“Oh, my buddy Tim Bass he's working pumping gas. And he makes two fifty for an hour . . .”

I couldn’t wait to get a job when I was in high school, and the job I wanted more than anything was to be able to work at the tiny gas station and mini-mart about two miles from home. It had two self-serve pumps and a little store that could only hold about three people at once. You could buy gas, cigarettes, soda, and Beeman’s Gum, which was pretty much all I wanted to buy when I was sixteen.

I had such fabulous daydreams about working there—I could sit behind the counter at the register, drinking bottles of Mountain Dew (it came in fat green glass bottles then, wrapped in a thin layer of foam that was very pleasant to peel off and shred), smoking my Winston Reds (because you could still smoke indoors then), listening to the radio, and reading to my heart’s content. I could sell people coffee, pop, snacks, quarts of oil, and gallons of wiper fluid. I’d be the keeper of the keys to the bathroom. My friends could visit me while I was working, and there would be no shortage of hot men to ogle and dispense change to.

It was clearly the perfect job, but my mother was convinced I’d get robbed, raped or killed, and wouldn’t even let me apply. Alas.

Sometimes I think I’d still like to have that job, although now I’d skip the cigarettes and Mountain Dew, and rotate in some knitting along with the reading. Should I be embarrassed that I have little enough ambition that getting paid to read, knit, ogle men, and work a cash register still appeals to me? Was my education truly a waste?