Park Ridge, Illinois is getting one of its first hot days of the summer season today. The forecast predicts it to reach a high of eighty seven, which is basically unheard of in this area so early in May. You decide to take advantage of this nice weather and set out on a walk. From a distance you see two girls outside a building, one using a watering hose and the other pulling out weeds. A simple gardening job, you think, how nice of a day for that. As you get closer you notice the girl's unusual clothing. Bright blue pants and a big white shirt with the various characters from the Disney movie Frozen. Interesting, you think, they look like scrubs…why are gardeners wearing scrubs?

Finally you’re only a few sidewalk squares away from the girls. You can see the dark brown dirt smudges on their clothes, the beads of sweat dripping from their foreheads, the annoyed expression written across their faces. You look into the building. Through the window walls, Wee Care Pediatric Dentistry is written in big, dark blue letters across the front desk area. These girls work at a dentistry, you think, that explains the scrubs. So why are they pulling out weeds? As you pass them, you see their faces in better detail. As they shyly glance at you, you notice the pink in their cheeks, the embarrassment plastered on their young faces. Poor girls, you think.

My friend Kara and I have been working for my mom’s dentist office since eighth grade. Nothing too serious, usually just cleaning, setting up, filing charts-- the easy stuff. But now that we are sixteen, my mom lets us do more, such as fluoride trays and learning how to do x-rays. We were so proud of ourselves; we’re practically real dentists! That’s why we were so disappointed to be assigned to garden duty.

Garden duty was usually assigned to my younger brothers, who sometimes had to hang out at the office. If they weren’t available, usually one of the hygienists, Vanessa, would stay after work to do it. Now, Vanessa… is odd. For example, she wears these special magnifying glasses over her normal glasses, which make her look like some sort of evil bug or something. Her dark brown hair is cut awkwardly into something longer than a pixie cut but shorter than a bob and her nose, oh, her nose. Let’s just say it’s an epitome of witch noses(I’ll let you imagine how that looks). She also happens to think she’s the boss of me; Vanessa has been my mom’s friend since I was little, and she thinks she has as much authority over me as my mom does.
It all started one day when Vanessa called me over.

“Samantha darling! Come here please!”

My eyes could have created an earthquake, that how hard they rolled when I heard her voice. I knew I was in for something. But the problem is that I can’t ever ignore her; she will hunt me down and force me into whatever she wants me to do just because she can. Or she thinks she can. So after stripping off my painfully tight rubber gloves, I slowly make my way towards the witch. Oh, my bad. I mean Vanessa. As soon as she sees me, she slides over in her little chair, bloody floss still in hand.

“Samantha darling, I need a quick favor. I’ve been thinking about it all day and I really need to get it off my conscience”.

Oh god. This cannot be good. I put on my best fake smile.

“Of course! What do you need help with?”

Vanessa gives me a serious look from under her bug glasses and replies, “I need you to run out to my car and grab the three watermelons in my trunk. It’s been so hot today, they’re going to go bad out there! Thank you!” She slides back over to her patient, leaving me standing there.
Uh...what?!

Did she really just ask me to fetch watermelons for her? Did she really just steal me away from my mom to make me do this? And who does she think I am? Her servant? Maybe Superman? How am I supposed to carry in three watermelons by myself? I force myself out of the room before letting out another earth- rumbling eye roll, and track down Kara to update her on the witch’s demands. Keep in mind this is not the first time Vanessa has asked us to do stuff like this. Or the second. Or even the tenth. This is a common thing with her, and usually she asks Kara to complete her tasks, so Kara understands my rage. I finish telling Kara about this latest task, and the amount of eye rolls that came from our eyeballs really should have created a tsunami big enough to swallow the earth.

Now, this is how we ended up channeling our inner gardening skills.

My mom was not in the best mood; a whole afternoon of patients await her after a long, rough morning. Kara and I were walking out the door with Vanessa's car keys when my mom called to us.

“Where do you guys think you’re going? We have a lot of patients this afternoon we need help.”

Kara and I look at each other in an oh-boy-I-can’t-wait-to-complain-about-this kind of  way. Complaining happens to be one of our favorite things to do, especially at work. We run up to my mom, scanning to see if Vanessa was in earshot, and unleash our fury.

“Mom, you’ll never believe what Vanessa is making me do!”, I start off with. Kara jumps in, “Yeah honestly she’s treating us like we are her slaves!” We continue ranting to my mom, on and on, about how evil Vanessa is and how she shouldn’t be allowed to force us to do anything because, news flash, she’s not my mom so it doesn’t matter how old or witch- like she is, she can’t control us and it doesn’t really matter that she works there because we don’t work for her, we work for my mom, the dentist, the owner of this business, so why does she think she has so much authority over us just because we’re young, but she can take advantage of that and also take advantage of the fact that we can’t really complain that much about her or we will get in trouble. And that’s exactly what happened.

“Enough!”, my mom interrupts, “I’m sick of you guys complaining about her all the time! If you work here then you have to help everyone out, even if that includes bringing watermelons in from the car.”

Kara and I glance at each other in a oh-boy-now-what-have-we-started kind of way.

“Vanessa is a very busy lady and you need to do everything you can to help her out. As a matter of fact, I know the garden hasn’t been maintained in a while. You know why? Because Vanessa has been too busy! So after you bring in the watermelons, you guys are going to garden until everything is perfect and you learn to respect Vanessa, especially when she needs your help!” My mom storms back into her office.

What have we gotten ourselves into.

So there we were in the sunny, blazing hot, eighty seven degree day, in our dumb Frozen scrubs, pulling out weeds and hosing down every single plant (with specific instructions from Vanessa), sweating through every pore while plotting ways to get back at the witch, spraying and chasing each other around with the hose(maybe hitting a few cars...or pedestrians), accidentally smearing dirt over Princess Elsa and cute little Olaf’s face, getting judged by the confused pedestrians, wondering why out of all days this was the day that we got punished to pull weeds, hose down plants and embarrass ourselves in front of all the cars, all the patients, and all the plants who were probably begging us to stop harassing them with the hose because we were uneducated around plants, plain careless and above all miserable.

As you pass the two girls an older lady with short brown hair and a significantly large nose walks out of the front door.

“No, no, no girls what are you doing! I specifically said not to leave the hose running on the rhododendrons!” You hear the lady shout at the girls. That sounds like some sort of robot, you think. You look back and see the two girls burst out laughing. Again, the lady shouts, “Girls! What do you find so funny about ruining my precious plants? Do I need to talk to your mother, Samantha?” You let out a breathy laugh as you turn back around and continue walking.

Poor girls, you think.