The way I remember it, the air was hot and still. These were the Florida summers of my childhood, after all. It was wet even when it wasn’t raining. When it did rain—which was every afternoon at 4 o’clock –steam would rise and sizzle off the sidewalk and driveway. Then the sun would return with less force, but the mosquitoes made up for the sun backing off. It was brutal.

That didn’t stop us, though. My neighborhood girlfriend and I set up a car wash in my driveway and waited there for customers each summer. Our sign was a chalkboard that read “CAR WASH” in our fanciest, swirliest, girliest writing. Our clientele consisted of the last stay-at-home moms of the 80’s. They were a dying breed even back then, but there were a few who passed, felt sorry enough, and turned around. We washed, Windexed, and vacuumed for two bucks, which was a great deal even considering inflation and the fact that scrawny ten-year-olds were the ones wielding the elbow grease.

After our first customer of the day left, we’d close up shop. Splitting the two bucks one-and-one, we’d hop on our bikes and race to the convenience store at the entrance to our neighborhood. We’d blow all our money —me on beef jerky and a popsicle, her on a Laffy Taffy—and ride home. On the way home, we’d pedal slowly, while I caught the drips off my twin-pop.

Alongside our car wash business, we tried lemonade stands and mowing lawns. Both yielded pathetic returns. It wasn’t until I turned eleven and got my first babysitting job that business started to pick up. I became popular and continued to be all the way through college. Once, three moms in a cul-de-sac collaborated to have me watch all their children full-time for the whole summer. I was only fourteen. Desperate housewives existed back then; they always have.

It wasn’t good enough to work all day; when someone called in the evening, I’d take that job too, falling asleep on someone’s couch sometime after midnight. I worked a lot, not understanding that there’d be plenty of time to do that later. But I had other reasons too, so in some ways, it was a good thing.

Besides the fact that I was not mature enough to raise other people’s children, there was another annoying part of the job. Before I got my driver’s license, I had to catch a ride home from whomever I was working for. Nine times out of ten, the parent or boyfriend was drunk. They’d hunch over the steering wheel every time, drive 10 mph, and tell me stories that I didn’t want to know. Even back then, I despised drunk drivers, as I’d known a few cases up close and personal already. It never occurred to me to opt out of the situation because like the summer air, it was all just a part of living.