Jobs I Should Never Have

     In the course of my roughly 40 years of employment, with lots of gaps for child rearing, I have had many different jobs.  Many of them were office jobs, which is somewhat surprising because, in spite of two years of high school office related classes, I am a very slow typist (ancient form of keyboarding).  What I should have gone into had I known myself better was nursing.  In my thirties I worked as a nurse aide at the hospital and currently work in home health care.  I love older people and giving them the assistance they need to stay in their own home, rather than a nursing home, is very gratifying.  My most satisfying and challenging career was being a mother, but I was downsized after 23 years due to lack of head count.  I had the privilege of being a stay-at-home mom (laughable misnomer) and because my husband is finally making the good wages they promised him in aircraft mechanic school, I make my living mostly as a kept woman, very part time as a home health aide and wasting time trying to be a writer.
     There are a large number of jobs I am unqualified for, those requiring more than basic knowledge (this is on/this is off) of computers for example.  I know a little about a lot of things but there are no jobs under the heading "trivia". However, there are some careers at which I would be terminally incompetent.  I should never work at a craft store. It doesn't qualify me for a handicapped sticker, but I am a craft impaired person.  I can do one craft, knitting baby afghans.  For dozens of years I have knitted dozens of afghans all the same pattern.  The only thing that varies is the color of the yarn.  Not only am I incompetent at crafts, I am uninterested in crafts. The only suggestion I would be able to give a potential customer at a craft store is to buy whatever it is preassembled.  Since craft supplies are usually found at fabric stores and I think sewing machines were invented as instruments of torture--"Confess or we'll make you sew bridesmaid dresses.", I am totally unsuited for work at a fabric store.
     A second contraindicated career choice is anything to do with plants.  I am known as Connie Kevorkian in the plant world.  Occasionally well meaning people will give me a plant as a gift, not knowing they are consigning it to its doom.  I can almost hear the hushed herbal horror when it realizes where it is. "Nooo, not the Black Thumb!"  I have one houseplant, an African violet without the sense, or ability, to leave.  It seems to flourish from neglect and I am good at that.  My vegetable garden was one tomato plant whom I named Juan, as in juan and only.  Juan was well grown and had several good sized tomatoes on him when I got him so, even I, didn't have time to kill him before he produced.  For outdoor flowers I buy only annuals.  I do not cover them when the weather turns cold.  I want them to die.  Every living thing has a time to die, for plants that time comes when they get to my house.  Hiring me to work at a nursery would be like hiring Typhoid Mary to work at a rest home. 
     It no longer bothers me that there are things at which I am hopeless because there are many things I am good at, including apathy about my failures.  Besides, there are always jobs available for incompetent, apathetic individuals. They are called government jobs.