sweet sixteen...
i got my first job when i was fifteen. my high school speech/communications class had a guest interviewer from a local grocery store as one of our tests, and he ended up offering jobs to several of us. it was a great first job. they worked with my schedule and i could pretty much work whenever i wanted and have any day off that i wanted as long as i gave about a week and a half of notice. i started working there in november and i was a good worker. the managers liked me and customers would often look for my line because i was one of the fastest and most accurate, pretty much the grocery store golden boy. high repute, i know. but i could get away with just about anything. i was pretty surprised when the request to have my birthday off the following august was denied. it wasn't a long shift and wasn't going to interfere terribly with my plans to go to an amusement park that afternoon, so i didn't protest. just stayed quiet (as was my modus operandi at the time) and went to work.
the plan was that my dad would pick me up and take me home to change where we'd meet up with my mom, brother, and one of my best friends. we got home and i hopped out, eager to get out of the shirt and tie and slacks that was the required uniform for work. i was the first in the door and... SURPRISE! my whole high school class was crowded in my parent's living room. ok, that sounds like a lot of people, but i went to a tiny private school and i had about 18 people in my class at the time. but still. to this day it remains my most memorable birthday. it was pretty normal as far as teenage birthdays go, with cake and ice cream and N64 and such. my friend got me a bottle of michael jackson cologne, and our class clown (her name was aog) stole a pesticide marker out of a farmer's field and wrapped it in a trash bag with duct tape for me. well, there were others, but i can't remember exactly what they all were. those are the two that i still have, though. 
well, the cologne bottle just has a tiny bit in the bottom for sentimental value.
didn't get to go to the amusement park, though, which i was a little sad about. 
anyway, it turned out that my mom had called my boss and asked him to schedule me at just the right time. he told me later that he felt so guilty because he didn't think he could lie if i asked him about it, but i got brownie points for not complaining. 