By Pat Cashman

    The school year is well, well over---and young people everywhere have an important choice to make: 1) Get going and hustle to find a good summer job (perhaps three weeks ago would have been good)---or, 2) Spend the rest of the summer resting-up.  

    When I was a kid, I highly favored the resting-up option. The father in our household had an entirely different notion. In fact, if his wife---my mom---had not intervened, he would have had me up and at it---pulling down a paycheck---by the time I learned to walk. (Spoiling his plans, I purposely crawled until I was 12.)

     But isn’t there always at least one kid around town whom your parents can use as the ideal? “Why can’t you be like that Jenkins’ kid?” They will say. “That Jenkins’kid has three summer jobs---all of them full-time! What a worker!” 

     I didn’t really know that Jenkins’ kid, but I wished he’d get a horrible rash---right where it counted the most. (You know where that is.) After all, that Jenkins’ kid represented a major impediment to my own summertime plans for torpor, indolence, languor and other words I didn’t know.

     I will not deny that there is something to the notion of teenage summertime employment. That something is money.  Money is power---and power means a lot.  Power means watching a TV ad selling greasy, unhealthy burgers---and then being able to go out and buy those greasy, unhealthy burgers.  

    Power means having a hankering for a Snickers---and within minutes, snarfing on it. Then the next morning---courtesy of the Snickers---power means finding seven new zits on your face---and because of the power of money, being able to buy a tube of Clearasil. 

    The key thing is to land a cool summer job, pay-scale notwithstanding. In that regard, I always thought being a male model would be just such a cool summer job. I liked the idea so much I decided to give it a try following my sophomore year. But that summer they weren’t looking for guys with size 9 1/2 necks---and arms the width of green beans---to model underpants that summer. 

    I decided another cool job would be selling hip clothes in a hip clothing store. That way, the only schoolmates who might see you on the job are hip kids shopping for hip clothing. You would then also appear to be hip, I figured. 

    I wonder if Bill Gates ever doubted that he had a cool job when he was the Microsoft chairman and CEO. “To tell you the truth,” he probably told friends, “I wish I was a salesman at a hip clothing store. “ Then he would likely pause and add,  “Let me re-phrase that.  I wish I was the richest man in the world…at a hip clothing store.”

    A few years ago, a reader sent me an ad from the local newspaper of a town in Wisconsin called Blanchardville---a place that is on few vacation itineraries.

   Deep in the “Help Wanted” section was this:  “AWESOME SUMMER JOB! Team corn detasseling is hiring workers for summer detasseling, age 12 and up.  Earn $5.15 to $10.00 an hour!” 

    Corn detasseling?  It is simply the task of tearing tassels off of corn---and it turns out to be a legitimate gig---and an important one.  Kind of. 

    Corn tassels are those puny yellow hairs that surround cobs of corn after you tear off the leafy part. The job would be like waxing a stalk of corn. Tassels are a sort of an agricultural Silly String.  If corn did exotic dancing, this would be a type of stripping.

   You may wonder: How hard could a job detasseling corn be?  The answer is…not very. Plus the word detasseling makes the task sound desirable, almost sexy. Yes, that’s the key point: Detassling sounds cool! 

    “What do you do?”

    “I’m a detassler.”

    “Really? What does that mean exactly?”

    “No time to talk.  I’ve gotta go! Flying out to Wisconsin for a three-day detasseling conclave ! It’s all very husk husk. I mean, hush hush.”

    Therein lies the secret. Every teenage or adult job can sound COOL if it is properly labeled.  Some examples:

     A person is not a bean-picker. They are on the legume acquisition team.

     A carnival ride operator? Wrong title. He or she is now called an experiential anti-gravity facilitator.

     Little League baseball umpires calling balls and strikes---are now arbiters of spherical accuracy.

     I better wrap this up.  

     I’m having a bit of trouble breathing. 

     Think I better get my nostrils detasseled. 

pat@patcashman.com

Pat was a longtime cast member, writer and detasseler on KING 5’s Almost Live. He is a keynote speaker---and a fundraiser auctioneer---plus he co-hosts a weekly on-line talk show: Peculiarpodcast.com