My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My parents got me a sewing machine for Christmas during my senior year of high school. I made three pieces of clothing and had a fashion show at the end of the year, where we had to wear the clothes that we made. I took it to a whole new level; I made all my friends clothes.
My mother was kept very busy with her sewing; sometimes she would have another woman helping her.
I used to work, part time, in a deli, in those days when your parents made you work just so you should know what work was like. And you'd make 4, 5, 6, ten dollars.
We used to tie-dye T-shirts and sell them to classmates. We used to make egg rolls and sell them at street fairs. I worked at the mall. My parents probably spent more money on the gas driving me to different jobs than I made.
When I was 15, I worked at a dry cleaner because I wanted Abercrombie & Fitch jeans. My mom told me I could have $20 jeans, not $70 jeans, unless I was willing to work for them. So I did!
My mother, who graduated from high school at sixteen, had no hope of affording college, so she went to work in the local post office for a dollar a day. She was doing better than her father, who earned ten cents an hour working at a nearby grain elevator.
My mother opened a bank account for me when I made $60 on my first day of work as an extra. She's that kind of mother.
I was making $150 a week in workshop. It was a rough year. I had trouble paying the rent. But I had evenings free to spend with my wife, Olive, and our baby daughter. In terms of family-building, it was one of the most blessed years of my life.
From the time that I can remember, I worked to make money - either baby-sitting, or one year wrapping gifts at a department store at Christmas, so I could have my own money.
My dad was an autoworker, my mom was a clerk. Until I was thirty-five, I never made more than fifteen thousand dollars a year.