Putting My Big Boy Pants On.

After I graduated high school in the summer of 1978 my life really started to change.

And this time it was for the better.

I was now on the verge of working full-time and paying my way by helping my mother out financially. I absolutely had no issue paying my mother her room and board. I was always surprised how friends from outside the Jungle seemed mortified that I would want to give my mother money once I began working. For the most part all of my friends living in the Jungle were also in the same boat. Paying room and board was a fact of life for us working teenage Jungle bunnies.

It wasn’t like I never saw it coming; it was one of my mother’s carved in stone rules. It was Rule #3 right after no motorcycles and graduating high school.

I was still working my second season as a vendor during that summer. I knew it would be just a matter of time before I’d be putting my big boy pants on and getting a full-time job. I was scouring the newspaper daily searching the employment want ads. There were literally pages of ads from companies looking for full-time help. For the most part my search was focused on just two categories, general help and sales help wanted. Almost every ad I read was looking for people with little or no experience and able to work flexible hours. They were also the lowest paying jobs with most of them paying just the minimum wage.

My mother was never at all supportive of me broadening my horizons. I had given some thought about maybe taking a couple night school classes so as to better my potential income down the road. She quickly shot that down; she made me feel that my only station in life would be an unskilled worker in a dead end job. She always told me that I should be grateful for any opportunity whenever it came my way.

It is funny how after hearing the same things over and over you eventually begin to believe them yourself.

My first full-time job was a manager trainee position working at the SS Kresge Company. It was a low paying minimum wage job and I had been reeled in by the lure of above average wages once I worked my way up the corporate ladder. I started on the ground floor as a stock boy and within a few months I had worked my way up onto the sales floor. I actually didn’t mind the job; it was the commute that I really hated. Eventually the inability of both me and my boss to have a shred of respect for each other saw me quitting after just eight months.

My second job would see me working in a factory/warehouse environment and it was also a very low paying job to start. However, the promise of higher wages and joining the union after a three month probation period seemed too good to be true. Plus the fact that the job was less than a fifteen minute walk from my apartment saw me eagerly accepting a position at McGregor Bath Products. Once I was hired one of the unionized older guys warned me that all of us new slaves as he called us would never be hired on full-time. After we hit the end of our probation period we would all be laid off he told me.

There was some type of deal the company had worked out with the union. All the unionized workers like him kept their good paying jobs on the condition the company could hire low paid slaves every three months. It was like a revolving door with new slaves hired four times a year only to be laid off to make room for more new slaves after each probation period. Sure enough and like he had warned me all of us new slaves were let go at the end of our three month probation. I wasn’t even a year into my working career and I already fuck’n hated unions.

In August 1979; I had been out of school for just over a year and had already worked two different full-time jobs. I was now unemployed and looking for my third new job. I had literally no savings along with no job prospects and I needed to find a job quickly. After now having worked both general and sales help jobs, I knew which one that I preferred. I much more preferred working in a retail sales environment as opposed to a factory or a warehouse. I had absolutely no interest in working at a fast food joint either or washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen. I knew those jobs were always readily available should I ever become desperate for a job.

I assumed I was destined to start another manager trainee type job and I was hoping to find one in the Yorkdale Mall. That would be my dream job, working in a store so close to home. Pretty pathetic I must say when I look back at the lofty aspirations I once had. I aspired to work long hours in the retail sector for shit pay at a store in a mall that I could easily walk to.

Now the only question would be what store.

Collegiate Sports was a chain of sporting goods stores throughout the Toronto area. I visited the Yorkdale store often just to browse and look around. I also kept an ongoing mental list in my head of all the sporting goods I would buy if and when I ever had the money and I must say it was a rather large and pretty expensive list.

Although I loved walking around Collegiate Sports, I had never given any thought about ever working there. On one of my visits a sign greeted me; the store was looking for a full-time installer ASAP. After inquiring as to what an installer was, I quickly realized that it was not at all my type of work. I would be working in the backroom assembling bikes, installing ski bindings, sharpening skates and stringing racquets. In other words I would have to be mechanically inclined and be knowledgeable in the use of common everyday tools.

I told the manager that I would pass on the installer job, but I would be interested in the full-time sales job he also told me was becoming available the following week. By the end of the week I had my dream job. I was hired to work in the hockey dept. at the Collegiate Sports store in the Yorkdale Mall.

Like my previous two jobs I would be paid minimum wage, but now I would also be working Saturdays. I hated the thought of working Saturdays and thought twice about even accepting the job. I realized that any job at any store in the Yorkdale Mall would most likely include working on Saturdays. The fact I was running the hockey dept. and working in a sports store sealed the deal and I happily accepted the job.

I was nineteen years old on my first day working at Collegiate Sports. I still had no driver’s license and no money while living in a housing project with my mother. I had no wardrobe whatsoever and I basically wore either my navy or brown corduroy pants every single day along with the navy blue ‘Tough To Beat’ staff polo shirt.

I was so nervous before my first day and I really had my doubts if I would even fit in with the other staff members. They were sure to be all athletes and jocks excelling at every sport they ever played. I could not have been more wrong about the staff and Collegiate Sports was a great place to work. It was so different than either of my previous other two jobs mostly because I actually loved working there.

I quickly got used to the idea of working both evenings and Saturdays. A couple days each week I would start at 1 pm and work until the store closed at 9 pm. I was also making many new friends with my new work colleagues.

While working at Collegiate, I was being introduced to a variety of new sports that I had never played before. I played fast pitch softball on our store team and weekly flag football games during the football season. I also tried my hand at golf, tennis and downhill skiing.

Once I started at Collegiate, I rarely saw any of my Kingdom Hall friends let alone associate with them. I was now hanging out with a different group, a more active and sports oriented group. There were no more road hockey games because I was now playing so much ice hockey with my new work buddies. Just like me my old Witness friends were also moving on with their lives. Some of them ended up being disfellowshipped and thrown out of the Kingdom Hall while others who like me had had enough and simply walked away.

As the 70's drew to a close, my mother could see the writing was on the wall. She knew it was just a matter of time before my brother would also start working full-time and our family income would be too high to qualify for subsidized housing. Most parents in the Jungle would never claim their kid’s incomes since it would always mean either a rent increase or they would have to move out. Just like we had been on a waiting list for our apartment ten years earlier, there was always another family like us on the waiting list. There was always another family that now needed our apartment even more than we did. My mother could never live in subsidized housing by not reporting all of our incomes and depriving another needy family.

It would go against her conscience.

My mother had many faults, but she was the most honest person I ever knew. There was absolutely no doubt she'd be reporting every single penny that all three of us would be earning. Besides after living a decade as a Jungle bunny, it was time for a change of scenery anyway.