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Oh, I Thought You Were Just A Stalker

�So, I�m sure you�re a writer or an editor now?�

Someone said that to me in a new trendy department store in my hometown last week. The type of store one-fifth the size of a city department store, but with just the right knickknacks that let the small town folk feel like big city society, if only until the check-out. I was wandering through this store, continuing my search for a watch made of a non-plastic material after discovering they don�t put clocks in airports anymore, despite the obvious need. I�d just abandoned my search when I ran into someone whose name I couldn�t even begin to guess. The writer comment clued me into our distant connection from the high school newspaper, where I was first the copy and layout editor, then editor-in-chief, back in the days when Madonna was still considered clever and provocative.

�Where are you living now, Denver?� 0-for-2.

I said that I was living in New Jersey and working close to Manhattan as an actuarial consultant. She tried to look impressed, but the far-off, glassy distance in her eyes has become more than familiar to me since I began this career. The look is the same, whether the victim hearing my words is dumbfounded and confused because they�ve never heard the word �actuary� before, or horrifyingly bored because they have heard the word before but know only that actuaries are what the chess club members turn into.

She noticed my trendy glasses and tight, designer sweater and mistakenly assumed that I�d gone urban rather than homosexual. Since our emotional umbilical cords run a bit tighter out in the wilds of Colorado, she also mistakenly assumed my urbanization came from time in Denver, our closest option for sin and debauchery and designer spectacles.

The writer reference is much more telling, and held me in a momentary surprise. I had forgotten that anyone out there knew me primarily as a writer, not a mathematician, and before I recalled our commonality, I was alarmed at the thought that she might be a diaryland reader who�d stalked me.

You hear the phrase a dozen times on rare trips back home, �So, what are you doing with yourself these days �� and then the speaker blurts out with a question mark what they, and everyone else who knew you years ago, expected you to be doing.

Writing?

I�d completely forgotten it was even a part of my past, let alone what people expected from me ten years out of high school. It was my chosen profession before sensibility and a Blond Bimbo newscaster turned me away and into the arms of statistical analysis. After I�d won a �Best High School Journalist in Colorado� award (ironically, for the only comedic and bibliographic story I ever wrote in my high school paper), I thought I might actually have a chance to be successful as a writer. Then I met this Blond Bimbo at a journalism conference in Denver who was giving a speech to an audience of 100 high school students, many of them hopeful of being successful members of her industry. She was hard at work at the podium, proving that she was hired solely as a pretty face for the billboards with her speech on �Getting the Tough Interview.� She ended with a brief tale of how she hounded a man into giving her an interview even though he didn�t want to speak to any reporters and had repeatedly turned away all those who approached him. This man�s daughter had died that morning in a tragedy of some sort, and she was the only successful one at getting him to cry in front of the camera and bump up her ratings a few points.

I stood up in the very back of the auditorium and, my voice shaking slightly, I asked, �If your infant son was just killed in some horrible tragic accident, and you were still shaking from grief and remorse and guilt and loneliness, how would feel if some bubble headed idiot shoved a microphone in your face and demanded that you recount for America how his death made you feel?�

She responded as only she could, �I don�t think I understand your question.� Actually, I�m assuming that�s what she said. After those first three words, it all made perfect sense, and I stopped listening.

I left that conference and closed the book on my possible career as a writer. But here I am, just ten years later, once again contemplating my possibilities. The thought of setting aside my calculator and writing a book sneaks up on me more and more as I write this diary. But without the embarrassment of attending actuarial seminars with hoards of SuperGeeks, and the torture of working for Satan, what would I write about? I�d have to find someone else who�s being tortured and write about their life. Kind of sounds familiar. Maybe I could find Blond Bimbo and see what she�s been up to. Maybe I�ll get lucky and find her in tears, primed for an interview that will catapult me into success and stardom.