This Is My LIFE

Carter was always getting in trouble at the telemarketing center. We were seniors in high school and had the same schedule. Go to school, rehearse for The Glass Menagerie (she was Amanda and I was Laura), grab dinner, work in the dingiest cubicles ever in the tiniest saddest strip mall in St. Louis.

I kinda tried to do the job well, but I really wasn't any good. Carter wasn't good and didn't try at all. My favorite memory of her is one time te automated dial machine hooked her up to a person and instead of pitching the newspaper, she just said "Hey, what's up?"

She was in trouble tonight. This time she was lagging in her response time because she was trying to memorize lines for the musical auditions in two days. It was her favorite musical. Singin in the Rain. She wanted to play Kathy, the chirpy tap-dancing lead. That's not who Carter was, and she wasn't doing anything to curb it. She didn't attend the tap dance lesson prep workshops, she didn't practice an airy soprano voice. It was clear to me, she wasn't getting the role--even though she may have wanted it more than anyone.

Our boss yelled at her for slacking. This was her job. More importantly, this was HIS job. He grumbled away back to his office. She turned to me and said, "How can he not understand this is so much more important? This is my LIFE." My thoughts: you are quite disillusioned about the world. This actual place of business is not trumped by our high school musical.

But I think about this incident years later, and I kind of side with her more and more.