Putting My Big Boy Pants On.

Once I graduated high school back 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 problem paying my mother her room and board. I was always surprised by friends from outside the Jungle who always seemed mortified that I would want to give my mother money once I started working. For the most part all of my friends in the Jungle were also in the same boat as me. Paying room and board was just 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 at the Jays games during that summer. However, it would be just a matter of time before I’d be putting my big boy pants on and getting my first full-time job. I was scouring the newspaper daily searching the employment want ads and 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 was looking for people with little or no experience and who were able to work flexible hours. They were also the lowest paying jobs and most of them were paying just 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 to better my potential income down the road. She always quickly shot that down; she made me feel like my only station in life would always 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 job was a manager trainee position working at the SS Kresge Company which was part of the K Mart chain of discount stores. It was an extremely low paying minimum wage job. I had been reeled in by the typical manager trainee spiel lure. 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. I spent almost four hours daily commuting; my commute would consist of a small walk, two subways and a long bus ride each way. Eventually, the inability of both me and my boss to have even 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. 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 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 it was a 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. He told me that 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 told 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.

It was August 1979; I had been out of school for just over a year and had already worked two different jobs. I was now unemployed and looking for my third full-time job. I had literally no savings along with no job prospects on my horizon, but I needed to find a job quickly. After having worked both general and sales help jobs, I knew which one 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 or washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen. Those jobs were also always readily available should I ever become desperate for a job.

I just assumed I would be 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, mostly to just browse and look around. I also kept an ongoing mental list in my head of all the things I would buy if and when I ever had the money. I must say it was a rather large and 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 about 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 then 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 I lived in a housing project with my mother. I had no wardrobe whatsoever and I basically wore either my navy or my 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 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 working both evenings and Saturdays. A couple days each week I would start at 1 pm and work until the store closed. Before those afternoon shifts I absolutely loved taking the bus up to play morning shinny at Chesswood Arenas just north of Yorkdale. I was also quickly making many new friends with my new work colleagues. There was one female part-time colleague who I met on my very first day that I would end up absolutely falling head over heels for. And little did I know on that first day just how big of a role we would each play in each other's life.

At Collegiate, I was being introduced to a variety of new sports that I had never played before. I played fast pitch softball on the store team and weekly flag football games during the football season. I also tried my hand at golf, tennis and downhill skiing. My days of playing road hockey were officially over because I was now playing so much ice hockey.

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. Just like me, my old Witness friends were also moving on with their lives. Some 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 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.