On odd jobs

Last week, I officially joined the ranks of the good-hearted but annoying folks who go door to door and guilt you into giving for the environment. And then I dropped out. It was a Thursday and I had nothing better to do.

The idea had taken hold the day before: Get a job today. I gave out doctored resumes and hastily filled out applications. This was a version of what I'd been doing for the past month, selling myself continually to the far-away and noncommittal mandarins of my future life. Each sent email was a reminder of the immeasurable distance between my aimless wanting self and my direction in life. Was I following it? Was I even getting close?

I liked this paper filling and hand shaking a great deal better than the internet stuff, it felt more real and possible. I could see the distance and it was not insurmountable. If I chose to, I could have held the hand of my potential employer and never let go.

On a lark, I called the black number on the lime-green poster, framed by the words, "NEED A SUMMER JOB?" I did, and they were out there. I was the best man on the market for this sort of work. I'd worked in national parks in Utah and cleaned penguin shit on the Jersey shore. I'd been paid to take photos and sold stuff on eBay. Like a guy ordering Girls Gone Wild via express mail, I was confident I would be getting my rocks off soon.

The canvassing job started off holding my hand, and it was very soon sticking its tongue into my ear canal. It tickled. I didn't know if I wanted to kiss it on the waxy mouth, so I played coy for the moment. It was 1:30 pm Thursday, and I was being introduced to smiling faces.

A 22-yr-old Temple film student named Justin was my trainer. His favorite film was Good Will Hunting and I kind of liked him for not saying something pretentious. There were some other kids in the group with us, a high-schooler and a twenty-something teacher doing this for the summer. We read from a script, and it affected the way we thought. It shrunk our personalities to a letter-size page. It was a complaint in three beats: terrible environmental fact, terrible environmental fact, appeal for money. I went into it doubtful for this exact reason. Shadowing Justin and smiling, I got the friendly/commiserating eye roll a couple times. It's not that these people didn't believe in what we were doing, it's just that we were annoying them.

We were out in a rustic suburb on a brutal night, and no one even offered us lemonade. I went solo after a two hour introduction and racked up $30. Justin said I was doing really well, he said I was a natural. I dropped my intellectual hangups and learned my lines. I found it a good exercise in canceling ego. And of course all the rhetoric about making a difference left me with a pleasant feeling. It's only when the glow wore off that I remembered it bored me deadly.

That night I drank cheap margaritas and woke up the next morning regretting the whole thing.