I was chatting with some friends at work about business ideas and past  jobs and whatnot, when I sighed, “Ahh, but nothing will compare to my former job of selling snow cones.”

The group turned to look at me.

“Snow cones?”

Maybe it was the particularly frustrating past couple of weeks in the office, or maybe I’m just a moron, but the nostalgia in my voice was unmistakable.  I wasn’t goofing around.  I really missed that job.

“Yeah man, snow cones.  I sat in this tiny dumb wooden shed – a box, really – at the end of a shopping mall parking lot.  Alone, reading books, all day long.  Every now and then a car would pull up to the window, I’d stand up, hand them a snow cone, take their cash, and then sit back down to my book.   It was the best job I’ve ever had.”

B-rad asked, “Didn’t you spend a summer bartending on an island?”

“Yeah man.  But selling snow cones was better.”

“What?”

Yeah, really.  Man, I loved that job.  It was after my first year in college.  I was back at my parent’s house for the summer, had spent the past year of school hard-studying and under-age binge drinking, and suddenly found myself back in the place of my childhood, no longer surrounded by beautiful co-eds and bars that didn’t card.  It was a rough transition, going from living an adult-free existence, raising hell, smoking cigarettes in the dorm room, to a town where all the suburban parents treated you like some pock-marked pre-teen that bagged their groceries.  But 5 – 10 hours a day, I had my job at the snow cone stand where I was completely in control of my immediate surroundings.  All 4 feet by 4 feet of them.  I had a boss, sure, but he was never around and wasn’t exactly concerned about the business.  He was about thirty years old or so, and I seem to recall that he had gotten a DUI, and had decided to invest in this snow cone stand as an effortless way of making some extra cash to pay his legal fees.  I might have made that up.  I can’t remember.  All I remember is that for those 5 – 10 hours a day, that snow cone stand was mine.  And I was content.  The money sucked.  The freedom was awesome.

The conversation with my co-workers was suddenly focused on this snow cone job.   You tell people that you once worked in a bar on a tropical island, and they want to know all the details, because it sounds cool  You mention that you worked alone in a snow cone stand, and they’re just as inquisitive, but for the exact opposite reason.  Because it sounds so lame.

We began to discuss similar business models – a mini-tunnel in Florida that served as a drive-thru liquor store, or a small shack in the middle of a parking lot called The Milk Jug that serves as a pseudo-convenience store supplied with nothing but the essentials – cigarettes, condoms, tampons, beer.  And milk.  I explained how I’d love to work in a place like that, and, in fact, if it were possible for me to continue a decent-enough lifestyle on that paycheck, well, I think I might just apply.

This was perhaps an odd admission to make to a group of my IT peers, and even odder when B-rad offered up a suggestion.

“You could always work at a Quick Trip or something.”

“Yeah, but… I think it’s the box that appeals to me.”

Again they looked at me.

I began to contemplate this out loud.  Yeah, the box.   The freedom of… um… being stuck in a box for 10 hours.  It doesn’t make a lot of sense on the surface.  But then again,  I think many folks who have spent their adult lives in a corporate environment, a development job in my case, where you’re constantly bombarded with requests, excuses, broken promises, non-committal answers, and just the general hassle of being forced to rely on other people from other groups in order for you to accomplish even the simplest task… well, solitude in a box doesn’t sound half bad.

Or maybe it’s just me.

No, but I think there’s something more here.  Sitting in a 4ft by 4ft box for hours on end in itself sounds rather confining, sure.  But knowing that if you stepped outside that box for a few minutes to go take a leak in the nearby Kroger, and then when you returned, you discovered that a strong gust of wind had carried that box away… well, who cares, right?   If a strong gust of wind carried that whole parking lot away… who cares.  You’d just find another parking lot, another box.  Or not.  Or maybe you’d just walk away from  where that box used to stand and… you’d… well, you’d just walk away.

That’s freedom, yes?

I don’t have any strong interest in traveling, but I’m often stricken with an immense desire to walk out of my house, lock the front door, walk down the drive way, take a right, or a left, walk to the end of the street, take a right, or a left, walk to the end of the neighborhood, take a right, or a left, stop at a bar, grab a drink, exit the bar, take a right , or a left, hop on a train, or a bus, or a cab… and just keep going. Rights and lefts for as long as the desire remained.

And there’s absolutely nothing stopping me.  No wife or kids, an ass-load of vacation time to burn, and an iPod full of good tunes.   But when I begin to seriously consider the notion, I realize the futility of it all.  Eventually, I’d have to come back.  Now of course, eventually, I’d want to come back.  And that’s fine.  But the whole have to thing is the killer.  The idea of walking with absolutely zero direction is awesome.  The idea of walking with zero direction but a finite time table feels a bit artificial.  Eventually, I’ll have to return to the job and the house and the 401k and the emails and conference calls… It kinda kills the romance, doesn’t it?

I think at 34 years old I’m supposed to be embracing the responsibilities of adulthood.  And I guess I’m attending to all the necessary business that one must attend to in their thirties. Reluctantly, though.  And while I deal with these responsibilities, wear them like a suit, if you will, I’m sometimes tempted to go Baywatch, and charge to the ocean full-steam, ripping them off my back and tossing them thoughtlessly to the sand beneath me.  Course, then I consider the possibility that when I make it to ocean, I might just realize that I don’t feel like getting wet.

When I drive to work in the mornings, I  pass through a nasty area where a lot of homeless people are ambling about, seemingly careless and aimless, and sometimes when I’m in the middle of a particularly nasty work bender, I envy their lack of responsibility.

But then I realize that they all probably have to take a dump.   And they’re gonna have to solve that problem, and it might not be so easy.

And I discover that my upcoming client meeting doesn’t sound so dreadful after all.   A couple of frustrating emails might not be such a bad trade for the comfort of not having to use a gutter-soaked copy of the USA Today as toilet paper.  Being carefree sounds awesome, but something tells me that it’s a much bigger pain in the ass than I might expect.   Ouch. Sorry about that pun.

It’s all a trade-off, I guess.  And I ain’t complaining.   But that snow cone job, man.  It was pretty awesome.