GOOD JOB, ROBBIE!
An original short story by
Daniel Weitzman

"Good job, Robbie!" said Robbie's dad, watching Robbie scamper down the first base line.

"Good job, Robbie!" said his dad, checking over his son's math homework.

"Good job, Robbie!" his dad exclaimed, seeing that his son had eaten at least three quarters of his dinner - including a few bites of broccoli.

While Robbie was happy to make his dad happy, being told with the words, "Good job!" felt a little strange to him.

Dad had a job: He was a lawyer.

Mom had a job: She was a doctor.

Lots of the grown-ups Robbie knew had jobs. And the ones who didn't always seemed to be looking for one.

Oh, sure - kids had jobs, too: jobs like delivering newspapers, bagging groceries, shoveling snow.

But they weren't "jobby" jobs. They didn't keep kids away from home most of the day, and sometimes - way into the night.

They didn't leave kids looking totally exhausted.

They didn't come with suits and ties and oh so many rules.

All in all, jobs seemed like pretty demanding, very grown-up things.

So why did Robbie's dad tell him he'd done a "good job" of trying to beat out an infield hit?

Why "good job" when he added and subtracted numbers - especially when his math teacher sometimes showed him he hadn't done such a good job?

As for the "good job" with his dinner - that made absolutely no sense. Dinner wasn't a job. Okay, so the broccoli wasn't much fun, but that didn't make it a job. It wasn't like Robbie was going to grow up to be a professional broccoli eater.

Next day, after the baseball game, when dad said, "Good job, Robbie!" Robbie had something of his own to say.

"I quit," he said.

Robbie's dad looked at him like he was crazy. "You can't quit," said his dad.

"If baseball is a 'job,'" said Robbie. "Then I can quit it."

"You could," said dad. "But what would be the point of that? You love baseball."

"I'd love it more if it wasn't a 'job'," said Robbie. "It's the same thing you say after I do my math homework or eat my broccoli," said Robbie.

"Robbie," said his dad, "all it is... is a figure of speech."

"Then maybe we can figure something else out," said Robbie.

"Tell you what," said Robbie's dad. "I'll stop saying, 'Good job, Robbie' on one condition."

"What's that?" said Robbie.

"That you don't quit baseball."

Robbie took a deep breath, and squeezed out a few words. "I think I can do that," said Robbie.

And he did. And his dad stopped saying, "Good job, Robbie."

And that was that.

Until Robbie grew up and got a job.

(Not as a professional broccoli-eater.)



Copyright © by Daniel Weitzman. All rights reserved.