TRYING TO LOOK BUSY AT THE LOT
Michelle Lalonde, copy editor
The great thing about my first summer job, which was as a parking lot attendant in the dying downtown core of my hometown when I was 14, was that every subsequent job I got — lifeguard, waitress, journalist — seemed infinitely more glamorous and fascinating by comparison.
This was in St. Catharines, Ont. Our neighbours owned a tennis specialty store downtown called The Racquet Shoppe and its adjacent parking lot. (Why the archaic spelling of “shop”? I would have many quiet hours to wonder.)
Like the downtowns of many North American cities in the 1970s, ours was dying mainly because a huge covered mall had opened across town. I doubt the parking fees even covered my wage, which was below minimum.
The job involved sitting in a tiny wooden booth, just big enough for me, one chair and an AM radio. My job was to hand out tickets to the very occasional customer, and tell them they had to pay the clerk at the Racquet Shoppe. I knew this job was cooler than a paper route, or babysitting, but only slightly.
Very rarely, somebody from school would happen by. I would try to look cool and busy, which was difficult. They would inevitably ask me whether I was allowed to move the cars around. “Nah. I don’t have my licence.” Saying this was, of course, humiliating.
I was allowed to read a book if it was raining, but mostly I sat there listening to the radio. I credit that job with my inability to forget the lyrics to all the saddest songs of the late 1970s. Songs like When I Need You, All by Myself and Beth still bring me back to that little booth, singing along with the radio at the top of my lungs, often with tears in my eyes. This was occasionally embarrassing, when a customer would surprise me by knocking on the door.
I don’t think kids today, with their cellphones and unlimited Internet access, get to experience that level of excruciating, character-building boredom and loneliness. The poor things.