After I realized I was a shitty lifeguard, I hit the pavement to the nearest mecca of available jobs for teenagers– the local shopping mall. I entered on the NorthWest side, which was the loneliest and least likely you’d run into “anyone (who’s anyone)” side of the mall. I passed by a new store I hadn’t seen previously called ‘Native American Arts.'

The store was void of living souls but stocked to the brim with things that once roamed the Great Plains. Coyote skulls, rabbit pelts, deers skins stretched tightly over tiny drums adorned with feathers that previously belonged to beautiful birds that once soared high above where the Taco Bell in the food court now currently stood.

I thought “Arts”.... I like art. Native Americans are cool, why not? I gazed over the merchandise like a museum patron when a very quiet, but confident man appeared on the store floor. I remember he had a very shiny forehead, or maybe there were way too many accent lights shining down from the ceiling. He had slicked-back black hair that only when he turned around to grab me an application, I could see was pulled tightly back into a long black braid.

I kind of snickered to myself, “Wow, he must be an actual Native American!” I had never met any dude in my life who wore their hair in a braid, let alone a full grown ass man, so this guy must be legit. I got hired fairly quickly and was so excited to dress up like an Express mannequin for my very first day at my new job–And one that sold authentic Native American crafts at super high prices, so this is like a fancy store!

The reason the prices were so high, I was assured by my boss/the owner, was because these crafts were hand-made by REAL Native Americans on the reservation. I believed him because every item in the store came with a little certificate of authenticity attached to it with a plastic tie. The tags had the name of the artist and the name of the tribe hand-written on them for extra reassurance.

Everything had to be manually calculated with a calculator that was next to the register. Tax and what not. I was so nervous on my first day, I prayed that no one would come into the store or ask me any questions.

I recall a pair of older, affluent women coming in that first day and purchasing a miniature dream catcher. This particular one was made of black suede. I felt like I was doing an excellent job of being friendly and calculating the proper price for the item that a surge of confidence of the finality of my first sale caused me to slam the register shut. I looked down in horror to realize that I had shut half of the suede straps hanging from the dream catcher inside of the register and the dreamcatcher was stuck. The lady started to explain that it was a gift and if I could wrap it up for her, as I am softly tugging at the straps and praying that this fucking thing release itself from the cold plastic grip of the register. Neither the register, nor God had any mercy on me that day. I had to fess up.

I politely asked if she could maybe choose a different one because I had gotten it caught in the register. She didn’t laugh, nor seek mercy on me either. She insisted she wanted the black one, and that was the last black one. Then, as anyone who hates to do at a new job when you’re that young, I had to admit that I was new... and did not know how to open the register without making another sale. This led to me having to call the owner, which was so embarrassing I thought I’d be fired on the spot. Whether it was my panic/fear of such a petty situation that made the owner laugh, or my stupidity I’ll never know. He told me the magical key code that unlocked the grip of the register and the dreamcatcher was freed, and I was not fired.

At the end of every shift I had to tally up all of the sales of the day manually with a calculator, collect the paperwork and money and insert it into a official plastic bag and drop it at the South end of the parking lot at the drive-up bank window. Somehow, at the age of 15, this made me feel very important. After a few years the drops were unnecessary because days, even weeks would go by without a single sale.

I thought the owner would have a sweet name like Night Wolf or Spread Eagle but his name was Matt. When I asked him “Why such a boring white guy name?” he told me his father had named him and his brothers the most basic names because he believed it would lead to more fruitful opportunities in the American workforce. He believed people would be less skeptical of a Matt rather than a Spread Eagle. He also had a giant tattoo that covered up most of his forearm that said “WINNEBAGO.” I thought “Wow, this guy must really love RVs”. Apparently this was the former name of his tribe which was now referred to as HoChunk, which I thought was just the name of a chain of casinos. These casinos were the reason we could remain open without having a single sale for weeks on end.

Being at the most desolate corner of the mall, I would get very lonely working the store. This was before the smartphone generation keep in mind. And me being paranoid as always acted like a Stepford Wife guarding medicine wheels and stone fetishes, too nervous to just read a book and kick back. I’d get so conditioned for hours on end without one soul entering the store, that when customers actually did come in, I felt them unwelcome and a nuisance.

Once I felt the coast was clear I’d read a book or draw and if someone came in I swiftly hid the book or drawing I was working on like I was a 8 year old being caught by a pastor reading the Necronomicon. I don’t know why, I guess I just wanted to seem “professional”. The Editor Cut slacks and the Polyester button-up blouse from Express also helped push this agenda.

That first Christmas season was our “busiest” time of the year, which basically meant I had to start using the calculator again and Matt had to bring in another “employee”. He was one of the artists who actually carved the fetish stones and lived on a real reservation. His name was not Night Wolf nor was it Spread Eagle either – His name was Tony.

I loved Tony. He wore a shit ton of bone necklaces paired with his slightly too tight “Life is Good” graphic tee and was friendly in that “Uncle” sort of way. He explained the meanings of what each animal meant to his people, which I completely forgot about a week later. It was also great to have Tony around when people would come in and try to rip me a new asshole by saying “ALL THIS SHIT IS FAKE!” When my only defense previously was “I’m a fucking high school student trying to make money so I can coax a stranger into buying me cigarettes from the corner gas station!” Tony was the real deal so all of our merchandise must have been as well. Unless Tony was an actor? I’ll never know.

I have a lot of memories of this store. At one point I’d just write songs in the back room and chain smoke cigs. The boss never came in and I had a TV monitor of the store I could watch from the back room. Barely anyone ever came in except for a few annoying boys I went to high school with that knew I worked there and would stand on the threshold between the store and the main floor of the mall and set off the buzzer. The buzzer would just hold one note monotonously until they stepped off the trigger. It was probably very amusing to them but would drive me batshit crazy.

For some reason our phone at the store had an antenna on it that looked like a tiny horn. My friend Kim came to visit me during my shift one day and she asked if she could use the phone. I told her to go in the back and grab it and that it was black with a horn on it. She came back to the front of the store holding a huge feathered and beaded headdress with giant antlers to her ear mimicking making a phone call, laughing hysterically, “YOU MEAN THIS?!” “HOW DO I DIAL?!”

One time I had about 5 friends show up with Portillo’s and we put on a movie in the back hallway. As were laying on our stomachs scarfing down onion rings and hotdogs, the owner showed up. He literally tip-toed around us and our miles of greasy wrappers, disappeared into the front office and never mentioned a word of it. He was oddly cool like that.

Around Christmas time one year he invited my coworker/friend Yvonne and I for a company Christmas Dinner at The Outback Steakhouse. His nephew Nathan was also working that day, but told us not to mention the dinner nor the giant bonus checks he gave us to Nathan, who was holding down the store while we wined and dined. Thinking back, it’s kind of strange that a 40-something year old man would take two 16 year olds to a “fancy” Outback dinner and give them each $500 Bonus checks, but hey, who am I to judge? I got $500 for eating a free lobster dinner. And that pumpernickel bread?! Secret’s safe with me!

Once this boss found out I could draw ( kind of ) he let me in on a “little side project” he was working on. A book of idioms taken literally called “See What I’m Saying”, where an idiom would be drawn as a cartoon but taken literally. He had about 200 pages of these printed out. The idiom, his literal take on it and what it was supposed to look like as an illustration. One example was “Don’t cry over spilled milk” and his description for the cartoonist would be “Someone crying underneath a table that has a carton of spilled milk on top of it.”

I thought this was awesome and I couldn’t wait to start drawing. Oh, and on top of it he wanted to pay me $10 an illustration! This was HUGE! I did a lot of these drawings, some were harder than others and being an anal perfectionist, I threw a lot of the drawings in the trash bin. Probably most of them actually. One week I came in and the boss approached me and said he’d noticed I had thrown a lot of drawings away and not to throw anything away… and if I submitted all drawings to him he would pay $20 a drawing! This seemed strange to me and I think going forward I stuffed the bad drawings in my purse and threw them away at home. Also, why was he going through the trash? I felt like $20 a drawing was too much and so I only submitted a handful after that. Looking back, I should have just handed in every goddamn sketch and laughed all the way to the bank but I had some sort of pride I could not shake.

Somehow my coworker/friend/bandmate/mostpopulargirlinschoolsincewewereinkindergarten started dating my ex boyfriend, who eventually somehow became the manager at Native American Arts. This always kind of bothered me, but at the same time I dumped HIM, so I couldn’t be THAT mad.

My favorite moment at Native Arts had to be when I wrote on the dry erase board to my manager/ex-boyfriend/currentboyfriendofbandmate/friend/coworker” that read, ”Kevin, When you get the chance, please deep clean the toilet in the back room.” - Matt (the owner).

I totally thought he’d know it was MY handwriting and that I was obviously kidding. My handwriting as Matt’s handwriting was so convincing that he thought it was real and he went ahead and deep cleaned that fucking toilet. Years later I brought this up to him via FaceBook messenger and he replied, “That’s really fucked up, Meg…”