Christmas tree seller, 8th grade

The church parking lot is filled with rich-smelling firs, lashed together and piled against the wire fence. I get to warm my hands in a tent with a bunch of high school guys, who are a bit rowdy but generally kind, and I like the idea of working alongside them, brushing off pine needles, cutting twine, moving trees to cars, playing holiday music, and counting cash. Everyone who buys a tree is in a good mood - cracking jokes, sizing up fat trees, tall trees, trees that can fit in the living room. One day the boss buys us burgers, and I sink my teeth into my juicy, foil-wrapped cheeseburger and quietly listen to the high school guys talk, mostly about things I don’t understand, in warm pre-holiday bliss.

Dacie Moses resident, summer of 2011

We’re living in what they call ‘the cookie house’ next to campus. No overnight guests are allowed, a rule from the older woman who lives upstairs. She’s lived there forever, and is reliably caring and quirky. We’re two, living in bunk beds in a room off of the kitchen, the room spilling over with clothes and make-up and summer girl energy. We keep the kitchen stocked at all times with cookie-making material, and serve brunch to the community on Sundays - a delightful combination of young college students and older locals eating beer muffins, egg bakes, and coffee. I get really good at making brunch for a crowd and at sneaking the occasional person into the guest bedroom. We tend the garden and sometimes the woman upstairs will wake us up before sunrise to go strawberry picking. We have friends over for thai night, learn how to make challah braids with our hands, jam everything we can find. My favorite place to sleep is to sneak out of my own bed and spread myself on the old sofa on the screened-in porch - even better during a storm, with a blanket wrapped around me, lightning cutting the sky, and the soundtrack of rain and the smell of fertile earth. I consider a future as a farm wife and blogger.

The Gap, winter break of my freshman year of college

I am trained in: smoothing shirts for displays, how to cheerfully approach someone suspected of shoplifting and disarm them with a smiley comment on what shirt colors they like, and how to eat lunch upstairs in the closet in about twenty minutes. The dressing room holds a sort of power over women that I don’t understand until later in life. As I hold out different sizes and pass them between the crack of the door, I am a silent witness to sighs, small comments, and tears. I prefer working in the kids’ section. The wealthy people in the kids section brush me off, but the clothing is much more interesting. At that point in life I am very sure that I will have kids, most likely before I am 30. I finger a silvery, sequined baby shirt and wonder if I will dress them up in holiday wear from the Gap.

Football team highlight video editor and tour guide, senior year of college

I’m hired to sit with my laptop and edit highlights together from the previous weekends’ games, but sometimes I take a ride with the team captain and buy snacks for the upcoming games at the local grocery store, where we dump 40 bananas and 40 Snickers into a shopping cart and I think what a dream it must be to eat a whole Snickers during a game for fuel, like, you really need it.

Other times I smile and give tours to prospective football players, and one time we find out that one of the families is half-Danish, and I’ve just been in Denmark for a semester abroad, so they send me a care package with Danish candy and Carlsberg and other goodies, and continuing sending me a few more care packages - including one at home for Christmas.

Camp counselor, high school

The cure for existential despair is to live with fifteen 12-year old girls in a cabin on a mountain in rural Pennsylvania. To bear witness to these preteens, all delight and shrieking and hair brushing and poster-crushing and dancing and laughing and crying and grooming each other and hugging and whispering. They are dazzling, unstoppable. There’s barely any sight of puberty and the baggage it comes with. No awkward body-sense of self-acne-shame-beauty product-covering up bullshit. The emergence of gender expectations and the audience of society is around the corner, but not this summer. This summer they are immortal. They are painting, they are running, and kicking, and flying, and jumping into the water. They’re stealing cookies after lunch. They’re dancing on tables. They’re braiding hair and promising friends forever. They’re dancing, and dreaming, and crushing, and moving on again. They’re screaming, and they don’t go to bed when you tell them to, and they lip sync with the broom when it’s time to clean. They are shy and want to show you things. They write you little letters. They sulk when you remind them of the rules. At night you lie awake, in bed, grateful, with the sound of their breath all around you. Ebb and flow. They all teach you something.