Odd Jobs

Yesterday we got our new sink put in. Noah was fascinated with the whole thing. I suddenly started thinking about how maybe Noah should learn plumbing and Jonah should learn electrical work. I don't want me kids to only be plumbers and electricians. Of course I would want my kids to go to MIT and Harvard (Noah and Jonah respectively.) But there's nothing wrong with learning a skill that can make you some money. during the summer and weekends while you are studying.
And I could be their little secretary and take care that end of it. If I had had such a skill, all those wealthy friends I made in high school would have been more useful to me, I could have done work on their houses.
I remember several conversations in high school with teachers that talked about class and that sort of hierarchy. One example was a poorer kid tells his friends that his dad lost his job. A richer kid says the poorer kids dad can work for his dad. The poorer kid is now supposedly angry that the richer kid said this.
I didn't really understand the point of the story much. I mean I knew what they were saying, but my father was dead and our family had never had someone who had a job like the poorer kid's dad was being offered through the richer kid. It sounded like a great opportunity to me.
Another example is one kid who was under 14 or something like that needed someone over 16 or something like that to see him off at the airport. He was, he put it, "Smarter and bigger than most of the people on that plane." He was indeed over six feet tall and probably wider than four feet in his shoulders. And he was quite smart as well.. and rich. They would pay what sounded like a ridiculous amount of money just to sit there. After all, I was heading home too and I would have to take the bus to the airport too. It was just a matter of staying their a little longer
I quickly volunteered when I had the chance thinking I might be too late to get the job, but actually nobody else had been interested. The teacher setting up the job said, "and you don't feel like its too much to ask to have to wait with him etc."
"You're paying me right?" People didn't understand then that I was from the projects. Not a neighborhood of lesser economic wealth. PROJECTS. and my mother was sick.

Of course now sometimes people offer me similar jobs and I have to turn them down. I even feel bad that I can't help them. But I simply can't. It's true that I don't need the money, but the real reason is I have two kids. I can't go somewhere or drive somewhere out of the way (even if I could drive) because Jonah has to come with me and Noah has to be picked up from school, and Grace who has the real job needs to focus on her real job. People think I have a lot of free time. I do and I don't. When they are playing at the playground, that's sort of like free time, except I have to keep my eyes on both of them at the same time and spot them often for climbing dangerous things and also I play with them. So even though what  I'm doing might be enjoyable, I also am required to do it. Otherwise things much more terrible than getting fired could happen.