Do you know what my first job was?
I never really thought about it until I was watching an episode of "The Good Wife" and a black, female applicant at the law firm was asked where she was from. "Baltimore," she replied. "Tough neighborhood" and "You have to be tough to grow up there" were the responses from her interviewers.
To be honest, I wasn't an "inner-city" child. But we weren't exactly out in the suburbs either.
To be sure, there were nothing but row houses where I lived -- just like downtown. I was somewhere around the age of 10 when on Saturdays I would walk to the corner, catch a city bus, ride it downtown and get off at the Enoch Pratt Public Library where I crossed the street to go to the WMCA.
Riding the bus alone, being on my own in downtown Baltimore, and taking swimming lessons in the nude at the WMCA. No one gave any of this a second thought. It didn't make you tough; it's just the way it was.
As a kid, attending Northwood Elementary School, I was beat up a few times.
Once I decided to walk home from school using the other side of Loch Raven Blvd. I couldn't resist going down the slope by the bridge over Chinquapin Run. I was promptly confronted by the biggest kid I'd ever seen, and he proceeded to wrestle me to the ground, punching me in the face until I was able to break free and run away. Lesson learned.
And there was the time -- again walking home from school -- two neighborhood kids caught me alone in the wooded lot next to Northwood Appold Methodist Church. I really didn't know them except that I somehow knew they were from a nearby neighborhood. This time, one kid -- the bigger one -- would hold me down on the ground while his little buddy proceeded to punch me in the face.
Never thought much about it. "Tough neighborhood?" I didn't think so.
But now that I think about it, I remember the day I got mugged.
I was too poor to get an allowance. So in order to get some pocket change I'd walk 12 blocks to Northwood Shopping Center on weekends and station myself just outside of the door to the supermarket. When people came out with their cart, I would ask them if I could push their cart to their car, help them unload groceries, and return the shopping cart for them. In return, shoppers would give me a quarter, nickel or dime. Whatever they had.
This, in fact, was my first job.
Then one day, as the sun was going down, I walked around back to the stairs up to the alley, ready to call it a day. I had made a lot of money (or so I thought) and for some reason I decided to put it all in my sock. It was awkward walking, I remember.
I had barely climbed the stairs before I was confronted by two kids, demanding my money. They must have seen me pushing carts earlier. But I turned my pockets inside out and said something to the effect of "But I don't have any money." And I was let go -- without a beating.
"You have to be tough to grow up there ..." Maybe so. Just never thought much about it.
