Making work a joy

“While you’re restin’ . . . ”

As a child, I knew I was in for a load of work whenever I heard that phrase associated with my name.

It usually went something like, “While you’re restin’, Benny, grab a wheelbarrow and help me move some dirt.”

Or, “While you’re restin’, Benny, help your sister weed the garden.”

What a wonderfully witty way to announce what work was to be done, “While you’re restin’ . . . “

Neither my mother nor my father was afraid of work. It seemed that both were always busy at something worthwhile and meaningful. (Their generation is referred to by many historians as the “Great” one — for more than one reason.)

At about age nine, I commenced work for my own spending money; happily mowing grass, raking leaves, and shoveling snow off driveways for various neighbors at a couple of dollars a pop. If the work I did was for a widow or the very elderly, I did it for free. Mom and Dad had said, “Don’t you dare charge them a dime.” (Although I do confess to accepting homemade muffins and pies, at times.)

So much was the fun that my parents taught me to have with any work I did under the sun, that little of it seemed like “work” to me at the time..

Those days certainly laid much of the foundation for the plentiful amount of “volunteer community service” work I do these days, even though I am now officially “retired”.