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My New Summer Job

When I was a youth, I had a bunch of summer jobs that I really loved.

Between the ages of 13 and 22, I was a paper-boy, lawn-cutter, dish-washer, farm-hand, beer-jockey (in a beer drive-thru), taxi-driver, bank-teller, and bar-tender. Each hyphenated job connected spring to autumn, money to my pocket, and fun to my day. 

Each job taught me something I've never forgotten. As a bar-tender, I learned to tie a bow-tie.

As a beer-jockey, I learned to sell. One day, the boss challenged us to sell several cases of cheap Lambrusco red wine. The prize for the top salesperson was a case of beer. As an under-age beer-jockey, a case of beer was a very big prize.

"Hey, fella," I'd say, leaning into the driver's window as the car came to a stop in the beer drive-thru. "You ever been to Italy?"

"No," came the bemused answer.

"I understand. Too expensive. Well, I've got good news. Here's your ticket to Italy and it's only $2.45. It's called 'Lambrusco', which is Italian for 'Let's Go to Italy Right Now.' You buy this bottle, unscrew this top, and baby you are not only in Italy — you are an Italian.

"If you buy two, you can take a friend. How many should I toss in the trunk?" 

The boss was astounded when he came back from lunch and all the wine had been sold.

Suddenly There Were No Summers.
After college I noticed a trend. While I was lucky enough to have a job, that job never offered a three-month summer vacation. It just kept going.

I guess I was supposed to be glad to be an adult. I could buy beer legally. And the job was supposed to be captivating -- and, at times, was. 

But what happened to my summer vacation? When am I supposed to get a summer job?

My New Summer Job
I am happy to announce that I have finally — at the age of 50 — landed a job I've always wanted.

On Friday, I start at Katzinger's Delicatessen, as a runner.

The job: run sandwiches from the kitchen to the tables. When not running, bus tables. (There are more details, such as my official job description.) 

Thanks to Diane Warren, friend, entrepreneurial role model, and owner of Katzinger's, I will run sandwiches on the four Fridays of August from 11 a.m. until 1:30 p.m.

I hope I get your order right. If I do not, I will do everything in my power and with the authority vested in me as runner to make you happy.

What Are The Ethical Implications Here?
Why, here they are:

• Ethical Challenge I
  My taking this job must not rob another person of his or her job. I don't want to replace a current employee, nor hinder a recruit in waiting.
  How addressed: by working only four shifts, very part-time, during the busiest hours of the week, I will supplement the staff but not fill a complete spot on the team.
• Ethical Challenge II
  To my employer, the cost of my employment must be less than the value. Young Isaac had employees who were very valuable -- and those we'd have been better off without. (At times, I was either.)
  How addressed: my job will be limited so that my training is inexpensively swift. And my compensation plan will be simple.

My So-Called Compensation Plan
I didn't want to jump on the payroll and cause a lot of paperwork for my employer. After much negotiation, we have hammered out the following:

• Signing Bonus: one Katzinger's shirt, to be worn during all shifts. This has been paid and laundered.
• Per diem: at the conclusion of each shift, I shall be paid one loaf of bread (sliced). Unless there is a complaint from a patron, in which case I am to receive two loaves.

The incentive structure is odd, I know. (Compensation plans are always broken.) I just don't want to go hungry if a patron thinks I'm odd. 

And, Mrs. Isaac dislikes it when bread goes stale around here, so I really don't want to take home two loaves.

Come have some lunch on Friday.
I will bring you a pickle if that's what it'll take to make you happy. 

Garlic or dill?

Three Inspiring Paragraphs on Creativity

Perhaps you saw this during 2008.

It so wonderfully considered and expressed; I am enjoying reading it again today.

The Obama Arts Policy Committee asked committee member and author, Michael Chabon, to describe the critical importance of the arts at this moment of remarkable opportunity and challenge in our nation's history. Here is his statement in reply:

Every grand American accomplishment, every innovation that has benefited and enriched our lives, every lasting social transformation, every moment of profound insight any American visionary ever had into a way out of despair, loneliness, fear and violence—everything that has from the start made America the world capital of hope, has been the fruit of the creative imagination, of the ability to reach beyond received ideas and ready-made answers to some new place, some new way of seeing or hearing or moving through the world. Breathtaking solutions, revolutionary inventions, the road through to freedom, reform and change: never in the history of this country have these emerged as pat answers given to us by our institutions, by our government, by our leaders. We have been obliged—to employ Dr. King’s powerful verb—to dream them up for ourselves.

America’s artists are the guardians of the spirit of questioning, of innovation, of reaching across the barriers that fence us off from our neighbors, from our allies and adversaries, from the six billion other people with whom we share this dark and dazzling world. Art increases the sense of our common humanity. The imagination of the artist is, therefore, a profoundly moral imagination: the easier it is for you to imagine walking in someone else’s shoes, the more difficult it then becomes to do that person harm. If you want to make a torturer, first kill his imagination. If you want to create a nation that will stand by and allow torture to be practiced in its name, then go ahead and kill its imagination, too. You could start by cutting school funding for art, music, creative writing and the performing arts.

Our children need training and encouragement and support—they need rehearsal space and tempera paint and bass violins, teachers and tap-shoes; they need constant, passionate exposure to the great artistic heritage of their people, so that even if they don’t grow up to be artists themselves, they will still have been blessed, as Americans have always been blessed, with the artist’s gift for seeing the possible in the impossible, the fellow soul on the other side of the fence. Our artists need freedom to pursue the solitary investigations into which their art inevitably leads them. America needs that untrammeled flow of creativity, of the willingness and ability to innovate, to skylark, to tinker, to daydream out loud: over the course of two and a half centuries now, our creative flow has filled the world’s libraries, museums, theaters and recital halls, its academies, movie houses and marketplaces, with works of genius to break the heart and boggle the mind. And the people of the world--our world--need an America that remains in full, confident possession of its mighty gift of imagination, not merely to meet the global demand for our entertainment and art and literature, but so that they--and we--need never fear the brutality, the arrogance and the inhumanity to which a nation in want of imagination must, inevitably, descend.

Michael Chabon is the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER AND CLAY. His other books include THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH, A MODEL WORLD, WONDER BOYS, WEREWOLVES IN THEIR YOUTH. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, and Playboy and in a number of anthologies, among them Prize Stories 1999: The O. Henry Awards. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife, Ayelet Waldman, also a novelist, and their three children.

To A 13-Year-Old Son

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."
— Mark Twain

Kids grow up faster these days. With you at 13, I am already at my most ignorant.

I remember when my father was a dope. 
I was expert at finding gaps in much of what he said. He was not always impressed with this talent. I could imagine becoming a great lawyer, shooting holes in the opposition. 

Even if he was impressed, he also shut down.
When someone seemed intent on shooting holes in anyone's side of a conversations, my father just stop trying. He wasn't interested in walking into the line of unrelenting fire. He enjoyed debate, but as soon as someone seems motivated on contradiction, rather than clarification, he was finished. 

My Motivation
If Mark Twain's right, someday I might astonish you with what I've learned. 

If you are like me, it might be a long wait. (I was nearly 50 when I started truly trying to listen to others. I'm hoping you are an earlier learner.)

But I don't long to astonish you. That is not my goal. Neither is your respect, though I ask for it. Think of me however you wish. 

What is my goal?
I want to share what I have experienced and learned along the way. 

What could I possibly know? I am not an expert on everything. I'm not completely expert on anything. But I have lived 50 years. And my experiences have taught me something.

Why do I want to share my experiences and insights? Not to change you. Not to prove me right and you wrong. 

And — definitely — not to argue with you. I most of all don't want to argue. Argument makes everyone breathless with too little accomplished. 

I want to share what I know to make your journey a little easier.

Perhaps, a la Twain, this will wait until you are 21.

Twain must have rejected his father for those seven years. Surely, he sought his teachers elsewhere. And, Twain didn't turn out so bad. 

A Partial List of Ready Conversations
Whenever you want to talk about these things, I'd be glad to share what we have each learned on these topics: 

1. Childhood and adulthood. How people become adult. Id-ego-superego.
2. Learning. Seeking first to understand, then to be understood. 
3. Choosing teachers. Everyone is a teacher. "Teachers are where you seek them." 
4. What wealth is. The inconsistent connection between happiness and money. 
5. True courage. Live and let live. Processing anger. Eliminating annoyance.
6. What the world owes us. What we owe ourselves. What we owe the world.
7. The difference between pleasure and engagement. This is about Flow, the psychology of optimal experience.
8. How to please a woman. Though I have eventually failed with all women, save one — your mother (thus far) — I have learned what not to do and would be glad to share that (without names).  

There are more. You can add to this list. 

Whenever you want to talk about any of these, or anything else that might help you benefit from my experiences, I'm here for you. Anytime of the day or night. Feel free to wake me up from sleep or work.

I'm here for you.
Not forever, of course. Let's stick to basic plan: you will outlive me. For now, however, at 50, I'm eating right, taking walks, and soon getting a colonoscopy — to be around when you are 21. 

I'll try to learn a lot during the next seven years.   

I love you.