 |
| Find the challenge here |
November Challenge: Something you always think "what if ..." about
After high school, I had two very positive interviews. The first was set up by my guidance counselor at the suburban Loyola medical campus not that far from my parents' home, where I was still living. I'd have to drive, but I had a car then (an old beater given me by my family). I'd be working as a receptionist for a dentist.
The second was with Sears, Roebuck and Co. in Sears Tower. I'd take the train every day and work in The Loop. I'd be a secretary to one of the men who placed local newspaper advertising for neighborhood Sears stores all over the country.
I took the second job. I hated it. No, really, I hated it. There were days when the train pulled into Union Station and I was literally the last one to get off. I fantasized about just riding back and forth all day, rather than get off and go to that job.
However I loved the city. Madly. I felt a sense of belonging there among that diverse, bustling populace I never had in the white-bread town I grew up in.
Eventually I was offered the copywriter test and became a writer for the Sears Catalog. That was the beginning of my advertising career -- which, let's face, I was totally unqualified for -- and I am grateful.
But I never go past the Loyola medical campus without wondering what happened to her, the me I would have been if I'd taken that job in the dentist's office. Would I have stayed suburban? Remained on the clerical path? Gotten married, quit and had the more conventional life my mom envisioned for me? I hope I wouldn't end up as unhappily married as my parents were.
Ah, the road not taken. I'm not especially good at envisioning what could have been.
ReplyDeleteIt's always interesting to wonder what would have happened if we had just changed the one thing in our life.
ReplyDeleteGood post. I suspect you're exactly where you were meant to be.
ReplyDelete