Career day

We drove past Mark's favorite teriyaki restaurant tonight, and Mark was thrilled to see it all lit up.

"Hey, Mom!" he cried. "Rascal's is still open!"

"So I see," I said.

"Hey, Mom," he said again. "If you ever lose your j o b, you should get a j o b at Rascal's."

"Yes," I agreed. "That's a good place to work."

Then I thought about it for a minute and asked, "But what would I do there? You know I can't cook."

I watched Mark nodding in the rearview mirror.

"You could work at the counter!" he said. "You could be the order-taker!"

Then he thought about it, shook his head and told me, "No, never mind, you can't count either."

Well, turns out my skills are fairly limited, especially as far as restaurant work goes.

"What could I do then?" I inquired.

Mark snapped his fingers and said, "You can scrub the tables!" He beamed at me in the mirror. "You could definitely clean the tables, that's hard to mess up."

And that wonderful thought spawned others as equally wonderful. He rattled off all the other places in the restaurant I could clean, and took particular delight in yelling, "And you can clean the bathrooms, too!"

I don't even like cleaning the bathroom in my house, let alone a public restroom, but I was relieved of duty before I could say that.

"Actually," he told me, very seriously, "You can only clean the girl's bathroom. You can't go in the men's bathroom, since you're a girl."

"You're right," I agreed. "Guess I'll just be cleaning tables and the women's bathroom."

In these uncertain times, it's nice to know I have a backup c areer plan.