The Reward is Finally Here!

My daughter has become the carrot at the end of the stick.

If I am having a tough day at work, I think of her. I know once I get through the day, she is waiting for me, smiling and laughing. In fact, some days I even leave a little earlier than normal so I can see her sooner.

Yes, the REWARD is finally here. She finally knows who I am and smiles and laughs with me. I was a little worried for awhile. Drowning in spit up, living life in a sleep-deprived fog and holding my nose through bouts of explosive ass disorder, I was convinced this whole baby thing was not my cup of Similac. I kept looking at her for some sort of confirmation that she even knew I was her daddy, let alone that she wanted to establish a long-term relationship with me. All I got were blank stares and scream-cries. It was like telling Alec Baldwin to turn off his I-phone.

But now we have turned a corner. The Gregg household is looking up. Sydney is smiling and laughing. She particularly likes when I recite her ABCs to her or when I sing Christmas carols while forcing her to dance along. But her favorite is when I move her legs in bicycle fashion and sing a song about “riding the bike to see the daddy!”

Her smile melts my heart.

So, it is easy to think of her as I navigate through another work day. She makes it all that much easier.

It is not that I don’t like work. I have the work ethic of a pack mule. I earn two weeks of vacation a year and have six saved up as of right now. That means in the five years I have worked at my current job, I have taken less than a week of vacation a year.

It has been like this since I was 13 years old. Yes, you heard that right – I was putting in 60-hour work weeks when most kids were discovering their Atari video games.

We had a sweet lady in our neighborhood, Ann, who put a crew of kids together to help sell products made by the blind. These were brooms, lint brushes and ironing board covers made by blind folks that she would buy and then resell at a higher price, pocketing the profit. She supported people who needed it and made a living at the same time.

Members of her crew received $1 for every item sold. She’d pick us all up in the morning, drive to a random Ohio city within a three-hour drive and put us out for the day. We would walk the streets all day, going door-to-door and trying to convince little old ladies that straw brooms and silicon ironing board covers were exactly what they needed to make their life complete.

I set about every sales record that existed. I was a sweet little blonde kid with big blue eyes who had somehow learned the gift of gab at a young age. I averaged 30-40 sales a day when 20 was considered good. I once sold 60 items in one day working the streets of a town called Shelby! We did this six days a week, so I was raking in about $200 a week, tax free. I paid for everything myself. My food, my school clothes, my trips to Chi-Chis with my girlfriend. (What the hell ever happened to Chi-Chis? THAT was a good Mexican restaurant.)

So, Ann picked me up about 7 a.m. every morning and dropped me off at about 10 every night. That’s 15 hours, six days a week. My work ethic was formed in 90-degree summer days carrying brooms and lint brushes for blocks on end.

I could write a book about those days. Six teenage boys with raging hormones packed into a car all day. You can imagine the discussions and fights that took place. The crew would change off and on, but it was always full of characters. We actually had a kid who freaking shot and killed a girl! He didn’t show up for work one day and we were like, “Where is Harold?” Ann says, “Well, he was playing with a gun last night and accidentally killed a 10-year-old girl.” “Well that sucks. Can we stop at McDonald’s for breakfast?”

Seriously, we were a bunch of idiot kids whose biggest concern was getting a hot, bikini-clad 17-year-old to answer the door on one of our sales calls and invite us in, 1970s-porn style. Some of the things we said were extremely disrespectful to 50-something Ann. That poor, sweet woman eventually gave up on us and let her husband take us out.

He turned out to be one of us. He’d jump in with stories of his own youthful indiscretions, always one-upping us. And he was addicted to gambling. He’d spend $50 a day on the lottery! He even started playing it for us, taking our money and putting it down on our birthdays or whatever. I’m pretty sure that was illegal. Sure, I was only 15, but what the heck, give me $5 on 7-1-0. Too bad Powerball wasn’t around back then.

Bob was great. He even taught me to drive. But he eventually drove me out of the broom business. He got this idea that, instead of driving to a new town every day, we would rent rooms at a fleabag motel and stay somewhere for a week, working out of the motel. Think Bates Motel. Think roach motel. Think gunshot wounds.

Not only were the motels nasty, but this led to free time. We started playing late-night card games. I loved playing cards – until I caught Bob cheating! I caught him dealing off the bottom of the deck in a game involving 15-year-olds! Out of respect for him – and probably a little fear -- I never said a word. But I never played cards again and that was my last summer selling brooms.

But the hard work continued in college. I worked at a huge water park. It was a ski resort in the winter and then converted to a water park. We spent the first couple weeks of May getting the place ready for the summer. About two weeks into the job, I was using a sledge hammer to tear up concrete filled with ribar. Believe me when I tell you this is manly work, the kind of work your Uncle Phil does. The kind of work you went to college to avoid.

We were planning on going to an INXS concert that night and I wanted to get out early. The boss said I could leave when the concrete was ripped up. So I was working my ass off. The boss – an Uncle Phil-type -- even said something like, “You must really want to go to that concert, I am not sure I have ever seen anyone rip up concrete that fast.” I could tell he meant it. Now when a manly man tells that to a college kid, that is quite a compliment.

So, I am plugging away when the BIG BOSS drives up on his four wheeler. This guy was a NAZI who rode around the park all day yelling at workers to ensure everything was exactly as he wanted it. You know the type. We have all had them in our past. They are mad at the world and seem to get a kick out of bossing people around.

When he pulled up, I didn’t notice him. This happened to coincide with me needing a short break from the back-breaking work I was performing. So I stopped and leaned on my sledge hammer for a few seconds.

“You’re not going to get much work done standing there all day,” he said to me with his smug attitude.

Now, if you know me, you know I am the reason anger management classes were invented. I have a switch that goes from zero to 60 in a twitch.

I turned around and yelled, “Fuck you, Art! I have been working my ass off all day. You have no fucking idea what you are talking about.”  I glared, seething, waiting for him to say anything. Mostly I expected him to utter “You’re fired. Pack your shit and get out of here.” My weasly little boss – not Art, the middle manager -- just stared, his mouth agape. He later told me he was too flabbergasted to talk. 

Art stared at me but never said a word. He got back on his four-wheeler and drove away. I couldn’t believe it. My boss couldn’t believe it. Two hours later, I was singing along to Listen Like Thieves with Michael Hutchence and the band.

The next day, I found out I was banished to the campgrounds for the rest of the summer. Instead of a great job like handing inner tubes to bikini-clad water parkers, I would help build the park’s campground. I was stuck doing Uncle Phil-type work all summer. But I had legendary status among my teen-age co-workers as the guy who cussed out Art.

To this day, if I met Art out on the street, I am pretty convinced I would challenge him to a fight.

But not every job I have had has been back breaking or filled with long hours. One summer, my friend and I decided to drive to California and live for the summer. We had visions of Beach Boy songs dancing in our heads. We figured we would live with a relative for a couple of weeks until we found jobs and picked up our first pay checks. Then, we would move into a beachfront apartment.

Well, that happened. But not without a few detours.

We arrived in Burbank, California to find no beach in sight. In fact, it was all concrete jungle. We were staying with my aunt and grandma, sleeping on the living room floor. That first night, we went out for dinner and a few drinks to celebrate our safe arrival. The next morning, at 7 a.m., we were greeting by my grandma popping the tab on her Pabst Blue Ribbon and saying, “You boys better get up and get out there and get you a job. You are not going to be lying around this house all day.” Right. Our stay with grandma wouldn’t last long.

We somehow made it down to Oceanside, which had a real beach and looked like what you would expect of California. We picked up jobs as construction workers. The guy told us to show up at 8 a.m. the next day. So we happily drove the two hours back to grandma’s so we could get a good night’s sleep and a shower before starting our new job.

The next day, we left at 5 a.m.. Unfortunately, we had no idea about I-5 traffic. California is absolutely freaking crazy when it comes to traffic! Our two-hour drive took three hours and 15 minutes. We were 15 minutes late. We walk in and the guy says, “I have no work for you.” Welcome to the real world, college boys!

We decided to stay in Oceanside and find jobs. Grandma’s lectures were too brutal. We lived in our car, parking it at a busy rest stop. Luckily, it was one of those old 1970s models, so it was pretty big and had long seats that we could sleep across. At this point, we had no money, so a hotel was out of the question. In fact, just eating was an adventure. We found a place that sold hamburgers for a quarter and would order four for a meal. The rest stop actually had a food cart where the food was free. Well, they had a suggested “donation” jar, but I was sleeping in a car and washing my hair in a rest-stop sink, so they weren’t getting a donation from me.

My buddy, Kevin, found a job as a roofer. I found a job signing people up to be solicited to attend “college.” California has a million of those “colleges” that prey on people who don’t know better. “Get your degree from ITT!” “Learn to be a nurse in 13 easy years!” Holy Rosetta Stone, how do people fall for this stuff?

I worked for a company that sold names and phone numbers to those colleges, so they could call people personally and make their sales pitch. I earned $2 for every valid name and phone number I turned in. This is where my training as a broom salesman came in handy. All I had to do was get someone to trust me enough to give me their phone number.

I got the great idea that I would stand in front of the unemployment office all day. People actually thought I worked for the unemployment office, so when I asked, “Are you interested in a good-paying career? Let me sign you up.” they felt they had to say yes or they would lose their unemployment checks. Yeah, that’s right. I’m TRICKY.

Kevin would leave at 7 a.m. for his Uncle Phil-type job. I would leave at 8, so I was still sleeping when he left. When he got home at 4:30, I had already been at the beach for a couple of hours. If I didn’t collect a $300 paycheck every week, he would never know I had a job.

So yeah, I could write a book about my jobs. Nobody would buy it, but I could write it. Hell, Harold is probably doing time in some prison right now. I could probably sell one to him just so he had something to kill the time.

My point is, Sydney is a darling right now. If she is not crying because she is tired or sleepy, she is smiling and laughing. This is what I signed up for. Brooke kept telling me it would get better, and it has.

So, even though I am used to hard work and I enjoy the job I have now, I am finding my work ethic to be challenged by this little 12-pound spit-up machine. There are some days I can’t wait to get home to see her, so I might sneak out a little earlier than normal. That drive home is filled with anticipation of opening the door and taking her from my wife for those 15 minutes of “smiley” time that make the whole day worthwhile.

She’s the carrot that keeps this donkey pulling the cart.