My parents tried hard to instill in us kids a love of work.
Well, maybe that was their goal, but in reality the resulting love for work was more like a love for the things we could buy with the money working provided.
Not that any of us, especially as children, earned a lot, but things didn't cost all that much in those days either.
I remember selling Cloverine Salve door-to-door for twenty-five cents a container.
We got to keep a nickel from each sale.
We also carried a supply of ladies hankies that had a butterfly my mother had crocheted in each corner.
These sold for $1 and we got a whole quarter for selling one of these.
Later, I graduated to baby sitting my cousins, hoeing beets, picking beans, strawberries, filberts, and walnuts, each in their season and working in the woods with my dad.
For one summer, I helped care for an elderly lady who was confined to a wheelchair.
My dad sometimes took us to the woods to peel Cascara bark which we dried and then sold to a man who sent it off to a company that used it in making laxatives.
I learned to type in my sophomore year of high school and answered an ad in the local paper to type a manuscript for a man who paid me five cents a page.
I'm sure I was underpaid, but nothing could shake the feeling of pride I had-I was a "paid typist.
" So, over the years, I have learned that there are jobs, and there are jobs.
Some are just plain work, while others are activities that help build your self-esteem.
Some pay less and some pay more.
In the end though, especially during tough times like many of us are facing today, almost any job is better than no job at all.
Recently, I have heard of people turning their noses up at offers for honest employment.
They have excuses like, "I don't like that kind of work," "The job doesn't pay as much as my old job," "I don't want to work with another person I know that works there," "I'd rather starve than work in a fast food place," or "The job is too hard.
" You probably remember, as I do, your mother telling you to eat all the food on your plate, because there were children in other countries who were starving? I never could figure out what one thing had to do with the other, but, in the case of getting a job, the old saying might be true.
If you are unemployed, you need to take an opportunity for work when it is offered to you because, if you don't, there are plenty of other unemployed people out there who will.
Suppose you don't like a particular kind of work or you think the work is too hard? A job, especially these days, is a job.
Grab it while you have a chance and worry about getting something that suits you better later on.