I wrote this for work last week.

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years at high school, before I was able to work legally in New York state, I secured a job that sounded almost too good to be true: I was promised ten dollars an hour off the books to help a friend-of-a-friend’s mother with her children’s party planning business. My new boss, Barbara, picked me up at home one oppressively hot June afternoon. Next to me in the backseat of the car was an enormous black plastic garbage bag filled with something soft and smushy. It stuck to the side of my leg when I slid into the car. Eventually I asked my new boss what she was carting around back there, half-joking about the mafia and bodies sleeping with the fishes.

“That’s your costume,” Barbara said matter-of-factly.

Costume? It was eighty-seven degrees outside, I was sweating, and I started to sweat some more. I dug my index finger into the black plastic bag until a bit of purple-colored fur poked through. Purple fur could mean only one thing: Barney, that sing-songy, perpetually congested, dinosaurish monster. Mortified, I racked my brain for an escape plan, and briefly considered tossing myself out the car door and onto the broiling asphalt, but just then we pulled up at a house with balloons tied to the mailbox. Party time had arrived.

Once inside the house, I was ushered off into a bathroom, along with the black plastic bag. The kids were corralled in the back yard, eagerly anticipating the arrival of their favorite fey reptile, me. Barbara had told me that it would be hot inside the costume—in fact, she recommended that I strip down to my underwear before putting the thing on. I stepped into the purple fur, shoeless and pantless, trying desperately not to think of others who had sweated there before me. Barney’s oversized head stared up at me from where I’d placed it on the toilet bowl lid. I wondered whether I could just leave it there and walk out of the bathroom headless, forever scarring those overstimulated five-year-olds.
Finally, clumsily, I emerged from the bathroom, and walked out the back door like any normal, purple-costume-wearing fourteen-year-old. The kids went berserk, gripping my fur in their grubby little mitts. I could barely see out of the translucent gray material that was to be my periscope—the inside of Barney’s mouth—and I was terrified to think that I might fall over and be smothered by thirty five-year-olds consumed with Barney bloodlust. After about fifteen minutes, Barbara stopped the tape recorder, and the loop of “I Love You, You Love Me” finally came to an end. The pink-cheeked mother of the birthday boy pressed a five dollar bill into my hand and gestured toward the house. I was free to go.

Back in my room at home that night, I thought about what I’d buy with my freshly-earned fifteen dollars. Next weekend’s assignment—the Bert half of Bert and Ernie—wasn’t looking so bad afterall.