Rant #2,426: Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes

When I wake up from this dream I am in, I know that everything is going to be fine.

There will be no pandemic.

People won't be marching.

And I will be gainfully employed.

I know that this, in itself, is nothing but a dream, and what we collectively have been going through has not been a dream, but a nightmare that no Hollywood scriptwriter could ever put on paper.

But as for me, the last of the three things I mentioned is more of a dream than anything else at this juncture.

Rather than be so maudlin and intense as I was in yesterday's Rant, I am going to take a different approach today, a more fun approach, one that we can all related to.

Do you remember your first real job?

And when I say first real job, I mean your first real job after your schooling ended or took a break. I am not talking about your job as a newspaper deliverer when you were a kid, or the job you had when you were still in school, but I am talking about your first real job, the job where you took responsibility for yourself after years of schooling.

I worked during undergraduate school, mainly at a public relations firm near my home where I put in about 20 hours a week as what I would call a gopher. Just let's say that a lot of political things went on in that office, and when the secretary of the office became the boss of her boss somewhat overnight, I was caught in the crossfire, and I lost my job.

Later that year, I graduated college with a bachelor of arts degree in English, and I set about conquering the world.

Little did I know how hard that would be.

I had many interviews back then, at both large firms and smaller ones, and I worked intermittently at some short-term positions before I finally landed my first job, as a proofreader at a small, family-run printing firm at 14 West 40th Street in Manhattan.

I don't remember the name of the firm, although the last name "Meyer" was in the name, because he was the owner.

There were about 10 employees at this firm, but even though we were a small company, we had some huge accounts, including the relatively new Home Box Office--yes, that is what it was called then--and Union Carbide. I had to read all of the printed matter we put out, both for errors in spelling and grammar and for content.

Back then, when I was 22 or 23 years old, I am not going to tell you I was a Houdini in fixing things. I did the best I could, but I knew why I was hired, and it had nothing to do with my prowess at finding errors--or at least it had little to do with that skill.

Mr. Meyer had a daughter who was about my age, and while she was not an official employee of the firm, she wandered in and out of our office all the time.

She was a nice looking girl, but honestly, we had nothing in conmon, and I don't think she ever really connected with me either. But her father saw the proverbial "a nice Jewish boy" for his "nice Jewish" daughter, and until it was clear that there was no interest between the two of us, I was the presumptive son-in-law for the boss.

When that didn't happen, well, I became a pariah, a real pariah, at this place.

The boss hated to look at me, probably rueing the day he hired me, and I was treated like garbage by him and some of the employees there.

Then we had a back story at the place that really typified how much I really wanted to get out of there.

We had our own gopher there, a young black guy who was around my age. He made deliveries, got coffee and other things from the luncheonette near us, and he did everything asked of him. He was a really nice guy, someone I often spoke with.

Then one day he didn't come to work, and that led to another day and another day of not coming to work.

Since I was the low man on the totem pole, and orders had to get out, we did use delivery people, but the boss decided that he didn't want to spend the money, so I was tasked with making deliveries.

He rarely paid for the subway or bus to make things quicker, so I walked all around Manhattan making deliveries. There were days I spent just about the entire workday out of the office.

The problem was nobody was helping me out with my proofreading, or at least minimally helping me out--sometimes the receptionist would read a few shorter items, which became jobs that I ended up delivering myself.

But more often then not, I would come back to the office, pooped from walking 40 city blocks back and forth, only to see a pile of work on my desk that had to be done yesterday.

Our gopher would come back for a day, then be missing for the next three weeks. Why they kept him employed is beyond me, and with his absence, I pretty much morphed from a proofreader to a gopher who did proofreading on the side.

He then vanished for about six months, and we found out why.

He lived in a rough neighborhood in Manhattan, and he had witnessed a drug deal that had gone bad. He believed he was being pursued by both the police and those involved in the drug deal, so he made himself scarce so he could not be found. Where he went and what he did to make himself scarce was a mystery, but all it meant is that he wasn't in the office, and I had to do his deliveries.

It was around this time, in 1980 when I was 23 years old, that I decided to take the next step in my educational path, and go to graduate school. I was accepted at C.W. Post College on Long Island into the dual English and Education graduate program, and my goal was to get my degree and get the hell out of this working environment.

I never told them what I was doing, but I would bring my books with me, and I would do lots of work on the train coming home from work--and then go directly to school when I got off the train.

I used to get up at about 5:30 a.m. in the morning, make the Long Island Railroad train at about 6 a.m., and the train would pass right by my old neighborhood of Rochdale Village in Queens several minutes later (it literally went through the Locust Manor station, which served this South Jamaica community). I could literally see my parents' old bedroom window from a great distance as the train passed by.

Once the train got into Manhattan's Penn Station, I would set out to walk to 40th Street, which was across the street from Bryant Park, an urban park that at the time was infested by drug dealers doing their business behind the massive New York City Library structure on Fifth Avenue.

I would get there by 8 a.m. or so, probably earlier, and our day began at 8 a.m., so I often would walk into the office and be hold straight away that I had to make deliveries all over Manhattan.

When the day was over at 4:30 or so, I would hop on the subway right down the street from my building and get on the train usually by about 5 p.m. or so, usually planting myself in the bathroom to do my work, since there were no seats to be had on this busy rush hour train.

There is nothing like reading Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit" in the smelly bathroom of the LIRR train I used to take, in particular because smoking was still allowed on the train back then, and yes, the bar car was also quite active back then.

I got back to my home station at 6 p.m., and then I would rush to get to my first class of my graduate school schedule at about 6:45 p.m. or 7 p.m. or so. I did this about three times a week, so there were days I did not get home until at least 10 p.m. or so.

I was so determined to get my masters degree that I even went on the weekend for a spell, but most of the classes I took were on weekdays.

Anyway, back to work ... finally, in 1981 or so, when I saw that I was going to be student teaching as part of my program later in the year, I told my work that I would be leaving. This is something that the boss must have loved, because he kept on repeating to me how much he wanted me to go. ususaly when I had one foot out the door to making deliveries.

And when the time came, several months into 1981 for me to leave, I literally counted the days. I really could not wait to leave this place.

And the day finally came. Everyone there wished me well, I went in to shake the bosses hand, but if I remember correctly, he wasn't there, so I never said goodbye to him.

And I left, and that should be the end of the story, but it wasn't.

They owed me one check--and by the way, I was making all of $180 a week at this place--and they, for some reason, refused to send it to me in the mail--all due to spite--and I had to go in to pick up my check.

I did just that, and when I got there, the boss was there, and he was rubbing into me that he got someone to fill my position who was so much better than me that they didn't miss me at all.

Yet, when I looked at my old desk, no one was there. I guess that person they hired after me was walking the streets, too.

And I also found out that day who I replaced as the proofreader there.

My predecessor was a young, Puerto Rican woman who took that job because it was near her home in upper Manhattan ... but she had later made international headlines as a member of FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist organization that targeted police in their operations.

She had literally been picked up and arrested at work as a member of that organization, and may still be in jail for her participation in this group, which most famously planted a bomb at Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan, a bomb when it detonated killed several people, all in the name of justice for the Puerto Rican people.

That happened in 1975, they didn't pick her up until 1979 or just before I started there, so right now, I can say that I succeeded a terrorist in my first real job after undergraduate school.

Yes, that job certainly set a pattern for the strange work history I have had, but that was my very first job after college.

And by the way, if I ever wanted to revisit 14 West 40th Street, I can't, because both the address and building no longer exist, with the building torn down in the 1990s, I believe.

And presumably, the company I worked for no longer exists.

And whatever happened to our gopher? Is he still evading police and drug dealers?

I have no idea.

Do you remember your first real job? How did it go? Did you succeed a terrorist in your very first position?

Well, I did, for whatever weight and importance that holds 40 years later, a period where nobody wants me, and even I can't get arrested.