I swear I'm gonna bite you hard and taste your tinny blood

Lately the subject of my first job has been coming up in conversation. Most recently it was because my roommate's son was talking about how his summer job (also his first) didn't really pay that much because he only got $2000 for a month's worth of work. Now, maybe it's because I'm getting old, but that seems like it's a lot of money for a 15 year old to make. In fact, I know people with families to support that barely make that much in a month, so I told him he shouldn't be complaining and he should just be grateful that his dad had arranged for him to work such a good job (it was doing lab work on campus, which is much better than flipping burgers).

I know that things have changed in the financial world since I was a kid, but I believe I had to work for a couple of hours after school for almost an entire year in order to make $2000. Not only that, but my job was to clean up a meat packing plant after the day's slaughter. Sound like fun? Didn't think so. Looking back it was hardly worth whatever I was making, but it was a job and it put some money in my pocket, so I was glad to have it.

One of the drawbacks of my first job (aside from the fact that I was cleaning a freaking meat packing plant) was that it ruined cherry pie for me for quite some time, the reason being that when they would kill a cow they would have to let it bleed out, and the floor would be covered in what looked just like cherry pie filling, except it wasn't. Not only did it look disgusting, but it smelled disgusting. For any of you who have never smelled death (and I know you're out there from previous comments), there's a very thick metallic smell that comes along with large volumes of blood. This smell had seared itself into my brain, and every time I'd see cherry pie, the smell would come back and haunt me, at least for a while. As with all things, when you see something often enough, you become desensitized to it, and I got back to where I could enjoy all my desserts once again. Whew!

So I know what you're all thinking. You can't believe that I would slaughter an innocent little cow, just so I could take a picture of it's coagulated blood for my blog post. Don't worry. I made it into a nice tasty blood cobbler.

(Ok, fine, it's really just cherries after all)