It was my first job. I felt gritty; I felt real. There were time sheets and shifts and a manager and a uniform. I got Employee of the Month. I smiled at strangers and said, “You have a nice day!” I pretended not to be clumsy around the hot public- school boys who came to taste different flavors and left without buying anything. And I got paid. Minimum wage plus a scoop on every shift. I never bought the denim mini. Turns out that minimum wage doesn't go all that far. | also never ate much ice cream after that. But I learned responsibility. I learned to keep my word. I learned, no matter how hard it is, to keep scooping until the job is done.

“You picked a hard row to hoe,” she said, and went back to her chess game. The rows were tubs of ice cream. The hoe was that scoop.

5/4/23, 3:57 PM My Summer of Scooping Ice Cream | The New Yorker But there was this tiny denim miniskirt, with buttons up the front. It barely reached the bottom of my butt cheeks; a sudden wind would have made it a crime in several states. It. Was. Fierce. Tiny denim mini was beautiful. Tiny denim mini was everything to me. One March day, my mother gave me forty dollars to buy clothes for a dance. I bought the skirt. When she insisted that it be returned, I—newly indoctrinated into the churches of Janet Jackson and Madonna—refused. My mother calmly informed me, in a tone that suggested I had five seconds before I would meet my Maker, that when I had my own job I could buy any clothes I wanted. Until then, she would decide what I wore and what I did not. Wanting to live, I returned the denim mini. And then, wanting to win, I walked over to Baskin-Robbins and, with all my honor-student charm, talked the manager into giving me a job.