Tori Got a Job Today

As landmarks go, this one seems a little silly.

After all, Tori started working on and off in independent film at 9. She took over shipping and other administrative tasks for me at 12. She was an on-and-off production assistant at 15. She started freelance writing occasionally at 16 or 17. She's done copying and filing and data entry and mailings for my business and various of my clients and charities.

She had a small part in a movie starring Jeffrey Combs, which won multiple festival awards and showed up in our video store.

In short, she had more work experience before she was old enough to apply for a regular job than many people have in their mid-twenties.

But, she'd only filled out one job application in her life. She'd never been handed a schedule or punched a time clock or been issued a name tag or a brightly-colored vest (or, to hearken back to my most traumatic uniform-related memory, a red, yellow and blue polyester dairy maid outfit).

Then, about a week after she got her driver's license, she Got Serious about finding an "outside job". The whole experience was a lot like the driving test--once she decided to do it, she sat down and applied for a bunch of jobs, got a call from one of the four she applied to the first day, went on one interview and starts work next week.

Trading in "freelance writer" for "cashier" probably doesn't sound like the big step forward that it is, but this is a new horizon. And, it's a step toward "normal" and away from the open-ended way of life we've maintained since she was 13.

Boyfriend. Driver's license. Job.

I can only expect that "apartment" is going to be the next abrupt development.