Friday, May 14, 2004 a parable for our time
My senior year of high school, I started sitting with the cool kids. The weather had changed, graduation was getting close, and there was as new-found camaraderie among the members of the senior class. People who had previously rolled their eyes when they'd seen me coming and made hilarious comments in my wake (at that time, I displaced enough mass to leave a fairly sizeable one) didn't exactly clap me on the shoulder in a hearty fashion when I sat near them, but they tolerated me.
Some of the cool kids, the ones with flattering clothes and decent haircuts, were even friendly: more so than some of my fellow oddballs. They started actively waving me over to sit on the Senior Deck and hang out. Is your mind blown? Mine was!
I'd transferred to that middling-snooty prep school the year before to little fanfare, and abrupt tolerance when I was nearly done with the place was nearly more than I could take.
I want you to know, this was not a movie, so this wasn't some elaborate set-up. This story doesn't end with pig's blood at the prom or any other kind of cruelty.
Instead it fizzles: graduation came, I walked with everybody else, and went to college. The end. It's not even a story.
I tell it now because it turns out I'm leaving Boston, which has been my post-college version of the Senior Deck. It's been very exciting to be here, and I'm amazed at the friendliness and help people have given me here.
Baltimore, however has made me an offer that I could refuse, but have decided not to. as my one friend put it, I wasted my "fucking around" year. Almost exactly a year ago, after a touching commencement speech from actress Linda Hamilton*, best known for her work in the first two Terminator films, college was over and I walked again, just like everybody else.
The next year passed in a dull blur. I don't consider it wasted, but I do kind of wish I'd backpacked across Nepal or something rather than working in a call center in my old hometown.
I needed to come up here to get out of my rut, but good friends and a low cost of living are calling me. My plan now: get a real Real Job that maybe uses some of my skills and talents, instead of a Bartleby-style office job that is a step up from the ol' call center but serves only to make me feel like my brain's been scooped out with a melon baller at the end of the day. This may be more possible in Baltimore than in Boston.
They know me in Baltimore, hon. They know my college, and in that oddball town, that's not an added liability! In some ways, I feel like I'm falling back, but that's only true if I don't make a reasonable life for myself.
Luckily, I have the internet to keep me honest.
*The previous year's commencement speaker had been Larry Hagman.
posted by Frenzy Lohan | 5/14/2004 06:09:00 AM
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