Job Announcements and the Lies People Tell

Please forgive me.  

I stopped writing after the fourth job interview  that went nowhere. I can’t figure out the story I want to tell anymore.

The newspapers are dying.  The corner stores are dying.

And then the  weekend before last, as I was finishing my CORE III earthquake emergency preparedness training, putting out real fires,four police officers were shot dead, and  their killer too.

After this two adults came into a classroom at my high school brandishing guns, and robbed  the students. Somewhere else the same week  a fifteen-year-old girl, a high school drop out, was murdered, and a young child witnessed her mother with a bullet in her head, in the car seat beside her.

All week I am dealing with crisis.

That my husband has no job, hardly matters.

Can’t figure out how this happened, that the world I thought I was growing up into became something so different. 

People who are desperate, traumatized, who have no options, who failed to get an education, commit terrible crimes.

But there are others,  people who had the best education, and every option.  Some of them  are people who  lie and cheat and steal, lured the top college graduates away from medicine and engineering, into their number games and pyramid schemes,then let people tumble away as waste, after they gambled away their middle class future.

We were the ones who had believed in the stories they told us. The ones who believed in our  college education. Believed in owning a house. Saving in a 401K.  Making a commitment to  work hard. We believed it would lead to a better life. We would not end up the desperate ones who committed terrible crimes. Not the ones who ended up homeless, hungry, deprived.

 I am not sure anymore what story to tell.

People are disappearing, being forgotten.

There are not enough reporters to investigate what is going on.

It’s hard to keep up with the story because it’s  changing too quickly. 

Like how suddenly the  ski slopes that used to have  the long lift lines  are surprising empty.

 They tell us we must be vigilant about our safety. Watch all the doors. And then they cancel our health insurance. Even scarier than losing a job is this: being middle age and grey.

Did you know that you are uninsurable if you have pre-existing conditions, like high blood pressure, or diabetes?

Why aren’t the job offers following the interviews my husband gets?They love his resume, they love him on the phone, what happens next when they meet him in person?

 I always thought  that how you looked only mattered if you wanted to be a movie star but all of a sudden it’s the most important thing. I’m looking at people and trying to figure out: Are they the lucky ones still in the work force, or the ones cast off? I am exploring their wrinkles, appraising the pain in their face.

Quick: I think, cover it up. Die you hair. Dumb yourself down. Make yourself be someone who graduated with a BS or MS in Computer Science June 2008 - June 2009, an extraordinary coder with engineering talent.

 Yes. That’s true. That’s what the latest job announcement actually says.

I answer:

If they don’t want you and your experience, why be an engineer? Go teach the young people I work with to play guitar. They are dying to have you. They will think it’s cool you play so well, that you're still like them at heart.

There is work, even if it pays nothing, that’s more important. You can save a life. Really.