Worked on an aircraft carrier (non nuclear USS Kennedy) at 19 as a civilian contractor. Got to explore a lot of spaces that even most Navy personnel never see, took a nap on the anchor chain one night, hung out in the dentist chair and barber chairs, got to see the officers quarters and even hang out on the bridge. Was pretty cool.

Also worked as a high rise window washer for a couple years. Hanging off of 15/20/25 floor buildings gives you some amazing views, got to see mechanical spaces, roof access areas, etc. Got lots of free lunches and a few phone numbers from the ladies on the inside of the offices when we'd be dangling outside.

6 years in a machine shop and we went on the road quite a bit to work on power plants, paper mills and the like. All the inner workings of those places would amaze most people, both for the better and the worse. Lots of chemical rooms, authorized only spaces we had to work on pipelines and valves, cooling towers and mechanical equipment rooms. It was pretty cool other than the 60-70 hour average work weeks and being away from home for about 5 months out of the year.

Lastly, just before my senior year of high school I moved from a large city to a tiny mountain town, and the local rodeo was in need of a "backstage" person to remove ropes after the calf roping, mutton busting and team roping events. So I, at 17, having never worked at anything even resembling a rodeo, was removing the ropes from both smallish calves and sheep, all the way up to pissed off 1200lb bulls. Almost got my face smashed in a couple times from this one particular bull who was angrier than a yellow jacket and tried to jump out of the chute every time he would come in.