Summer jobs can be very instructive

If nothing else, getting hired for even temporary labor, manual or not, can provide an indication of what you don’t want to do in adulthood.

Our brief tenure attempting to sell shoes at Kinney’s in Belmont was a case in point. We had a very bad feeling about our salesmanship future right from the outset when an elderly lady plopped down in a chair and asked to be shown some pumps. It did not go well.

That unpleasant exercise (and several others) was enough to convince your devoted scribbler that shoe sales were not in his future, not to mention his present. There were other examples of failed work experiments. To wit:

• Butcher’s apprentice — Cleaning the electric bone saw and injecting aging corned beef with brine in the walk-in freezer as a 12-year-old at the State Market in San Mateo was almost certainly a good reason to create OSHA later on.

• Driver for the U.S. Postal Service — Causing two accidents in Burlingame (backing into a stopped Southern Pacific train to collect mail bags, for one such incident) did little to pad our youthful employment resume.

• Dishwasher at the Elks Lodge — Scraping off plates during weekend buffets at the San Mateo venue seemed like an endless trial to nowhere. At least sodas at the bar were available as the clock ticked toward midnight.

• Playground supervisor — Lunchtime readings from the horror novels of H.P. Lovecraft did not sit well with many of the impressionable kids at Baywood Elementary School in San Mateo. Our summer tenure there did not last long.

There were more examples, nearly 20 of them. But they were mundane, often boring. Still, they provided a paycheck, minimal in most cases. And there were no benefits. We did get valuable experience, though.

The concern now is that employment opportunities during the summer are quite limited.  

IT’S A MIGHTY MOUND OF MULCH: Peninsula real estate agents who handle luxury housing sales are among the most creative marketing practitioners extant. They have to be. Competition for listings in this pricey area is fierce. The sales folks scour every possible plus to promote their clients’ digs. An advertising sheet arrived in our mail slot not long ago. It hailed the sale of an attractive Hillsborough manse that featured, among other items of interest: 506 plants, 37 satin brass doorknobs, eight tons of rock and gravel and (get ready for it) 30 yards of spreadable mulch. Long live a mighty mound of mulch.

RAVENSWOOD EXHIBIT TO OPEN: The surge in San Mateo County births after World War II was a mixed blessing for local public education here. New schools came on line with regularity. Enrollments surged. Then the bottom fell out. Dozens of campuses went dark as the 1980s loomed and pupil numbers cratered. Four of them were high schools: San Carlos, Crestmoor in San Bruno, Serramonte in Daly City and Ravenswood in East Palo. A new exhibit devoted to that last institution is scheduled to open at the San Mateo County History Museum in Redwood City on June 9. Ravenswood opened in 1958 and closed in 1976.

SOFTBALL IS NOT FOR SISSIES: How impressive is Megan Grant’s softball hitting ability? The Aragon High School grad pounded out a record 91 home runs during her just-concluded college career at UCLA. But that’s just part of the story. Arguably, hitting a softball is harder than the corresponding  task in baseball even though a softball is a bit larger. Grant (and her peers) faced high-level pitches that sometimes reached 77 mph — or even more. That’s equal to a baseball thrown at a staggering 108 mph — with the distance from pitcher to home plate set at 43 feet in softball and 60.5 feet in baseball. Math don’t lie.

POLICE REFORM DIRECTOR: We learn something new every day, wind, rain or shine. It’s a daily adventure. A candidate in this week’s primary election provided a novel occupation for the voting public to chew on via his TV blurbs: “Police Reform Director.” Who knew? What’s next? “Safe Spaces Consultant?” “Anger Management Monitor?”