Chris Kutcher’s–ahem, I mean Ashton Kutcher’s–recent acceptance speech at the Teen Choice Awards struck a chord with me, particularly when he said that ‘opportunity looks a lot like work.’ That caused me to reflect on the many jobs I’ve had in nearly six decades of living, many of which I have truly enjoyed and all of which taught me at least one Life Lesson. I don’t know when work became associated with something negative, as many millenials (and some of their parents) think, for I remember anxiously awaiting my sixteenth birthday so that I could get a job. Legally, that is. I don’t count the two years before that when I helped my aunt cater weddings nearly every Friday and Saturday night. Somehow, shlepping mostaccoli, pouring coffee, and cutting wedding cake didn’t seem like work.

I held at least one job while going to school, and sometimes two. One of my favorite jobs was working at the bakery at Target, especially on Saturday mornings when the hot donuts were delivered. It was sheer nirvana. The chocolate-iced ones were my favorite. Maybe I liked working there a little too much, because I got a second job at a women’s-only figure salon called Elaine Powers that I reported to after getting off at Target. As a result, I learned that I was a bit obsessive-compulsive, but I regarded that revelation as a Life Lesson because knowing one’s true self is paramount to one’s happiness and satisfaction. And isn’t that what we are all ultimately striving for in everything we do and every relationship we have?

One of the most satisfying jobs I ever had was as a gift-wrapper at a large department store in Saint Louis, Stix, Baer & Fuller. How fun it was to have all those rolls of wrapping paper and yards of ribbon at my disposal! I totally reveled in the appreciation and gratitude I received from my customers because they were completely in awe of how little time it took to wrap a plain box and transform it into a work of art. This job led to another job within the store, and although I made more money as a waitress in the dining room, I wasn’t as fulfilled as I was working as a gift-wrapper in the basement. Life Lesson #2: Money Isn’t Everything. However, I did manage to put myself through college with the money I earned and saved, and the satisfaction I got from that was more than just a little worthwhile.

Sometimes jobs can rescue us from the ordinary and give us comic relief. Such was my short-lived, but unforgetable, job at a condom factory in Dothan, Alabama, called Alatech. It was the early 1980’s, and I was a young mother of two children under the age of three, and although I loved being a stay-at-home mom, I hungered for adult conversation. So, I signed up with Manpower Temporary Agency; that way, I could pick where and when I worked. At Alatech, my week-long job was to fill in for the secretary in the research and development section, and my duties included picking up all the daily mail and filtering it to the right department within the factory. Also included in my duties was opening and reading the mail directed to the R&D department. Lordie, Lordie! Was that ever fun! Those letters, every one of which was written by a male, were a cross between letters one would see in a Dear Abby newspaper column and Penthouse magazine. Conversations with my husband over dinner no longer centered around how many times I’d been barfed upon or what letter was taught that day on Sesame Street, but rather the hilarious or shocking consumer comments I had read at work. One letter was especially memorable; the consumer recounted in vivid detail–and at great length (no pun intended)–his experience with the product, and concluded his letter/manuscript/screen play with, “and if I may offer a suggestion, it would be to make the condoms bigger, as my portions are larger than the average Caucasian.” I nearly fell off the chair laughing! The fact that I have remembered his self-congratulatory comment for thirty years speaks volumes. Although nearly every job I worked at temporarily usually resulted in an offer by the company to continue working there full-time, such was not the case at Alatech. My guess is that the regular secretary loved her job too much to ever quit. The Life Lesson learned here was Love What You Do.

A passion for the importance of clearly communicating with and helping others is perhaps what ultimately led me to a career in teaching (compensated), and then to founding and promoting an organization for women in boating (volunteer.) And both of those eventually led me to what I’m doing now, tutoring college students with their writing assignments (compensated) and teaching English as a second language (volunteer.) Both have all the components that, collectively, satisfy me beyond measure. Work is good for both the mind and the soul. It’s impressive that Chris/Ashton has learned at such a young age that opportunities come through work. I hope that he can influence his entire generation.