| For a journalist at a weekly paper, | | | | guilty about not having a job that I went, |
| especially one as small as the Carrier, The | | | | for the first and only time, to Wickenden's |
| Day the Paper Comes Out is a day of rest. I | | | | Career Promotion Center. There I filled out |
| usually strolled into the office around | | | | questionnaire after questionnaire, and I |
| eleven, caught up on correspondence, read all | | | | talked to chipper recent grads with sweater |
| of the magazine articles I hadn't been able | | | | sets and pearl necklaces, loafers and the |
| to read during the week, made some | | | | beginnings of beer guts. I looked through job |
| long-distance personal calls, pretended to | | | | ads that made no sense. My favorites were |
| start thinking about next week's pieces, and | | | | from the consulting firms: "You will learn to |
| left at five sharp. If I was feeling | | | | implement strategic management protocol |
| virtuous, I'd file some of my week's notes | | | | decisions," et cetera. I worried that I would |
| and clear a landing strip on my desk, but | | | | turn into some sort of cyborg after three |
| usually I saved that for when I was on | | | | weeks at one of these places; I would return |
| deadline and needed mindless industry to | | | | home for my first Thanksgiving and |
| clear my head. Not that a deadline really | | | | communicate via streams of ticker tape |
| mattered all that much: Lincoln, Connecticut, | | | | issuing from my mouth.After a couple of hours |
| like many small towns, specialized in news | | | | of Career Promoting, I felt certain that I |
| with a long shelf life. Anyway, nobody was | | | | would live a long, lonely, useless life and |
| going to lose a job if an article detailing | | | | die alone and unmissed (did I mention that I |
| the controversy over the high school's mascot | | | | never bothered filling out any grad-school |
| -- the Fighting Sioux: culturally | | | | applications?). It's self-indulgent, I know, |
| insensitive, respectfully traditional, or | | | | but this is what happens to the overachieving |
| traditionally respectful? -- didn't make it. | | | | but essentially useless children of parents |
| First of all, the debate would recur next | | | | who raised their children to do well on tests |
| year, probably in the fall, right about the | | | | but failed to equip them with the |
| time ambitious seniors wanted to polish their | | | | poison-tipped spurs of true ambition.Art |
| agit-cred for college. Second, we had an | | | | Rolen called Career Promotion as I was |
| endless supply of ads, announcements, | | | | getting ready to trudge home and maintain a |
| notices, and just plain filler we could | | | | full schedule of feeling sorry for myself. I |
| recycle or resize if the cub reporter | | | | remember watching the face of my Career |
| couldn't quite ride without training | | | | Finder become radiant, just beatific, as she |
| wheels.And the times when I couldn't were | | | | nodded with increasing excitement and finally |
| getting more and more infrequent. I had been | | | | said into the phone, "Sir, I think I have |
| working at the Lincoln Carrier for almost a | | | | someone for you sitting right across from me. |
| year and a half, ever since graduating from | | | | He's not from the college paper, but his |
| Wickenden University. I had friends who had | | | | Gibson-Montaneau scores indicate that he |
| slid seemingly without thought from college | | | | might be a rilly, rilly good fit for you."She |
| to med school or law school, or to fancy | | | | winked twitchily at me and handed me the |
| consulting jobs or some sort of literary | | | | phone with one hand while making a |
| underling work in New York, as though those | | | | 1983-vintage thumbs-up sign with the other. I |
| things were just what you did. I had no such | | | | said hello, and this drawly growl in the |
| prospects, nor did I much want to go back to | | | | earpiece said, "Well, I hear those Gibbon- |
| New York, where I grew up. Actually, I had a | | | | Martindale numbers of yours are really adding |
| vague plan to attend graduate school and | | | | up. But here's what I want to know: What do |
| eventually settle down to live the | | | | they mean? And can you write?"I tucked the |
| cloistered, quiet life of a history professor | | | | phone into my chest and turned away from my |
| in some picturesque little college town | | | | Career Finder's blinding enthusiasm. "Well, I |
| (steeple, main street called Main Street, | | | | don't really know what they mean, to tell you |
| movie theater with a marquee), someplace | | | | the truth. They seem to put some stock in |
| where I could get all of my aging out of the | | | | them here, I guess. And technically I'm not |
| way in my early thirties and live without | | | | from the college paper: I wrote for them |
| crises or surprises, changing only | | | | every so often. I guess I can write well |
| incrementally for the rest of my allotted | | | | enough. Where is it you're calling |
| threescore and ten.I hadn't really thought of | | | | from?""Lincoln, Connecticut. About two hours |
| becoming a journalist, mostly because I | | | | west of Wickenden. I run a small weekly paper |
| didn't really understand how one did it. I | | | | here, about sixteen pages. What I need is |
| had turned out a few music and book reviews | | | | another fulltime, little-bit-of-everything |
| for my college paper, mainly for the free | | | | kind of person. Right now it's just me and a |
| books and CDs; I would read or listen to | | | | columnist, and we got an ad lady. The other |
| something, write a couple hundred words about | | | | full-timer we had just left, got a job in |
| it, and a week later I'd see my name above | | | | Storrs. Greener pastures, I guess. Anyway, |
| some prose that bore a passing resemblance to | | | | you'd do a little reporting, little writing, |
| what I had written. A racket, not a | | | | little editing, little paper shuffling, some |
| career.After graduation I had just stayed on | | | | office work." I heard the muffled hoosh of a |
| in the same apartment I lived in during the | | | | cigarette being smoked. "Some phone |
| year: I had no reason to be anywhere else. A | | | | answering, but no more than anyone else. |
| month into that stagnant summer, I declined | | | | Nothing fancy. No Woodstein stuff. Maybe a |
| my father's offer/mandate to work as a | | | | way to see if you want to do something like |
| paralegal at his friend's law firm in | | | | this or not."I shrugged, then remembered that |
| Indianapolis, where my father had moved after | | | | shrugs don't translate over the phone. |
| my parents finally split. He made me feel so | | | | "Sounds interesting. Sure. |