I am 20

I am 20 and have just come home for the summer after leaving a State School an hour and 1/2 south of where I grew up.

I go and apply for a job at one of the local large restaurants. I have kitchen and waitress history on my resume, along with chambermaid.

For a few years before leaving for the away college, I had been working at the Island breakfast place, but I don’t want to go back there again, as my father, whom I am estranged from, is a haunt there, and I can’t take it anymore.

Having to serve him coffee and all the locals watching like hawks at the oddity of us.

A daughter serving her father without ever speaking to him.

The summer before I left that place, my father was in the small dining area, holding court with himself, talking and talking and talking and joking with anyone who would have him.

At a table beside him, I heard the woman say, can’t anyone get him to shut up?

She wasn’t an old local but had been around long enough on the Island that I am sure she knew I was his daughter, but I just laughed at her comment, caught her eye, and gave a smile, and she winked at me.

It made the embarrassment a bit more bearable, but it still stung.

I try very hard never to denigrate anyone’s family, especially parents.

Even if you hate your family, there is still a tug and a strange bond.

The summer before, I had left for the state school, excited to live in the dorm and meet people who might have something in common with me.

That dream was squashed, and I am determined not to return to that school. I don’t know what I will do, but I am not going back there and not working on the Island anymore.

The hostess who takes my resume at the restaurant uptown tells me to sit in the bar, and then a chef comes out and says, So you have worked in kitchens before? And tell him yes, but that I want to waitress.

He tells me that working in the kitchen is best as I can get over time and won’t have to deal with rude customers. He tells me my school classmate works for him, and he takes me out back for a tour of the kitchen.

I see my old classmate on the line during the kitchen tour with the chef.

She is a friend (sort of); we have occasionally hung out over the years, gone on canoe trips, and drank Boone's farm.

My first boyfriend was her boyfriend's friend, who also works there and lives with her at her parent's house.

They both say hello to me, somewhat smirky as if to say there was no way I could work as hard as them in that kitchen.

The chef takes me into his office, peppers me with questions, and tries to act like a tough guy with me, and I laugh at his antics. I can tell he gets a kick out of that.

He says you want the job or not; it starts at eight dollars an hour, and you get overtime.

I had been working for tips for the past few years at the beach shack during the summers and off-season, and 8 dollars an hour in a semi-AC kitchen sounded good, so I agreed.

Prep cook: I was going to be a prep cook. I was too naive to realize that the best money was in front of the house, and no one in my family would direct me otherwise.

If I had been my mother, I would have said, you are too cute to cut up carrots and make the slaw. Why don’t you apply to a few other places. . or tell them you want to be a waitress or nothing and look at different locations in town? What about the lovely small pub at the inn?

But I don’t even remember my mother discussing jobs with me at that age, except to tell me I should be grateful to have one and never to get too uppity.

TBC