It’s a Living… I Guess

Every once in a while — okay, lately it seems like daily — I discover that I’m going about this whole making a living, putting food on the table business the hard way.

For example, apparently there are people who apparently make very good money as… eyebrow stylists.

When I first heard about this job, I had visions of teeny tiny brushes, itsy bitsy hair curlers, and miniature cans of hair spray. I imagined hot, bright lights and an oversized magnifying glass just above the prone customer; a gentle aesthetician with slender hands sweating the details. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Marple. A little off the ends today? A bit of curl for body?”

But no, apparently eyebrow stylists just remove bits of your eyebrow. Forcibly, but apparently in a stylish manner. So, I’m thinkin’: I have duct tape. I can do a nice flourish and even add a sophisticated French, “voila!” as I yank. I could do this.

Then there’s being a golf ball marshal. If you’re anything like me (that is, conditioned by years of westerns on TV), you’ll imagine a gunslinger in a cowboy hat, walking casually around the back of the saloon to catch a golf ball trying to escape certain incarceration by climbing out a window. (Okay, maybe it’s not conditioning but rather too much wine and an overactive imagination.)

What it really involves is scanning the fairways for lost golf balls. While not as romantic or dashing as my version, I could do this as well. Really, who couldn’t spend their days wandering across green spaces, basking in the sunshine?

The only downside for me is that I suck at finding things. For proof, just ask the Easter Bunny, who when hiding chocolate eggs for me in year two, ended up stepping on the gooey, half-melted gifts that I hadn’t found the first time around. However, I could grab a pair of those Visiball ‘find your golf balls faster!’ glasses than no less than 12 mail order companies have told me would make a great stocking stuffer.

Another way to make a living is to be a ‘wrinkle chaser.’ This does not, as you might think, mean you are a young man or woman in pursuit of a rich, elderly spouse. It means you get rid of wrinkles during the shoe manufacturing process so that we don’t all end up with creased toes. While this job would be easy, it’s just not for me. First, it involves finding things (see above), and second, I have a faith-based thing against ironing: I avoid it religiously.

I could earn better money as a — I kid you not — chicken sexer. Because this is a family-oriented column, I will not put to words what I’m sure you all envisioned just now. What it really involves is sorting out boy chicks from girl chicks. I’m sure most chicken sexers (does one put this on a business card, one wonders?) do this the hard way, i.e., by picking up chicks one by one and doing a rather personal inspection. I’d just set up two television sets at the end of the conveyer belt in the poultry factory: one showing action films, and one showing, well, chick flicks. They’d self-sort.

I could also be a pretend patient. Many medical schools hire people to pretend they have various ailments so that medical students can practice their diagnoses and bedside manner. As long as this didn’t involve practicing, say, surgery, or needle administration, this would be an easy job. Disrobing wouldn’t be an issue for me these days either; as anyone who has ever given birth to a child can tell you, modesty is no longer part of your vocabulary.

But perhaps the best job of all would be one in the technology manufacturing industry. I could be a ‘clean room’ janitor. This is one of those rooms where you need to prevent dust, dirt and other impurities from interfering with the manufacturing of delicate electronic components. I figure since everyone who comes in has to wear one of those white full-body suits anyway, the job basically does itself.

Indeed, now that I think about it, I may insist that everyone in my house wears one of those suits from now on.