First Days

Recently I started a new job. The end of the first day caused me to reflect on other first days I’ve had, none stellar.

My earliest first day in memory is first grade. I wasn’t too excited about it. I’d watched my older sister dress in her uniform, ride the bus and do homework for quite some time. I knew the drill and had the benefit of my older sister attending the same school. Nuns bothered me, but were great curiosities as well. Mom didn’t wear big, black dresses with wide plastic collars. It was my first experience with different fashion statements. I knew that first day school wouldn’t be all bad. Each row of desks was named after a fruit. Cherry and apple are all I remember and I chose cherry. It was a good day, as I recall it. My first experience with corporal punishment came shortly after. Sister Remegia, at least 150 years of age, carried a dowel rod with a rubber point and called it a “candy stick”. We were told to make our “Os” in a specific direction and to this day, I swear I did as I was told, but she smacked my knuckles with that stick. In the grand scheme of things, does it matter which direction your freaking “Os” go? I ball all of that into my first day, because it was my first experience with a first day, a nun, a candy stick, and a terrorist.

An orientation rally started my first day of high school. In grade school I was accustomed to 30 kids or less in a class. Here I was standing on a blacktop parking lot with hundreds of kids, few I knew. In this new world, I traveled to classes. I had a locker and I had to make it to the locker and to the classes in five minute’s time. Eight years of nun experiences had trained me to have no faith in my own instincts or strengths and to constantly be on the look out for dowel rods. New experiences caused stress and that first day was a bundle of it. Following my schedule I made it to my first class. Orientation tried to prepare us, but they couldn’t cover every element of change encountered. I was not prepared for the desk. My desks had been the type with a lidded metal container attached to a metal frame that led to the seat. When told to take your seat, there was no thought process. No matter which side you stood on, you were able to sit. Welcome to high school seatage. There were no lidded containers, just a flat piece of wood. Anything you carried into class got shoved into a small opening beneath the seat, which, by the way, was attached to that flat piece of wood with a bar. Not in the middle, but on the side leaving but one direction possible to take the seat. I used the wrong one. I learned of the seat, bar, piece of wood construction the hard way. I sat there, embarrassed to have to get up and move to the other side. My instincts failed me yet again. Of course, I’d chosen a seat in the front to maximize my embarrassment potential. So self-conscious was I that it didn’t occur to me everyone else in the room was challenged by their own first day demons. I have no doubt that at 14 we all had them.

First days on the different jobs followed that same general pattern. Until my first day at First National Bank; it spun out of control a bit differently. I’d hired in as a computer operator. My previous postion only lasted three months because of boredom and a lack of serious pay. Hiring on in a computer room enabling me to use skills I’d gained in seven year’s at the Federal Reserve Bank gave me quite the chip on my shoulder. Adding to that chip was being asked by my manager to join him and higher managers for lunch. This job was also my first experience with name badges. I clipped it to the pocket flap of my jacket. I walked through the cafeteria line and joined a number of managers, few of them women, for lunch. I left early to make a good impression about my work ethic. It was back in the computer room I looked down at the keyboard and noticed something dark on the badge. I’d had a bowl of chocolate pudding for lunch and managed to dip the badge into it and smear a considerable amount across my boob. My entire lunch was spent with these managers and my chocolate boob.

Moving forward in time, I started my current position. By this point I know one thing for sure, anything can happen and usually does. Don’t worry about it, because I can deal with anything. I wore a lovely red brocade jacket. It’s one of my favorites and I’m a bold statement kind of girl. Take charge, in control, watch out world I’m coming kind of girl. I met my co-workers, my leader and our manager. I walked around the building finding my way to the bathroom, to the ice maker, the cafeteria and Kaldi’s. Great day and no pudding, at least that I noticed. I got home, tired, but feeling quite happy about the new job. I took off my jacket and that’s when I saw it. A tag hanging from under the arm. The price tag, there, hanging under the arm! I realized I’d worn it that way to work before and had even washed it without noticing the tag!  I handled this with much better grace, that grace that comes with age, experience, humility, and knowledge. I immediately thought of Minnie Pearl. That signature tag hanging from her hat was initially an accident, one of those firsts. Her first performance she bought the hat as an afterthought for her costume and in her rush to the stage forgot to remove the price tag. It stuck making her career and fortune. My price tag did not.