The goal of getting a job always looms over any fresh college graduate. It's an enterprise rife with disappointment and self-deprecating revelations. It makes us wonder:
"Will I ever get out of this hole?"
You have to do things in order to do things. Once you start an action, it makes all subsequent actions a lot easier to stomach. It's like pushing a boulder down a hill. The hardest part is getting it to move in the first place. Unless your name is Chris Redfield, punching boulders don't come natural.
For the rest of us, we need help. It could be through friends, family, a mentor, connections, a network, or just plain luck. As with most things, it's an amalgam of factors, not one, that gets us what we need.
So begins a new job for me that I got through my brother-in-law.
The first time I met my boss, Arthur, was like any other meeting with a slightly deaf seventy-year old. It was too early to be patronized so loudly. He had rough hands, a rigid posture, and one tone of speech: commanding. His interrogatives might as well be imperatives.
My job was simple: look after his 33 year-old handicapped son.
Before you fret, it's not a physical disability, but a mental one. He has a severe case of "I can't remember what I ate for breakfast" syndrome, or short-term retrograde amnesia. It's almost Memento status, but he still has the ability to make new memories -- it just takes awhile.
Arthur went on to explain the job duties, detailing all of his son's quirks and ways to deal with him. From the sound of it, Noah sounded like a micromanagement nightmare.
When I first met my charge, Noah, he greeted me as if we were old friends. I hypothesized that the nature of his condition necessitated a friendly demeanor to any and everyone since he'd never know if they'd actually met before...that, or he was just being friendly. He's a big guy, towering over me by at least a head and a half, with Asiatic features.
For all of Arthur's build up, Noah was surprisingly friendly and easy to look after. Arthur told me of his son's excellent NBA 2K skills since he plays a lot of sports games. His double digit blowout loss, courtesy of me, said otherwise. I played the Lakers against his Rockets and owned him easily.
He forgot it ever happened. If it was me, I wouldn't want to remember either.
I'll give the job a shot.
