There are not too many action shots of me working at the Mary Davis Home but here is one. This was when I was a Counselor and we had to do all the jobs to make the place work: cook, organize events, watch for errant behavior during rec time, counsel our specific kids, answer the phones, open the doors for kitchen deliveries, talk to parents and write reports, and many others.
Here I appear to be taking a pillow into the classroom. I swear I wasn't going in to take a nap, really. More than likely I am doing a duo task of letting someone in to do some cleaning, and afterwards taking a pillow and bedding back to dorm for a new intake. That's my story and I might as well sink or swim with it.
What you cannot see behind that door is a one-way window. On the other side was the superintendent's quarters who could look out into rec area and see what was going on but you couldn't see him doing it. No one ever told me what that window was. When I found out it brought a whole new meaning to Big Brother Is Watching. To his credit the window was seldom used, and the Superintendent trusted his employees. That guy would hire me two more times for better work within these walls. But it was the original job that was the most fun. Right up there with the satisfaction of changing young lives was the extraordinary people I worked with through the years.
As for cooking, I did a fairly decent job except for one Sunday morning. I had to work by myself (yeah that happened, too) and I left the eggs too long in the big skillet turning them green. My toast was burned and the oatmeal I sliced with an electric knife. When I took a tray back to someone in lockup, they asked, "who the Hell cooked this shit?" All I could say was the new cook.
New jobs, when young, take on a myth all their own. At the time they are huge and you wonder if you'll last till the next paycheck. But you do. And then you look back and its a career. It goes in the blink of an eye.
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