Gifted

I might as well confess.  So many years have gone by, I have nothing to be ashamed of, not really.  It was something I did, something I was good at.  Gifted, in fact.  Back in college, every Christmas break, I was a gift-wrapper for the goyim.  Not a sheet of Hanukkah wrap ever made it out the door.  I wrapped gifts in a tiny cubicle in the basement of a bookstore in Westwood, and it was hellish.  Why did I do it?  Why did I subject myself to such manual labor?  I wanted my job back.  In high school, I was a cashier at College Bookstore.  Other friends started waitressing or working in dress shops.  Not the SJG.  A spiller from way back, I knew, instinctively, that I would be the worst waitress ever.  I knew I would spill hot coffee, I would drop, I would break.  And working in a dress shop, which I did once, proved somewhat disastrous.  I was too honest with the customers.  "I wouldn't buy that, it's not flattering."

All I wanted to do was sell books, to soak up literature, to bath in the glory of words.  I'd only been there a few weeks when the owner came in and saw me at the register.  "How old are you?" he asked.  "I'm 16 and a half," I said, trying to sound mature.  The next day, I was fired for looking too young.  "The owner thought you looked about 14," they told me.  "We're so sorry."  I'm pretty sure it was illegal, but in 1974, I couldn't afford Gloria Allred.  So every Christmas, I'd audition to get my job back, to show how responsible I was, and it worked.  I always got hired back in the summer.  Hours of wrapping books during the holidays taught me a harsh lesson about people.  Sometimes, they're not so nice.  "I'm sorry, we can't wrap those for you," I told the a-hole standing there with a huge bag of toys. "Why not?"  "For starters, you didn't buy them here."  "So?"  "Store policy."  "Place is probably run by a bunch of cheap Jews," he said, storming off.  Gift wrapping brings out the anti-Semitic nasty in some folks.  Who knew?  Now I just gift wrap for fun, not profit.  I'm still good at it, too. Thanks to those hellish cubicle days at College Bookstore, the SJG  knows how to work the ribbon and the scotch tape, and most importantly, how to stick it to the putzes of the world.

(Reposted from a few years ago, due to SJG Exhaustion.  Send caffeine.)