I was at a pal’s house this week.
His senior-in-high-school kid was in the backyard with a handful of buddies whacking some golf balls into a big net. A great kid. I’ve known him since he was a squirt. Always nice. Full of good looks and charm.
I offered him $70 to take me to the airport the next morning.
He looked up after a nice, high-cotton swing with his brand new TaylorMade Qi4D Shadowfall driver and Fujikura Ventus TR Red VeloCore+ shaft—and said, “I’ll pass.”
I asked the other boys.
Head shakes.
I was driving home thinking about it.
Those boys never got the greatest gift I got as a kid.
First jobs.
I had to work as a kid. It was part of the deal.
If I wanted that snappy driver, or anything else under the headline of ‘fun’ or ‘yummy,’ I was paying for it.
Out of my paperboy monies. Grass cutting monies. Caddying monies. Busboy monies. Shoveling snow monies.
If you’re between 45 and 105, I’ll bet the ranch you know what I’m talking about.
Those kids don’t know how great it was to get handed $3.50 on a boiling-hot summer day by an old man neighbor behind his aluminum screen door after cutting his lawn.
Of the feeling of just dripping in sweat with clips of yellow grass stuck to your face—as generations of mosquitoes have dinner on your arms.
Or folding up and rubber-banding newspapers in the black of the morning —and shoving ‘em all in a huge basket on the front of your Schwinn one-speeder. And before the birds sing their tunes, making a sport of winging ’em on front porches—dreaming you’re Rick Mount at Purdue.
They never shoveled thick, wet snow with a knucklehead buddy on a driveway in the spank of winter. Or know the high of sweat that’s dripping and freezing at the same time on your face, or why you need to grip your hands in a fist under sopping wet gloves—so the tips of your frozen fingers don’t crack.
.
Or the 6th-grade rite-of-passage of barely lugging two 35-pound golf bags on your shoulders—a good fifteen yards behind a foursome of irritated country clubbers that think your first name is “Caddy.”
Seems like yesterday. Eighth grade, dreaming about what all the good players on our basketball team had.
Black Converse All-Star gym shoes.
At the time, $13 plus tax, at Montgomery Wards in town. It took me a couple weeks of jobs to save up.
When I tied those shoes for the first time, I was tying up a lot more than those shoes.
Tying up a little dream, a little ‘action plan’ with some bumps along the way.
Felt good tying those shoes.
But we all know the pressure the world is putting on us to give our kids the best.
To be lessoned-up in sports. In academics. In dance. In music. Coaches for everything.
Grammar and high schoolers are running a million miles per hour, cramming life in from the second they wake up until they fall asleep.
They don’t have time to work.
As parents, we’re the captains of their grade school and high school ship.
Not them.
Sometimes captains have to make tough decisions that annoy the hell out of the crew.
Maybe architect Mies Van der Rohe was right. Maybe sometimes “less is more.”
More time to breathe. To think. To hustle. To dream.
Those boys in the backyard? All great kids.
They’re not passing on $70.
They’re passing on a richness of experiences they can’t ever go back and recapture again.
I asked my buddy’s kid if he wouldn’t mind if I took a swing with his new, snappy driver.
As I stood up to the ball, he said he’s probably getting an extra 30 yards off the tee.
I took a swing. Sure felt good.
I smiled at the kid, handed him back his driver.
I thought about my first jobs.
Those beautiful, wondrous first jobs.
Probably gave me an extra 30 yards off the tee.
.
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Jimmy Dunne is a modern-day Renaissance Man; a hit songwriter with songs on 28 million hit records; songs, scores, and themes in over a thousand television episodes and many hit films; a screenwriter and producer of hit television shows; an award-winning book author; an entrepreneur—and his town’s “Citizen of the Year.” Reach out to him at j@jimmydunne.com.
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