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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.
