Scintilla 1: First Job. Evil Rooster Bait

The Scintilla Project is back again! I may actually make more than one entry every couple of months.

Prompt #1 is: Tell a story set at your first job.

I was five years old when I was hired for my first job. Maybe six.  All of my other prior-to-the-legal-age-for-actual-employment jobs involved things like matching everyone’s fresh out of the dryer socks for ten cents a pair, or feeding the calves, or washing the cars, or weeding the garden. Or picking up rocks and branches in the pasture which wasn’t much fun, but also was not at all scary.

My first job was scary. Very very scary. When I was five, or maybe six, we had some chickens. One of them was an extremely irritable rooster who hated everyone. He especially hated small children, and if he saw me or my younger brother he would chase us. Which doesn’t sound all that frightening now, but we were small children and he was a big rooster. Big and fast and angry. He would screech and flap his enormous wings around and rush at us, trying to peck us. Peck our eyes out and trample us and tear us limb from limb! We were terrified of him. My brother had to be dragged out of the house if he thought Evil Rooster was lurking nearby.  

One day, after yet another round of screeching flapping rooster and hysterical wailing children, my father decided he’d had enough. He told me he’d give me fifty cents if I’d do something for him. He wouldn’t tell me what it was I had to do, but the money lured me in and I had not yet learned to ask lots of questions before accepting a job. He told me to go sit down in the driveway. With my back to the garage, where Evil Rooster was pacing around eyeing me and waiting for Daddy to get lost.

“WHAT?!?” I said.

“Sit in the driveway. Pretend you don’t know the rooster is there,” Daddy said.

“HE’LL KILL ME!!!” I said.

“He won’t kill you. I’ll grab him first.” Daddy said.

“HE’LL KILL ME!!!!” I said.

“Okay, okay, I’ll give you seventy five cents,” Daddy said.

So. I sat down in the driveway with my back to the garage and pretended I didn’t know Evil Rooster was right behind me. I fiddled with the gravel and waited to die a horrible gruesome insane-rooster-induced death. Daddy sauntered off towards the house, feigning oblivion. I could feel Evil Rooster’s beady little eyes boring into the back of my head. I could feel him creeping up on me, his little sharp yellow claws tip-toeing on the gravel. I could feel his cruel little chicken-brain whirring around and plotting my painful and gory extermination. Evil Rooster knew he had me, and I could feel his wings stretching out and starting to flap….

….And Daddy swooped in and grabbed him. Evil Rooster ended up as the main course for dinner, and I ended up seventy five cents richer. And I learned that it’s best to find out what exactly you’re getting paid to do before you accept a job, especially if it involves being bait.

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