Strawberry Fields For Never

 What job would you find impossible to do no matter how much it pays?

Farm worker. It is one of the most important jobs in the world as it is how vegetables and fruits get to our table. When I was a teenager my friend Jean and I picked strawberries one morning at a local family’s farm. The couple of hours we picked felt like forever! I had already started babysitting for a neighbor, watching her three little ones (under eight years old), did a little waitressing at a small restaurant, and often babysat my four younger siblings. That was all a piece of cake compared to two or three hours on a summer morning crouched low in a row of strawberries.

Our goal was to fill small 2-gallon buckets with the strawberries, being careful not to pull up the plant. We were paid fifty cents per bucket. We were paid in cash.

One other job I would find impossible to do would be working in a restaurant kitchen. The chaos that reigns during rush times would have my head spinning. I think I would sit down in the middle of the floor and cry or go out the back door and never come back. Add in the imagined heat of a kitchen and I might suffer heat stroke before I was able to flee.

When it is all said and done, if I needed money and those were the only jobs available, I would give both my best effort.

Thank goodness I do not need to do either one today.