I started working in middle school just to buy my own notebooks while my parents drank thirty-dollar wine and argued about which sports package looked better on our sixty-inch TV.
People online ask, “When did you realize your parents were total hypocrites?” For me, it wasn’t some dramatic explosion. It was a slow burn that started the summer I turned thirteen in our quiet subdivision on the edge of an American Midwestern town—flag on every porch, Target and Applebee’s off the highway, Friday night football under bright stadium lights.
I was sitting at the kitchen island, legs swinging, while my mom signed a permission slip.
“You’re thirteen now, which means you can buy your own school lunch,” she said, not even looking up.
I thought she was joking.
“What?” I laughed.
She clicked the pen shut like a judge banging a gavel.
“We’re not made of money, and you need to learn the value of hard work.”
A few days later, when I asked about notebooks and pens, she didn’t miss a beat.
“Figure it out,” she said, dropping a stack of mail on the counter. “Other kids your age have jobs, so maybe you should too.”
That afternoon, a delivery truck pulled up and dropped off the brand-new sixty-inch TV my parents had ordered for football season.
Dad spent the evening mounting it on the living room wall, yelling for Mom to step back and tell him if it was straight.
My entire school supply list cost less than his monthly NFL sports package.
That was the first time I felt something crack—a thin line running down the middle of the version of my parents I had in my head and the people standing in front of me.
I started babysitting for families on our street, walking golden retrievers past mailboxes with plastic eagles on top, and saving every dollar in a mason jar I hid in my closet.
The first time I had to ask a teacher for extra paper because I didn’t have a notebook, my face burned so hot I thought I might pass out.
She gave me a half-used spiral and a handful of pens with a kind smile, and I lied, saying I’d forgotten mine.
At home, Dad was sprawled on the couch watching ESPN in HD.
“Look at our little entrepreneur,” he said when I came in tired from babysitting until midnight.
“Maybe now you’ll understand why we can’t just hand you everything on a silver platter.”
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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