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I recently spent time emptying my phone to restore some much needed memory. 

I discovered it was full while trying to capture my wife on the best and longest waterski run she'd ever done.  She had just gotten up when I was rudely alerted: "iPhone memory full."  I spent the next five minutes pretending to film her while she yelled over the boat motor and waves multiple times "you're getting this, right?!!"  With me enthusiastically lying back “Oh yeah!  You look great baby!”

The waterlogged wheels in my head whirred wildly trying to figure out how to deftly deflect the blame for this.  Sadly the 85 different videos of our niece and nephew saying "guess what, chicken butt!" over and over and the 77 videos of Emmett sleeping in different positions with varying snore sounds that she already knew about, were not helping my defense.

I ended up blaming our 19-year-old niece Hannah who is living with us for the summer, (don't even try to judge me, we chose to not have kids, so there is no point in having a teenager live with you for three months if you can't blame her for stuff).

While clearing out the phone, I found a picture of a list I'd made after graduating college years ago of every job I've ever held since childhood.  Maia’s response to this was, “Well I hope that was worth missing my Olympic-like run.”

Note to Reader – staying up for 5 minutes before you face-plant into your own ski tips is hardly the stuff of champions.  The memory that one note might have freed up would not have extended the video for a fraction of a nano-second.... but I was still in the doghouse (she didn’t buy the our-niece-did-it defense) so I dutifully hung my head in shame.

I’m still cleaning out the phone and just in case this one document is the difference between capturing my wife doing a triple-axel (she doesn’t skate but I’m taking no chances), I’m deleting it and saving it for myself here:

Jr. High & High School:
Age 13-15 – A&W waitress & Root Beer Bear - $1.85/hr – Summers.  I only fainted once (the bear costume was 85 lbs).
Age 16-18 – Lifeguard at the Public Pool – $3.85/hr. – Summers.  Best tan ever!
Age 16-18 – Swim Lesson Teacher – Summers.  Two-year-olds to Ten year-olds.  I didn’t list my salary, all I wrote was “Not Worth It!”
Age 16-18 – Detassling Corn and Riding Beans - $100 per acre - Summers.  Riding beans was easy, you sat on a seat attached to the front of a tractor while the farmer drove you up and down the rows.  Success was not falling off and getting run over by the tractor and/or not killing the actual crops by spraying the wrong plants.  Detassling was wearing long sleeved flannel shirts and jeans in 100+ Iowa humidity while walking up and down mile-long rows pulling out the tassels.  Success was not having heat stroke or finding bugs in your bra when you got home.
Age 16 – Bagel Stand in the Mall - $3.70/hr – Part-time during the school year – I cut myself on the bagel slicer and got blood all over the cream cheese on my first day.
Age 17 – Hardee’s – Part time during the school year.  I was fired for “stealing” a hamburger.   What I was really fired for was refusing to rat out my friends because we all took the frozen patties out to the lake after hours and had weekend barbeques with them.  I just got caught.  So unfair.
Age 18 – Public Library – The quietest place in town vs. me.  The ironies abound. 

College:
Telemarketer for Mothers Against Drunk Driving:   My first taste of promoting something over the phone.  One person was named “Top Dog” each week and had their name written on a giant plastic Snoopy's belly.  On my last day they just gave him to me.
Telemarketing Selling Credit Card Insurance:   The pattern of getting things done over the phone is forming.  They didn’t have a Snoopy but, as the least-hung-up-on employee, they played my recorded phone conversations for new trainees. 
Vito’s Waitress:  Vito’s was an on-campus bar.  Déjà vu. I got fired for giving free pitchers of beer to my friends.  I am slow of study.  Clearly.
Golf Course Bartender:  I got this gig by lying in the interview.  They asked what my handicap was and, not knowing the lingo and having never golfed a day in my life, I took a stab and confidently said “8.”  They were impressed and I was hired.  I only knew how to make drinks that were literally in the name (i.e. Rum & Coke and beer).  After that my repertoire was exhausted so I would just tell people we were out of whatever they were ordering.  I didn’t get many tips.
Golf Course Beer-Cart Girl:   My bartending skills were not appreciated, however my social skills were. I was "promoted" to beer-cart girl.  I would fill the cooler with beer, candy bars and cigarettes and fill the insulated course bag with the hot dogs they sold, made sure the cart was charged and drive from hole to hole.  I did well in this job until accidentally driving the cart into a water hazard.  In my defense I also didn’t know what a bunch of people screaming “FOUR!!!!” at me meant and I panicked. 
Summer Intern At the Algona Upper Des Moines Newspaper:  I got to be a real reporter which I thought was going to be my career.  I reported on school closings, random happenings about town and took over for the editor, my mom, (I still support nepotism) in writing her weekly column called Ink Spots.  So, she got a break for the summer and I got to build my resume. 

All the on-staff reporters traded off having to take the police scanner home in case of breaking news.  In our small town of Algona, that usually meant a report of “a suspicious noise” which almost always ended up to be a raccoon going through a trash bin outside a restaurant.  On one of my nights, the scanner came to life with people shouting back and forth yelling codes and numbers.  I grabbed my reporter’s notebook and pencil and the paper’s camera and rushed out to capture a barn that was on fire.  I snapped from every angle and interviewed the head firefighter.  I was confident this would be on the front page above the fold and I would have an award winning by-line.  That feeling went away the next day when the staff (and real) photographer came out of the darkroom, handed me back the camera and said, “Next time put film in it.”

Turns out the only jobs I was ever really successful doing were promoting things over the phone and writing.  The jobs where I had the most fun were lifeguarding and being the University of Iowa’s beer-cart girl. 

I have the former covered.  The latter will have to wait until I can find a golf course with a swimming pool where they don’t mind a challenged driver and someone who gives drinks and food away for free.

My IPhone free space now reads a number and letters I don’t understand but, am told by my twenty-something office manager that this means I’m good to go.  So I’m ready for the next video moment when it shows itself. 

Emmett has a new snore sound I’ve been dying to capture.