By David Rose
Although it’s 30 years past, it’s still as clear as yesterday. It was the kind of thing I always thought happened to somebody else, not to me. I was immune, and then it hit me, the mid-life crisis.
I’d spent my life driving down the freeway with hardly another car in sight. The traffic in the other direction was bumper-to-bumper. Surely I knew something they didn’t. Things changed. I began to think all those people couldn’t possibly be wrong. There was something I was missing out on.
I decided to give up my life as a hand-to-mouth artist and get a “regular” job. I wanted it all: an office with a desk, Rolodex, photo cube, and a calendar on the wall. I wanted to walk down a hallway with a handful of papers, perhaps an unlit pipe in my mouth, and finger-wave at my co-workers.
I borrowed a typewriter and set to work on my resume. Dropping out of high school wouldn’t play well so I glossed over that part and moved right along to my military career. Two years in the Army, the longest I ever held a job. Perhaps my future employer wouldn’t notice that I’d been drafted in the first place and only stuck it out because the stockade was the only other option. After that was a 20-year gap. I wrote in artist.
The next few weeks were spent scanning the want ads and making calls. Finally, it happened, my first job interview. I strafed a thrift store for proper attire.
The man to interview me sat in a perfect office behind a perfect desk. He had a Rolodex, photo cube, and the stem of a pipe sticking up from his shirt pocket. I was knocking on heaven’s door.
The interview was short. He glanced at my anemic resume, flipped it over and scanned the back. The back was blank. He looked up at me and shook his head.
“In the third grade, I was line leader for a whole week,” I added.
He pointed me to the door, but on my way he called me to a stop. “About that 20-year gap in your curriculum vitae,” he said. “You might want to say you spent that time in prison. A lot of people are willing to give an ex-con a second chance, but nobody’s going to gamble on an artist.”
