My First Job

Today, the two year old has been much better behaved and allowing me to get some actual writing done. So in lieu of a life update, I am giving another writing prompt a try. Let me know what you think.

My first foray into the working world pretty much rocked. It wasn’t so much the job – though working at a movie theater totally had its perks – it was the people I worked with.

In high school, I never really fit in. I never felt I had that ‘best friend’ experience, or a place where I felt comfortable and liked for who I was. I never felt my true personality come out; I spent too much time trying to impress people who were totally not interested in being impressed by me.

Then, at the movies, I met the “archgeeks” (check it, we even have a facebook group). These were my people. A little geeky, a little theatrical, a lot of freakin fun, and most importantly, they liked me. They really liked me! Working at the movies, I made my best friends, had my most teenage experiences.


Playing freezetag in the back of one of the theaters.
As people clocked out for the evening they would come join in the geeky fun.


I had my first boyfriend – a pastry chef who made me the most amazing lemon meringue pie I’ve ever tasted (even still!). I fell in love with my best guy friend and broke the heart of the aforementioned boyfriend (teenage girls are mean, but I found him on myspace a few years ago and totally apologized). I had my first Rocky Horror experience. I rode on the back of motorcycles for the first time with some really hot boys (I still have a love for them – the bikes, I mean). We partied together, we played together. We had some serious fun.

It was such an amazing time in all our lives that one of my friends, the writer in the group, published a book about it. It pretty much rocks to have my teenage experiences memorialized in print. From an actual publisher!! Go Wade!!

Twenty some years later, it’s fun to catch up with these people who really brought out my personality - my flirty, slightly obnoxious, crazy personality - and taught me that being me was a good thing. It’s fun to randomly find them on facebook chat and spend an hour rehashing the “if only’s” and the “I can’t believe I never knew that” sort of things. It’s fun to get together and reminisce, to bring them into my adult life, to step into theirs, and create new memories with those who were such an important part of my teens.

I look back on these days with so much love and fondness. When I think of high school and my teenage years, I don’t flash immediately back to my alma matter, I go first to my days at the movies, to my closest friends. I wonder where some of them are now, wish we could reunite for one amazingly fun evening; I hope they are all happy. Mostly I’m thankful that I knew them, that they made an impressionable part of my life so much fun, that they helped me find the confidence to be (and to like) me.



It's since been demolished and replaced by a Kohl's. Sad.