A fairy tale? Probably not...

Once upon a time, in the land of ten thousand lakes, there was a mostly unhappy teenage girl.  Although it is fairly common to be an unhappy teenager, this particular girl could not remember ever being mostly happy.  This girl had always felt alone, even when in the company of the few people she considered friends.  She was a target of school bullies for being overweight, socially awkward, and tall since the very beginning of middle school.  The worst part is that this mostly unhappy teenage girl was me.

In effort to get me out of the house during non-school hours, my mother suggested that I find a part-time job.  The options were limited near our house for someone my age; however I applied and was hired at McDonalds while I was in September of 2000.  I had no idea just how much that battered brick building was about to change my life.
During the first few months of my employment I learned the basics; the fry station, taking orders, stocking supplies, and the smaller cleaning jobs.  I spent the free time during my shift watching the people working in the grill area.  They were a tight knit community and I was envious of the warmth and the way they helped each other.  I wanted to be a part of that group of people, to have that connection with someone.  Unfortunately I had one major barrier in my way, I didn’t speak Spanish.  In fact, the foreign language classes I was taking in school were for French.  To this day I have not had a situation where the knowledge of French would have come in handy.  Perhaps I have been running with the wrong crowd all these years.

I enjoyed the daily Spanish lessons with my coworkers, even though they didn’t necessarily teach me the correct meaning of all the phrases.  There were those few who took delight in teaching me bad words, but luckily some of the women were quick to advise me which words I shouldn’t say.  My first six months at McDonalds opened my eyes to a culture much different yet similar to the one I grew up knowing.  Somewhere around this point I was dubbed ‘la jirafa’ which means the giraffe.  I see that as a turning point in my own attitude since instead of being offended, I was actually happy to have a nickname not derived from my name.