unsplash