FREEDOM AT LAST!

It was August 1976 when I started working at McDonalds.  Minimum wage had just been increased to $2.30 in January of that year and that is what your earned an hour working at McDonalds.  My checks couldn’t have been much as I was a entering my junior year of high school and did not work except after school and weekends.  Saturdays were the days I could work the most hours and they needed the most help.  This particular McDonald’s was right across the street from Michigan State University (MSU) so we were busy when college was in session and for footballs Saturdays. I met Irvin “Magic” Johnson several times when he came into McDonalds for lunch or dinner.  He was playing at MSU at the time, but I had met him before at the roller skating rink when he played at Everett High School.

My Dad struck another deal with me.  If I saved my money, he would help me get another car.  My brother drove a 1974 Chevy Vega Estate Wagon, yellow with simulated wood grain along the side panels. As a GM employee, Dad was able to get discounts on new cars and this was a deal he struck with my brother when he graduated from high school.  I saved my money and within nine months, I had saved enough money to rid myself of the blue bomb.  Dad and I went used car shopping and I found my second car, a 1972 Ford Pinto Hatchback.  I was moving up in the world!

I started my senior year with a “new” car and new job and ten months before I was able to get out of DeWitt. The first day of school, an assembly was held and an announcement was made for a job opening.  This job was part time and it was part of the co-op program.  The position was as a secretary for an insurance agency in the northern Lansing area. 

First, you must understand that I had taken “business” courses in high school such as typing and office machines, but I knew then that I was never going to be a secretary and so I did not excel in these classes.  To this day, I hen peck a calculator unlike some of my fellow classmates that can skim over those keys and within minutes have a tape that is six feet long and a sum to the trillions of numbers they just entered.  I would still be hen pecking the first number into the 10 key and looking for my place on the work sheet to see what number I needed to punch in next. 

I had been flipping burgers for a year, mixing shakes and serving up Big Macs, what did I know about being a secretary, but I got the job and it allowed me a freedom I had never dreamed of.  I only had to attend school from 8 AM to 11:30 AM in my senior year and then I worked at the insurance agency from noon to five.

Because study hall was prime time for idiots to tease me, I chose to not take study hall and instead I took classes for credit, which allowed me another freedom, graduating in April 1978 verses June 1978.

In fact on April 7, 1978, I turned eighteen and it was officially the last day of high school for me.  Back in the day, you had to be of legal age to call in sick verses your parents calling in for you.  I drove to a friend’s house that morning and exercised my first adult decision, I called in sick and she and I took off for a day of fun! I was FREE from HELL!