I tried to write this story into fiction many times but it never quite works so—here it is just as a memory. I’m sure I’ve told this in bits and pieces to many people before but here is the whole thing.
It was very hard for me to get a job as a teen, because I lived in a small town and would have had to be driven to any employment by a parent, because I was shy and nervous of strange adults, and because there just were not that many places to work nearby. In the end, I didn’t have a job until the summer I turned 17 and I had to move up north for the summer and work at a resort and lodge, a position procured for me by my mom’s friend’s daughter, a kindness I think maybe she regretted later.
I was told I was going to help run the kid’s camp at the resort, which I felt a little bit qualified to do because I had babysat before and volunteered in a kindergarten room. When I got there, though, they said they had enough people doing that job, and so I could be a waitress/chambermaid instead. I was already four hours from my home and felt like I needed the job, so I acquiesced, but that sounded bad since I had never done those things. It was fairly bad
The role was: you set up, served, and cleared breakfast, setup lunch, then went out and cleaned the guest rooms in the resort until it was time to serve lunch. Then you cleared lunch, setup dinner, and if there were still rooms to clean you did that and if and when the rooms were done you could have a break until dinner. I was bad at everything and slow so my rooms always took too long, which meant I got fewer breaks and also everyone was annoyed with me, including my own self. The meals were at narrowly prescribed times—not like at a real restaurant where dinner is from 4 to 11 or something—but still it was a huge amount of hours. There is a reason most kids’ first job is 10 hours a week and not 50, as mine was. I was exhausted and frazzled all the time, and very very unpopular with my colleagues because I was so bad at the work and also—you may know this about me—not a fun person. Even worse as a teenager, when I was not able to get jokes and laugh at myself, as I can sometimes do as an adult. I didn’t drink alcohol at that time or, as it turned out, ever. I don’t think people were monstrous to me but I was alone a lot, even though I had three roommates and served from a crowded narrow kitchen.
Which is how it happened that I got extremely sick and no one noticed. Initially, not even me. I was very tired and unhappy most of the time, and was trying to be a vegetarian that summer because I didn’t like the meat the kitchen served, so I didn’t notice initially that my body felt bad in a new way, but eventually when I did, it didn’t occur to me to do anything about it. There wasn’t anyone who I felt might be interested.
What I had, it would emerge later, was strep throat. This is somewhat normal for a group teens packed in together—in addition to me and my roommates there were 9 or 10 more all over the property and we spent many hours a day together, all that work, plus sleeping in the same room, plus more. Even me, who was disliked, was included in movie nights where we piled in like puppies. I assumed that is how I got it but I was today years old when it dawned on me: who ELSE got strep that summer? I don’t think anyone…huh.
If I had been at home, having dinner with my family every night, someone would have noticed I was coughing and feverish, but more to the point, someone would have asked, “How are you?” and I would just have told them. A fun side story is a few summers later, my brother and I were both home from university (I had—not a better job, exactly, but one that allowed me to live at home, which made my life better) and my parents were away for the weekend. My brother was outside chopping weeds with a machete, because he had a deal with my father that he would do this chore but only if he was allowed to do it with a machete. He came in and said he cut his hand with the machete and did I think he needed to go to the clinic? I looked and thought maybe he did, so he called to make an urgent appointment, and then came back, jingling the car keys. “Ready to go?” To be clear, the cut wasn’t that bad—he could have driven himself. But we were kids and kids don’t like to have to take care of themselves. So I got up and went with him to the doctor. And his hand, shortly, was fine!
I seem to have lost the plot a little here but what I mean is, I wasn’t used to being responsible for my own well-being because at home there was always someone else who was interested. I think I would have just eventually collapsed into my mop bucket if I hadn’t lost my voice. One morning I woke up and discovered a chipmunk on the bedside table eating the banana I had been saving. I jumped up and tried to yell at the chipmunk but no sound came out. What a surprise! I chased the chipmuk down the hall, then came back and threw away the banana (no I don’t recall what my roommates were doing during any of this) and realized I still didn’t know what to do and I had even less recourse now because I couldn’t talk. I guess I whisper-told someone and got out of serving breakfast but when I was out cleaning I recall some other staffers trying to speak to me and I couldn’t answer, and the friendliest silliest camp leader, Jenny, asking, “Are you freaking out?” Yes, I was.
Then they made serve lunch?!? I did not think that would work but the manager thought it would be fine so I tried it, by whispering in the diners’ ears?!?!??!!? Which went about how you’d expect. After that debacle, management decided that Tara, our very long-suffering head server, would drive me to the walk-in clinic on what should have been her afternoon break. Also mine but I was both delirious and dying of embarrassment after WHISPERING IN PEOPLE’S EARS about the soup specials and no longer cared about anything.
Tara brought Jenny along for company, ostensibly since I couldn’t talk but also she never really talked to me in the first place. And this, the only good part of the story: Tara had a convertible! It’s the only time I’ve ever been in one. I don’t know why or how she had it, I imagine there was a story but of course I couldn’t ask. My hair was much longer and more unruly then, and I hadn’t been prepared for a convertible ride, so midway to town Jenny turned from their conversation to see me engulfed in a hair tsunami, and very kindly gave me an elastic. And then it was a perfect ride after that.
They dropped me at the clinic and I found out I had strep and laryngitis and got prescribed antibiotics and then Tara and Jenny came back with their coffees and rolled their eyes at having to drive me to the pharmacy but did so and then we all went back to work.
I was young then and recovered quickly. My voice came back in 3 or 4 days and I was probably only sick about a week. But getting that sick and not treating it immediately left lasting scars on my vocal cords, and now whenever I get any kind of a chest cold I lose my voice. It’s been happening to me every year or two since that summer. It’s happening right now! The story of the original illness is 30 years ago last summer.
The crazy thing is I’ve probably got a bunch of details wrong but I remember a lot of it so vividly—pushing the buggy full of towels over tree roots from cabin to cabin to do the housekeeping at the resort, Gary the manager’s hand swatting air as he said, “It’ll be fine!” Tara rolling her small blue eyes. The little chipmunk bites on the banana. It was a very viscerally felt summer. It has always frustrated me that I have never been able to get any of this into fiction but at least I have written it all out here.
