Huck Finn

The best part about working a minimum wage job in Beverly Hills, California is meeting a man who'll tell you, "Huck Finn ruined my life."

The second best part about working a minimum wage job in Beverly Hills, California is all the other people you'll meet. I'm not talking about the celebrities or the lookalike women who've all had the surgeons carve them the same nose. I mean the co-workers: the people who come to southern California and for one or more of a million reasons, they wind up working a minimum wage job in the most prosperous zip code in the nation.

You'll meet aspiring actors and writers, comic book artists and singers. You'll meet lost girls and boys and ambitious college students who work unpaid all day and then slave away in the evenings to support their experience. You'll meet all stripes and all types. I'm telling you. I was one of them.

I was aspiring AND lost and working paid all day and then slaving away in the evenings to meet interesting people and do something besides drink or watch television. I stood behind the counter at a bookstore, bewildered at what titles celebrities will buy. And, I talked with my co-workers.

One of them told me that Huck Finn ruined his life.

"What?" I asked. I was familiar with the title. It was that book that was always getting banned.

"Yeah," he said. "Basically, after reading it, I just want to float down the river for the rest of my life."

Some would say he's a lost boy, but I knew better by the look in his eye. I wondered if that's why the book strikes such fear in the hearts of so many school board members. It's not the language or the action or the behavior of the characters. It's what they inspire. They inspire flotation. It seems like the opposite of ambition. It looks like laziness. It sounds like a vagrant's life.

That's more frightening than cutting your flesh to change your face. To look similar. To assimilate. One takes money and one takes guts and maybe that's the real fear. That guts without money can thrive in this world. The best part about working a minimum wage job in Beverly Hills, California is feeling gutsy without a big payday. You have your wits and your dreams and you got yourself to southern California. If you can get to Beverly Hills, you can build a raft. You can find a river.