Sweet Sixteen . . . . what a joke.

I'm still mad.  Its been since 1974, and I'm still mad.  I didn't have any idea I was still mad, until today.

As a young girl, my parents raised me to be responsible, and hard working.  When i grew old enough to earn money, they had helped me find ways to do that.  I was a terrible scaredy cat and didn't like being home without an adult, so to teach me that I was safe and ok being alone, they would leave me alone with my two siblings (I'm the oldest) and go next door to visit for the evening.  They would give me my dad's watch and I would keep looking at it until either i fell asleep, or they came home.  My eyes were glued to that thing, and the darkened outside filled me with fear.  Before long I became more comfortable with it, never liking it, but adjusting.  My mom let me know when she thought I was ready to babysit away from home.

Our neighbors had three little kids, youngest being two.  They were clean freaks and everything in their house was spic and span.  I had never seen bedrooms look like that - and the furniture was beautiful.  The oldest girl had a canopy bed - every girls dream and I must say I was jealous.  The house always smelled like the original scented Pledge.  They must have dusted every day, or the mom wore it as perfume!  Even today some 30 plus years later, when I smell that smell, it takes me back to those days standing in their kitchen.  I earned a total of 50 cents an hour.  I wasn't very responsible with my earnings.  Doritos had  just come into popularity and the taco flavor was to die for.  My neighbor and I would walk to the grocery store, after I had been paid, and I would buy me a bag of Doritos.  We would eat half of them on the walk home, and then I would try to hide the rest of them from my sister.  Silly me.  She had a nose for food like a hound dog.  She would find them when i wasn't home and eat all but a few and put the bag back like it hadn't been touched.  It didn't matter where I put them, she found them!

I had all sorts of babysitting jobs, some were fun - some were just not.  Some of the places I went to were down right scary, and some felt like I lived there with them.  I did Christmas wrapping for extra money, and I would help clean for some elderly people off and on.  That was before i was sixteen.

During the months prior to my sixteenth birthday, my parents made me apply for jobs.  They had given me a 1965 green volkswagen bug to drive (more posts about this later on), and it was going to be up to me to put gas in it.  I had been given parameters to follow for this job search, and was pretty anxious to have a job and earn my own money that I could spend however, whenever I wanted.

For my birthday, a few of my friends and I had purchased tickets to the Peter Frampton Concert being held at the fairgrounds just north of our house.  I was so stinkin excited to go to this concert, and it was ON my birthday!  The day was planned, the weather was supposed to be beautiful, and I was gonna be sweet sixteen.

OR NOT.

Three days before the blessed event I received a call from Ben Franklin Store.  They wanted me to come in for an interview.  I was so excited.  My mom drove me up there as I wasn't sixteen yet and legal to drive.  I had my interview and it went well.  I was so hoping to get that job.  It paid a whopping $1.62 an hour and it was close to home and I would always be off by 7 at night.  I was anxious to hear from them.

My sixteenth birthday was on a Saturday that year.  The concert was at 2:00 in the outdoor stadium at the Fairgrounds.  It was going to be an afternoon of sun and fun and great music.   

It is Friday the day before Peter Frampton steps on the stage.  Early in the afternoon my mom tells me that I had received a phone call in the morning from Ben Franklin's.  They were offering me the job, and my mom had accepted it for me.  I got really excited - almost jumped for joy.  But then . . . . then she tells me the rest of the story;

"You have to work tomorrow from 10-5", she said, "I know it is your birthday, but they said if you didn't work tomorrow they would have to give the job to someone else.  Since you don't have another job, I told them that would be fine and you would be there by 10."

I wanted to kill her.  I wanted to set fire to Ben Franklin.  I wanted to call in sick my very first day - or just not go in at all, after all I didn't accept the job - she did for me!  I didn't do any of those things.  I did the next right thing.  I went to bed early on the night before my sweet sixteen.  I got up on that morning  -  not even wanting to hear Happy Birthday - and prepared for my first ever real job that was i was excited to get but didn't want to go to.  (That was a long un-punctuated sentence on purpose - for you to get the feel of how it is read).  AND, there was one more thing that I didn't put into the equation.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to attend the concert and had to give my birthday ticket away for someone else to enjoy.  Thats not the left out piece.  Its worse than that.

Ben Franklin was across the street from the Fairgrounds.  The very Fairgrounds where the concert was going to be.  The very concert I was missing because of Ben Franklin.  Can you say salt in the wound?  Worse than that, the whole reason they needed me to start that day was because they were anticipating a lot of traffic in the store to meet the needs of the concert goers.  Yes.  I had to wait on - help and check out those lucky ducks going to the concert on MY birthday.  Concert goers came in  buying styrofoam coolers, and personal paper fans, and soda, and candy, and bandanas, and so on and so on and so on.  Each person I checked out my resentment deepened.

At noon, my friend I was going to the concert with came to go to birthday lunch with me at the diner next door.   She almost felt guilty, but tried to buffer it with the fact that she didn't have a job and it was going to be so good that I will have that extra money.  Yeah yeah yeah.  Whatever.

It got worse.

As the day went on, and my resentments grew, and customers came in and out of the store, the Fairgrounds parking lot filled up to the brim.  The sidewalks were full of people, and for the small midwest town, it was crazy.   But then it happened.  

I had to listen to the band play while I worked.  Yes.  The doors to the store were opened, and the concert was outdoors, so the music flooded the store as if it was part of the air molecules.  It was one more grain of salt in the open gaping wound and it was getting ground in bit by bit by bit.  Happy Birthday to me.

Somehow I made it thru that day and lived in spite of it.  I never listened to Peter Frampton again, other than what was on the radio, as it caused my blood to boil all over again.  So, you say what prompts this post?

Today after returning from the doctor with Jim I needed to lay down.  There was nothing on the television and so I was left with few options.  Oprah was on and I never ever watch that show - but thought what the heck.  Shaun Cassidy was on and he performed his old songs.  Then came the Backstreet Boys (whoever they are) and tigerbeat magazine.  But then.  Then came this ole gray haired hot guy - introduced as none other . . . Peter Frampton.  YES!  He was singing all of his old songs - the ones that he sang at the concert in 1974 at the Fairgrounds in Davenport Iowa.  Those songs.  The ones that I chose to not listen to anymore because of the emotion they stirred.  Yeah that emotion - the emotion I was beginning to feel at that precise moment.

I'm still resentful.  I think I need to do something about this.  Peter Frampton sang to one of the women in the audience that was wild crazy about him and went to ALL his concerts.  I bet her mom didn't offer an employer her services on her birthday on the day of his concert now did she?  I think Peter Frampton needs to sing to me.  He needs to make it all better.  He needs to know how loyal and hurt I was, and how my parents chose to make me being a responsible accountable productive member of society over attending one of his concerts.  How dare they?  I'm sure he would see this as big of a problem as me - after all . . . 

See if I ever watch Oprah again.