You may have meant to say…

I’m fuming mad and have no right to be.  I cought up with my old friend Anita and my sister at a cafe this evening.  She spent most of the evening telling us about her wonderful new job working for her uncle.  The uncle is a psychologist running some kind of intelligence improvement courses for wealthy executives.  Learn grammar to improve your mental acuity, or something like that.  She’s trying to convince him to raise his rates from $100/hr to $200.  As for Anita, even she has no idea what she’s actually going to be doing there.  But she’s getting paid already, so she’s happy. 

Yeah, I was a little jealous.  Paid to teach grammar?  She admits she’s rubbish at it.  I have a degree in Linguistics.  With very good marks, no less.  I’ve always been good at it.  But I don’t have her Psych degree, and the boss isn’t my uncle. 

As we were leaving, she suggested I find work doing proofreading.  Proofreading?  It doesn’t make much sense, but it pissed me off something fierce.  It’s like, is that all she thinks I’m good for?  Fixing the typos and spelling mistakes in what someone else has written?  More mindless clerical work?  Answering the fucking phone and filing the damned papers?  Doing the things someone hasn’t bothered to automate?  Is that all I am? 

And this after I spent the evening taking an interest in what she does.  And drinking the six-dollar sickly sweet hot chocolate out of a mug shaped like a bedpan because she recommended it.  Even after skipping dinner to get there on time, (after Lara moved the time forward) and after sitting by the fountain waiting for them both for a full half-hour, surrounded by restaurants but unable to eat because I was waiting for them. 

She can think I’m useless, but it’s polite not to say it, you know.  I have no right to be mad about it.  If my cousin with two relevant degrees and several years experience in editing can’t get a job in the industry, I doubt I could either.  Most of the work I did in that single year when I did work, was no more elevated.  Oh, my resume’s not going to impress anyone.  What do you expect?  I’ve spend most of my adult life too sick to work!  It makes me inexperienced.  Unqualified too, that’s true.  But not useless.  And I’m sure as hell not hauling myself up out of my sickbed because the world would be a poorer place without the benefit of my proofreading. 

Up yours, Anita.  Go answer phones and photocopy things.