Narrative Essay
Working at Thirteen
I had just turned thirteen when my dad flew to Phoenix, Arizona on a business trip. The purpose of this trip was to receive proper training on how to own and operate a multi-surface restoration business. This was little more than a glorified name for a tile and carpet cleaning trade. After receiving training and purchasing equipment, he came home to Ocala, Florida and proceeded with all of the legalities of starting his company. When it came time to choose an “affordable helper”, he asked me and my brothers, “Who will help me with my business?”
The reason he first asked me and my brothers was because we didn’t have much money, and the best alternative to hired help was his children. The reason he was able to have us work with him is because the child labor laws in Florida are extremely lax. They let anyone of your family members work for you, even without pay. Take my case for example; I was only thirteen, but because I was homeschooled, I could work whenever I wanted for free as long as I got my education.
I was the only one of my brothers to step up. I did this for multiple reasons, though I may not have fully understood them at the time. One, I thought it would be a fun opportunity to learn a trade. Two, I wanted to spend more time with my dad, and there was no shortage of time spent with him during those two years.
At first, the most difficult thing I had to learn was juggling working fulltime with schoolwork. The fact that I was home schooled helped a lot. I had to plan out all of my school for the week, and get up really early in order to get anything done. I learned at a very early age how to be responsible about doing things on my own. A typical day for me went as follows: I woke up at 5:30 A.M. and made myself breakfast, and then I played video games for about an hour. After that, I did my schoolwork until 7:30 A.M. and made lunch for me and my dad, and then stocked the trailer. The typical work day was from 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M., and when I got home I would usually clean out the waste tank and wash all the towels that we used. When I got home, I would usually do more schoolwork before bed.
When we first started, business was slow, so we had to do a lot of door to door marketing. When word got around that there was a new solution to all your hard surface restoration needs, business finally began to pick up. At first I started with setting up the site for a demo, and then wrapping up. But as I began to learn more, I quickly took on more responsibility. I learned how to seal grout lines, concrete, natural stone, and even learned how to scotch-guard carpet and upholstered furniture. But the best part was that I soon learned how to clean tile, concrete, and natural stone.
Even though fun, working fulltime had its price. It was almost as though I had to grow up at a young age. The more I worked, the less time I had to spend with friends, and for a fourteen year old boy, friends are important. Fortunately, since I had been homeschooled, friends were not as important to me as they might have been to other kids my age (though I still felt pretty bad when I came home and found out my brothers had gone swimming at a friend’s house without me). Sometimes though, the pressure I was put under got to me, and I just felt like giving up helping my dad so I could be normal. I would think that there wasn’t any need to do anything, and why couldn’t I just have fun like all my friends? I felt a hunger in my life for something more, and realized that nothing on this earth could fill that hole. The thing that changed these feelings, that gave me a purpose, was discovering the need for Jesus Christ in my life. And so begins a whole new chapter in my life, where everything I did was done for a new purpose.
To explain how I came to this realization, I would first have to explain my previous experiences with God. I was raised in the church, and by the time I had turned six, my Dad was beginning to have doubts about his faith. When I was seven, he denounced his faith in Jesus Christ, and began studying Judaism. After that, I never really gave much thought to the existence of God, except that he was somewhere in Heaven, and just wanted us to follow the Ten Commandments. So I tried not stealing, lying, coveting and murdering. But I still had this big hole in my life, and that’s when I was told that it was not a set of rules and regulations, but a relationship that I needed. It was at that time in my life, when my Dad came home one night after gambling away $400 that he told my family that God was working on his heart. That night, I gave my life to Jesus Christ, which was the best thing that I have ever done. I actually became a new person, and I could feel the difference in my life. From that point on, God had been working on my heart and I no longer felt useless or hated my life. The interesting thing was that it used to bother me when my dad did work for free, but not anymore. After I started attending a church, my Dad offered to clean the church floors and seats for free. But the real change that occurred was my ability to love people, even if I didn’t like them that much.
Around this time, my Dad began experimenting with different avenues of hard surface restoration. One thing we tried was concrete staining and polishing. Although it didn’t work out the way he planned, it was a valuable learning experience nonetheless. Not long afterward, and well into my second year of working with my dad, he began to feel God calling him in a new direction. So he began to do some research into working for the company that he bought his business package from, and decided that we were going to move to Phoenix. The interesting part about this was that it seemed as though everything started to fall into place in order for us to move. We were able to sell the business, find an affordable moving truck to drive across country, and even find a house to rent – all within two weeks after deciding to move! So in the beginning of February 2008, I said goodbye to all of my extended family and friends, and we began the long drive to Phoenix.
When I mentioned earlier that I didn’t fully understand my reasons for helping my Dad, I can honestly say that it was an incredibly smart thing to do. Not only did I learn invaluable knowledge of the tile and carpet cleaning industry, but I now possessed the knowledge to possibly start my own business. The neat part about everything I learned was that it helped me to get my first paying job - working for the company that my Dad bought his equipment from. Now, as I look back on my life, I think I can honestly say that I am satisfied with what I did. As a good friend of mine once said: “It is our experiences that make us who we are, without them, we’d all be robots.”
