Since this is my senior year, I figured I would make the most of my last free summer.
I wanted the perfect job, one of those jobs you tell your kids about when you are fifty ? no brainpower required but plenty of glory.
I tried out a few different occupations.
I spent an entire week, nine hours a day, licking envelopes. I almost died of dehydration, and I had so many paper-cuts on my tongue I could not talk.
Not like that mattered, though, because I sat in an isolated cubicle the whole time.
Unfortunately for my wallet, but fortunately for my tongue, I licked myself out of a job. The job was supposed to last two weeks, but I just licked too fast.
I did hard labor around the house. I suffer permanent lung damage from breathing in all the toxic fumes from the cleaning supplies.
I cleaned with so much bleach my eyes have a permanent redness. And I cannot tell you how many times I washed off the deck and windows after the Colorado wildfires deposited a thick layer of ash over the city of Denver and especially right over my yard.
That job was futile.
And then one day the job came to me. I think of it almost in terms of a dream, but the scar on my upper arm keeps it firmly placed in reality.
A few friends and I were hiking around the Red Rocks Amphitheater when we decided to break in and mess around on the stage.
Is it not everyone’s dream to stand center-stage at one of the most famous concert venues in the world? Ah, dare to dream.
We easily jumped the small barrier at the top level of the amphitheater, and climbing the fence would have not been a problem had I not slashed my arm on the barbed wire at the top.
We did not walk more than three yards when an event staff employee stopped us.
After he yelled at me to stop bleeding all over his patio, I realized he was not just any event staff employee. He happened to be my prom date from senior year!
Before he kicked us out, Wil told me how to get a job just like his.
The job included everything for which I had been searching ? easy, mindless work where I got to watch free concerts. I applied the very next day.
My first day, I worked at Mile High Stadium during the Colorado Rapids’ major league soccer game. For nine hours, I did one thing: sit in front of the visiting team’s locker room.
I am not quite sure how I got that particular job considering I am not very big or intimidating, but I did not ask questions.
It was great ? the soccer players walked in, the soccer players walked out, the soccer players walked in, the soccer players walked out. I think you can catch the drift.
There were only two phrases running through my head the whole time. Firstly, Excuse me, but I’ll have to pat you down before I can let you in the locker room and secondly, I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave.
I loved my job.
Come sit in my parlor, said the spider to the fly. Before I knew it, I was stuck in their web.
The job was not all butts and glory.
I stood for ten hours in 100-degree weather directing shuttle buses. stood in the depths of Mile High Stadium for seven hours and watched an elevator that no one came out of.
I stood outside at Red Rocks, ironically in the very same spot at which I had been caught, for eight hours in a downpour.
This summer I learned the importance of owning a comfortable pair of black shoes.
Now that it is football season, I cannot wait for winter break. I just keep working on my line, “Excuse me, but I’ll have to pat you down before I can let you in the locker room.”
Haber can be reached at bhaber@campustimes.org.
