Like a cold virus, blog memes seem to be all the rage these days. Auren Hoffman just tagged me with his “My First $1000” question. Auren used smarts to get his — I used my looks.

Steady income in my teenage years came first from babysitting and then from working in a kid’s bookstore. The babysitting was particularly easy – there aren’t that many guys in that line of work, so you’re in demand for every parent with boys. Basically I cleared some good dollars for doing nothing more than playing video games and ensuring they scampered off to bed when the car pulled into the driveway.

But my first $1,000 payday came from a less traditional source, a neighbor who was a part-time filmmaker, part-time funnel cake maker (you know at those country fairs). My tale revolves around not fried dough but a mischievous looking face.

He was filming a training video for an insurance company. It involved a flashback where two different insurance salesmen remembered their childhood. One made real lemonade and charged a fair price. The other used powdered mix, lied that it was fresh and undercut the price of the other kid. I’m assuming the insurance company was telling their salespeople to be like the noble child. But I played the scoundrel. And got paid something like $1200 for the two days of work. No SAG card though.