First job

"Mom! There it is. My dream job." I scan the immediate area, but since I'm driving, I don't see much. "It's right there!" He points at a guy waving a sign in front of a pizza place.

"The sign guy?" I ask. "That's your perfect job?"

"Yeah, wow. I'd just have to hold that sign and pace back and forth." I don't want to discourage the boy, but I'm baffled. He continues, "Do you know how much thinking I could do? I could write stories in my head and get paid for it. You think they'd let me use a digital voice recorder?"

Now I get it. My oldest son is a writer. I don't mean he gets paid to do it. I mean he wakes up in the morning and those wheels in his head start turning and by breakfast he's added a whole new chapter to one of his countless on-going stories. Not a minute is wasted. He may look like a dead head underneath those iPod headphones, but there's plenty happening in there.

He comes up with insane questions for me. Last night, it was this: "If a ten pound owl has a wingspan of approximately five feet, how large would the wings have to be to carry a 180-pound man?" I don't even ask why. I tell him that's a simple math problem. It's ratios, go figure it out. Later, he came back to tell me that he was going to have to compromise the realism, because that was entirely too much wing for a man to manipulate. Yeah, that's life, every now and then we all have to compromise the realism.

"You really want to work there?" I ask. His eyes become very round and his head bobs up and down at a ridiculous pace. "Okay, then. I don't want to be responsible for crushing your dream." I pull into the restaurant, so he can ask for a job application. This is an interesting first. The job application is complex considering the venue. He reads, "What do you hope to achieve by working for our company?" He knits his brow and looks at me. "I just wanna carry their sign. I'm not hoping to achieve much." He pauses. "I probably shouldn't write that on the application, though."

Today he turned in his application while I waited in the car. He returned looking larger than life. "The lady handed it to the manager and told him that I wanted to be the sign guy. He said, 'Sweet! We'll give you a call next week and maybe get you on the schedule.' I think I'm getting the job."

And the saga begins.