Dear Sir or Madam:
There once was a little girl who took learning to write to a new peak of neurosis, erasing and rewriting each letter until each swoop and pole and slant was perfect. She grew into a preadolescent perfectionist who bullied her best friend, who’d have much rather played soccer with the hyperkinetic boys, into writing stories for her magazine, which she bedecked with Lisa Frank™ stickers and cut-out photographs from magazines called Bop! and Tiger Beat. Later, she wrote a story for a class about, well, her addled adult brain can’t remember now, but something, probably about her cat or her family, and her teacher, seeing “potential” (or maybe loneliness) in her hopeful blue eyes, sent her to a writing convention of other children in whom was also seen something like “potential.” While the children bemoaned the contents of their brown-bagged lunches and traded bananas for Cheetos, she decided, tracing her fingers over her first red editing marks from peers and mentors, that maybe it would be “cool” to grow up and be a writer, to make a life of your thoughts, however random or irrelevant.
Several years later. The girl has wandered, like most gen-Yers do, according to The New York Times and the State of our Economy. She majored in journalism and aced her classes then moved to New York, as you do. There she worked her tail off writing for a small magazine about lingerie for a 50-year-old, scruffy editor who barked at models like a chihuahua, in an office in a tiny studio apartment next to DuPont paints, with an office cat named Kinky who was not "fixed" and mewled like a lawnmower for a lover. Well she cast that aside, paint fumes and fake breasts and all, because she was in NEW YORK, writing for a MAGAZINE, and she could see herself MAKING IT after PUTTING IN HER TIME. Then she got an offer to work at a huge news organization as an assistant to an Executive Editor. He was old and everyone said he was mean and he had shock white hair and folds in his face and strong opinions about politics, but she took the job anyway, because, after she PUT IN HER TIME, she envisioned this: Her name under bold headlines, her stories cited by strangers and intellectuals, her parents clutching their hearts and saying, "That's my girl!," her hometown erecting a loud but still tasteful shrine to the young woman who GOT OUT and MADE something of herself. A professor had told her her writing was "Joycean." An obituary she wrote about a tall college kid getting crumpled up in a car accident had made the father cry. She had a purpose. She could do this.
But it didn't happen like that, of course. The editor, as promised, WAS mean, and after 2.5 years of answering phones, memorizing the CQ Almanac of American Politics, scheduling his hair appointments, finding his misplaced glasses (once, perched tauntingly on his head) and smoothing his combover for TV appearances, she was sent off with well-wishes and a list of nearby news agencies. Like most talented girls with a drop of humility in their bones, she was pushed aside.
She discovered, while seeking solace during this time of shattered dreams, that her Life Path Number was a 9. "You will never be happy," the Internet told her, "if you don't do something that helps others." It was time, her little voice told her, to shun corporate bigotry and fuck The Man and be young and idealistic. She bought a red statue of Buddha. She wrote an emotional narrative about tutoring and the hopeful look in the kid's eyes that made her feel she could “make a difference.” She was told it was tough, but it would look good on her resume. She joined Teach for America.
To be continued...
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