Iwas asked the other day about my first job, not counting a paper route when I was

twelve. I'm sure the people doing the survey were expecting me to talk about any one of the stereotypical first jobs so many people have. I don't think they were prepared for mine.

I'm not sure if you are.

I did not enter the working world manning the grill at a fast food restaurant. I didn't wait on tables or stock shelves in a grocery store. Those are normal jobs for normal people.

And we all know how normal I am, don't we?

My first job was about as far removed from normal as possible. I filled large bags with air.

It was a summer job, tucked in between grade eleven and grade twelve. I became proficient in attaching a hand pump to a nozzle, and filling the bag to capacity with air; just the sort of thing that utilized, without overtaxing, my technical abilities. These were not small bags. They were roughly the size of the garbage bags used for disposing garden waste. They held a lot of air. Four times a day, I would visit five locations in the city of London, Ontario, stand on a street corner, and fill my oversized bright blue plastic bag with air by squeezing the hand pump several hundred times. The bags were then returned to a laboratory at the University of Western Ontario, where the chemical contents of the air could be analyzed for pollutants. That job involved passing the air through a fluid inside a machine that was clearly marked, "Gordon Kirkland is not allowed to touch this machine."

Apparently, there was some concern about combining my technical abilities with an infrared spectrometer that cost several thousand times my weekly salary.

I collected my samples at a quiet university campus location, a busy downtown intersection, across the street from a large brewery, in the middle of an industrial area, and in a predominantly residential area. Over the course of the summer, I visited those sites at some point during every one of the twenty-four hours of each of the seven days of the week. That is eight hundred and forty bags of air.

OK. So it didn't give me much in the way of intellectual stimulation, but it had its moments.

One night, at about two o'clock in the morning, I stood quietly filling my bag with air at the busy downtown intersection. The streets were empty except for the occasional cop, and a wino or two.

I was alone for the first half of the chore, but eventually a lone figure staggered down the street. At first, I thought he might have been a city employee checking the sturdiness of the light posts, because he grabbed each one he came to and hung on for a moment or two. By the time he was a couple of light posts away, I could tell that he was more than slightly inebriated. A lit match within ten feet of him could have blown us both into the middle of the next week.

He stood, clinging to the closest light post, and stared at me.

"Whatcherthinkyerdoin?" he managed to say, stringing all of his words into one. "I'm checking the atmosphere here," I said.

"Whatcherwannadothatfor?" he countered.

"To see if the air on this planet is safe for my fellow Zenukobian warriors before we attack and colonize it." I said, proving that I could be just as much of a smartass at sixteen as I am at fifty-two. His eyes widened and his chin dropped. He turned on his heals and quickly retraced his steps down the street, once again testing every light post along the way. He may have warned them to get out of town before the attack.

I've often wondered if it was a sobering experience for him, or if he is still sitting on a street corner wearing an aluminum foil cap to protect him from the Zenukobians.

I can't say that I have ever needed to draw on the knowledge I gained filling large bags with air, but as first jobs go, though, it was certainly more memorable than flipping burgers.

2006, Gordon Kirkland