A lifetime of work is usually credited to someone who has been in one field for his entire lifetime. This accomplishment can be credited to scientists, poets, artists and other creative types. You may seem surprised that I put scientists in the same creative category as poets and artists. It takes a lot of creative thinking to come up with DNA or atoms.

However, a normal person like me does have a body of work that is not creative. I have been working since I was fourteen years old. But, my work life is wide and varied. Because I enjoy fiction and I enjoy writing, I hope that some day I can use these ordinary jobs in my writings.

If not? Well, at least I enjoyed the differences and changes of each job.

Stuffed Animals

My mother bought a stuffed dinosaur business when I was about fourteen years old. I learned the entire business, which included drawing the pattern on the cloth (fake fur), cutting the cloth, and sewing the dinosaurs. Next we stuffed them and glued black eyes on the sides of the head. Once they were finished, mother would sell them to the curio shops in Vernal, Utah.

This job was one of the hardest jobs I have ever done. By the time I left home at twenty-one, mother was making about five thousand of these cute critters a year.

Cashier at a Restaurant

This job I took at the age of sixteen. Because I was under eighteen, my boss was able to pay me half the minimum wage. It was a little over a dollar fifty. I think I lasted about six months at this job. And, it wasn’t worth it for the price I was paid.

Typesetter

At eighteen, I found a job as a typesetter. This job is now obsolete because typesetting is done by computers now. Originally, this skill was specialized. I used a typesetter to set the material according to the design specifications of our graphic artist. I worked with three different companies as a typesetter. In the 1980’s before desktop computers, it was a well-paying job.

My first job as a typesetter I worked on a small nickel-ad paper. Once I had finished typesetting, I would put the paper to bed, which means I put the ads on the graphic sheets. We had someone else print the paper. We had a Tuesday morning deadline. Sometimes I would work over 24 hours to get the paper ready for printing.