QUIT YOUR CRABBING - AMERICA'S OTHER DEADLY JOBS
According to the Discovery Channel, the most dangerous job in the land is actually out at sea. It belongs to those brave and daring souls who fish the Bering Sea for the Alaskan King Crab. Upwards of $140,000 for five to seven days of work with only a few minor challenges: virtually 100% likelihood of physical injury and the highest rate of occupational fatalities in the country. Suddenly my $10 co-pay doesn't seem quite so barbaric.
I certainly see why crabbing tops the list of perilous ways to make a living, but there are a few other occupations that have their share of risk as well, despite lacking the sex appeal of crab fishing on the angry sea. Not that a boat full of sleep-deprived men covered in fish oil should ever be thought of as sexy. Anyway, on with the jobs.
Traveling DJ
This seemed like such a great idea when you were head bag boy at the grocery store. Spending the rest of your life playing Come Sail Away by Styx and driving around in your conversion van from one party to the next. Unfortunately, the people throwing the party don't want to hear Come Sail Away. They want to hear Celebration by Kool & The Gang. After a few months of hearing that song every night it's only a matter of time before you go insane and chew your own arm off. The best that you can hope for in this line of work is to create a bidding war between members of the wedding party who are paying you extra to play The Chicken Dance, and members of the wedding party who are paying you extra to play anything but The Chicken Dance. It all goes south in a heartbeat when the bride announces her fondness for Kool & The Gang.
Driver's Ed Instructor
Besides the obvious risks here - riding with a 15-year-old while he merges onto the toll road - you also run the risk of being mowed down years later by a disgruntled former pupil. I spent every day of my driving instruction in the parking lot of the golf course while Mr. Gordon worked on his middle irons. While other young drivers were learning about the 10-2 position and how to pass on the left, I was familiarizing myself with the control panel of a 1979 Buick Skylark. Believe me, it takes a lot longer to hit a large bucket of balls than it does to master intermittent wipers and AM radio. And this was at a time when the only two songs being played on the radio were China Grove and Copa Cabana - undoubtedly a catalyst for many future Traveling DJs. Because of this gap in my driving education, parallel parking gives me gas bubbles and painful abdominal cramps. Guys like Mr. Gordon should be afraid to go out in public, because there are guys like me out there, still boiling mad and still veering over the yellow line.
Youth Fair Judge
Like every other fourteen-year-old boy who ran out of shop projects to enter for the free pass into the midway, I entered cookies once. Cookies I baked with my own two hands. My own two fourteen-year-old boy hands. The judge's job was to eat those cookies. Nobody should ever eat anything that was touched by a fourteen-year-old boy. No oven bakes hot enough to make those cookies fit for human consumption.
So the next time you saunter into Red Lobster for a bite to eat, tip your hat to those brave crab fishermen. And don't be so sure it's all about the money. After all, they don't have to parallel park a crab pot, there’s no fourteen-year-old with his hand in the onboard cookie jar, and the roar of the sea drowns out Kool & The Gang every time. All in all, not a bad way to earn a buck.
