Underwear Required

job noun
a paid position of regular employment

I am the recipient of a new job. After two of the most boring hours I have spent in quite some time, I was handed a W4 and given a date to report for work. Remember those pictures of women lined up sitting next to each other at tables with sewing machines? The sweatshop? That will be me. Only instead of a sewing machine and hundreds of pieces of material to form into the same design, I will have a laptop and hundreds of essays of high school students to grade, in the same manner.

Still reeling from the events of last Thursday. I was right not to have been nervous for the interview. And I’m thinking I probably could have shown up naked and still got the job. I don’t mean to sound negative or ungrateful, but really. I think the only requirement was a Bachelor’s degree and a pulse. In other words, there is nothing I have done in the past 30 years that qualified me for this job beyond that. Hard for me to reconcile that.

Bad attitude? Perhaps. Do I need to adjust that? Absolutely. Do I plan to? You betcha! But in the meantime, I rant. And now the dust has settled and I’m ready to move forward. Why do I do that? Why do I always have to go through that little stutter step before I can put that next foot in front of the other?

Along with a paycheck, the other good thing? I don’t have to buy any new clothes. Casual attire is acceptable as long as I wear underwear. I can do underwear.