A Dirty Education!

It had been nearly10 years since I had been in school so I had forgotten how much fun registration for college could be. No computerized registration in 1991. Nope, standing in the gym at MC (affectionately known by some as The Great Golden Boob) going up and down stairs praying the classes I needed were not filled.

I was also nearly 10 years younger and had smoked a thousand more cigarettes than I had at that time. The trek up the 3 flights of stairs to my very first class at 8:00 on Monday morning had me believing I was going to die! I couldn’t breathe when I made it to the top! I know the kids in the class must have thought I was some heavy-breathing pervert because it took me about 15 minutes to breathe normally. And speaking of the kids, there is nothing like being the oldest person in a college class with 18 -22 year olds to make you feel really bad...really bad. I was only 29 but I felt like I was old enough to be their grandmother.

I changed my major, that had previously been Theatre, to a new major being offered, Public Relations. It was still under the Communications department which also meant I could do two theatre plays and have a theatre minor since I had previously accrued so many hours in the department. Wow! Going back to school, doing something positive for me and my family AND getting to act again! The Lord knew what he was doing!

But, there was still the question of how we were going to eat. My mom could have probably supported me and Robert but there was no way I was going to ask her to do that. I had cashed in my small 401(k) of just a couple of thousand dollars. Obviously, I had been more concerned about keeping my lights on when living with Bob than planning for retirement which seemed like a lifetime away. Hmmmm...what to do, what to do? A close friend and co-worker who happened to live down the street from us asked me if I would be interested in cleaning her family's house once a week. Once, as an anniversary present, I had cleaned their house while they were on a short trip. Apparently she liked the work I did. They never asked how much I would charge, they just offered me $25.00 per week and they wanted me to clean every Friday. Sounded good to me at the time. Also, my mother had kept their child at our house since he was 6 weeks old when my friend went back to work. He was about a year old at this time.

After about the second time, it dawned on me that since I was coming to clean their house, they did nothing, do you hear me? N-O-T-H-I-N-G as far as even straightening up their house from week to week. When they would pick their baby up from our house every afternoon, my mother would have the baby's dirty clothes from the day tied neatly in a plastic grocery bag. Each Friday there would be 5 bags from the past 5 workdays laying untouched on their dining room table. Oh, did I tell you they wanted me to do their laundry, as well?  That $25.00 per week was beginning to look very meager to me. I would walk in every Friday and in their spare bedroom where there was no furniture, there would be no less than 8 piles of separated laundry to be done. Yes, I said eight piles! Eight full loads of clothes to do in one day all the while cleaning the house that no one had lifted a finger in since I was there last.

There was also an issue of the dishes. You will not believe this, but it's the truth: I had baked a chocolate cake and we sent a few pieces home with them. The next Monday when surveying the double sink filled with dishes I washed piece by piece and at the very bottom of the pile, the very last dish, was our plate we had sent home with them the previous Friday. The nastiness was unbelievable to me.

One afternoon when she and her husband came to pick up their baby they asked if we could sit down and talk. The kids were playing so it was just mom, me and them. Her first mistake was letting her husband do the talking. He was very smart in technology but could really barely make understandable sentences. He wanted to know why I left the dryer drying the last load of clothes on Friday afternoons. Why had I not finished my job? Ya'll I lost my shit right then and there. I read them for filth (just a figure of speech but strangely appropriate)! I told them NO ONE in their right mind would clean that nasty house and wash their clothes for $25.00 per week and a few other not so nice things. They left, I no longer cleaned their house, and we didn't speak for quite a while.

So, I ran an ad in the paper to not only replace that $25 and hopefully take on a couple of new clients that paid decent money for the hard work I did. The first and only call I got was from a lady in north Jackson who said she had terrible dust allergies and could no longer clean her house. I went to meet her and her family and see her house. It was in the Fondren/Old Canton Road area and was an older home but absolutely beautiful. I bonded with her, her husband and her two precious little girls right away. I would even spend the night or weekend with the children, taking Robert along, when they went out of town a couple of times. I worked for that family for 2 ½ years until I finished college. Once, when my back went out and I couldn't go to her house to work, I got a check in the mail from her for my weekly fee. The memo line in the check read "Everyone deserves sick pay".  She is still someone I consider a dear friend.

At the same time, though not for nearly as long, I worked for a well-to do family. He had a great job and she “did a lot of volunteer work'. Ahem! Anyhow, they had a huge older home that had been through many updates over the 70 or so years it had existed that, particularly the upstairs, had little tiny cubby hole rooms that made no architectural sense at all, at least to me.

They had two children, who I rarely saw, and the boy was particularly messy. He had bunk beds that were set against the wall that were a bitch to change the sheets on! The mother particularly had little shame when it came to leaving things for me to clean up. Once I found a used feminine napkin still left in her underwear left on the bathroom floor! I used tongs is all I have to say about that!

The last straw happened one morning when the father asked me to assist him in carrying a large, heavy piece of furniture up the stairs. He did this in lieu of getting his husky 14 year old son to help him. I hurt my back and that was my last day with that lovely family.

I also worked for another professional man who had a gorgeous home in north Jackson. But he didn't live there. He wanted all his friends to think he lived there judging from the number of messages displayed on his answering machine. He wanted me to think he lived there. But, I could tell a man hadn't been in a house more that once since I was there the week before. He would pull his sheets back as if he had slept in his bed, but, please! I can tell when someone has actually slept in a bed. There were never dirty dishes in either the sink or dishwasher. But most telling of all were the facts that there was no hair in the shower and there was no toothpaste spit on the mirror – two positive signs that a man lives in a house! I think he lived with his aunt.

I had a few other jobs that were no trouble at all. Nice, decent people who knew to put their maxi pads in the garbage!