Caught in the Kiddie Corral at the Mall: the young woman on the right here, singing ‘The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round’ to an audience of little people. I had never before seen a song leader/storyteller at this mall’s kiddie space so “college kid” and “summer job,” is what I was immediately thinking.
My first summer as a college kid I worked as the lone chambermaid in a seedy motel out in Aspen, a spooky place, the owner a mean and pointy-faced crone, the manager stealing from her…. Anyway that’s what the extended-stay guy on the second floor told me, a hippie who drank a lot of tea and kept a fairly neat room, which I knew since I was the one who had to clean it every other day.
But boy was I out of my element there, a pudgy and clueless innocent just trying to get into Heaven. I know I would have been devastatingly homesick – IF at 11 every morning I hadn’t popped a diet pill, prescribed for me by an actual Aspen MD, who furnished them without so much as batting an eye, without so much as checking my vital signs practically. That’s why I had all this energy. Because, I forgot to say, in addition to being a chambermaid, I also cleaned houses for three other families and walked to and from all these gigs, all of them a full five miles from where I was staying. I mean, you put a girl of 18 on speed, she can walk most anywhere.
I took those pills that whole summer and hardly ate a bite. I lost 15 pounds – which of course larded on again the second I returned to school college came back down.
So what? So I’m just saying: I always stop and pay silent tribute when I see young people in their summer jobs. I know they’re lucky to have jobs at all but sometimes – sometimes – there’s a little more to the story. 
you notice she’s in the bathroom. Colon cleanser another mirage
EXIT ONLY 