Grow up in a southern town where the local fire station sells penny candy and all of the firemen know you by name. Hang out there on summer days. Start young, say age eight. Claim a spot near the kitchen and sit quietly, willing yourself to become invisible, chewing tootsie rolls slowly, picking the goo from your newly grown permanent teeth, and listen to the drip of the leaky sink, and the country radio station twanging from the brown transistor on the green Formica table, and the large round clock on the wall behind you, ticking off the seconds, and the firemen in their gravel voices talking about their families. Wonder what the ladder man Eric means when he talks about knuckle sandwiches, but never ask. Be sure to get home before dark; this is the unwritten law.

When your parents give a cocktail party, wait until the second round of drinks has been poured, and then come downstairs in your pajamas, holding your glass with the ginger ale still fizzing in front of you. Sit next to Mrs. Coleman with the purple shaded cheekbone, and comment on what a funny thing your friend Eric said to you just today. Watch her spill her drink and jump up as you say, “And then he just gave her one hell of a knuckle sandwich”. Lie to your mother when she asks who Eric is. Tell her he was cutting grass at First Presbyterian and you stopped to ask the time.

Progress to high school with a slight addiction to marijuana. Choose friends with a similar addiction and spend your senior year skipping classes and riding on the Blue Ridge parkway in a 63 VW beetle, listening to Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix on an eight track tape. Condemn the Vietnam War and the establishment and the geometry teacher who is flunking you. When your friends talk about getting an apartment or moving to San Francisco, say nothing. When the guidance counselor asks you to pick a college, pick a small one where all of the dormitories fit along one long hill. Lie to your friends when they ask what your plans after graduation are. Tell them you are moving away to find yourself. Tell them you will write them once you do.

Once you get to college, change your name to something like Pine or Poppy. Introduce yourself as Pine Forest, and smile as if there is a grand prize behind your eyes. Convince your roommate that she is a howling wolf and that dormitories are for sheep. Suggest that she change her name to Venus Ray. Move in with her to a small gray trailer on the outskirts of town. Break the news to your parents that they will not get the deposit back on the dormitory room, but say how fulfilling life in the real world is for you now. Take a lot of philosophy courses. Read and re-read books like Siddhartha and Be Here Now. Smoke more marijuana.

When the first significant lightening storm strikes, convince your roommate that the trailer has bad karma. Move to a cabin in the woods, with your roommate and a drug dealer and a songwriter. Spend whole days listening to the drug dealer’s stories about moving bricks of hash up and down the east coast, and the songwriter’s stories about performing to empty rooms while tripping on peyote. Change your major to sociology. When you read the Sociology of Deviance, like the sound of the word deviant. Like it a lot. Promise your roommate that girls loving girls is okay in New York City. Explain that there is a whole group of social deviants just like you and her. Don’t believe her when she says she is not a social deviant. Tell your parents you are taking an independent study in Appalachian folk lore in the coal country of Southwest Virginia, that you will call them collect from pay phones every Saturday. Tell your roommate you need to go find yourself, find your own story. Drop out of college. Hitch hike to Texas.

Spend your twenties traveling back and forth between Texas and Virginia. Use pay phones to stay in touch with your parents, calling them collect every Saturday. Only take jobs that don’t require math. Start traveling by Greyhound after a truck driver attempts to transport you into Canada and only lets you out after you tell him you are a follower of Charlie Manson and begin chanting helter skelter over and over. Begin to recognize accents as you pass the seventeen hour bus rides with grandmothers, army recruits, college girls, and pregnant mothers. Be able to identify an Oklahoma accent from Arkansas and North Texas by the nuances of the word station. Smoke marijuana in the Greyhound bathrooms, offering to share joints with strangers who recognize the hand signal for toke. Finish college with a major in social work, and decide to save all of the emotionally disturbed adolescents in Texas. Change your name back to Jane. When the hostess you fall in love with dumps you for a math teacher, move back to Virginia. Forget about saving anybody.

Don’t listen when your parents suggest you go into the army. Go to the local 7-11 instead and get a job on the midnight to eight am shift. Find everybody interesting, especially the singles stumbling in between three and four. When an overweight cowboy strides in one 6am, comment on his Oklahoma accent. While he’s saying how cool you are, smile as if there is a grand prize behind your eyes. Use the word girlfriend several times so he gets it that you are gay. Notice that he starts coming in every day for his 6am coffee. Stop smoking marijuana at 5am so that you will remember what he says- Something about starting up a computer company, needing someone to answer the phones. Ask him how much it pays, and don’t blink when he says numbers that triple your salary at 7-11. Ask him what strings come with it, and blink when he says nothing but no smoking pot while you’re on the job.

Begin working in the overweight cowboy’s double garage/Computer Networking Company. Learn computers. Motherboards, Hard Drives, CPU’s, Ram. Watch the overweight cowboy work on computers, as you crunch M&M’s at your desk. Spend your down time taking apart computers, then putting them back together. Answer the phone. Recognize the clients by their accents. Call them by their first names. Suggest solutions to their computer problems. Expand your answers to include their problems at home. Volunteer when the overweight cowboy needs a client set up in Danville. Volunteer a lot. Become indispensable. When the overweight cowboy says you remind him of his daughter back in Oklahoma, smile as if there is a grand prize behind your eyes.

Grow as the company grows. Gain twenty pounds in the first year. When the staff count grows from two to ten, weigh in on all of the new positions, and convince the overweight cowboy that the thirty- something blonde from Atlanta will be the best candidate for HR. When he agrees, smile as if there is a grand prize behind your eyes.

Join a gym. For your thirtieth birthday, wake up in the arms of the HR manager. Tell her she is your soul mate, your only one. Invite her to take vacation with you to the Florida Keys. Arrange a business trip so that you can expense it. Suggest to the overweight cowboy that you need to follow up on client satisfaction along the East Coast. Remind him renewal licenses are coming due. Convince him that you are the best candidate for the job. Schedule your last stop in Florida. When you arrive in Key West, take a cab to the bed and breakfast where you are to meet the HR manager. Blink when you read her message saying she had to cancel, saying her husband was moving back in, and sorry, but she was so confused.

When you call the overweight cowboy from the pay phone in Key West, call collect. Tell him the HR manager broke your heart. Suggest that she is not, after all, the best candidate for the job. Suggest that you will find a replacement. Ask him again, when he tells you he will not fire her. And again. And finally, tell him you quit. Spend sunny days snorkeling off Marathon Key, and breezy nights drinking rum and cokes at Sloppy Joes before stumbling back to Marcie’s B & B. Accept the call when the overweight cowboy has you paged at Marcie’s, telling you he is canceling your company credit card. Glance at your nearly empty wallet. Suggest a compromise. Become the overweight cowboy’s Jane of all trades, traveling the country, installing computer networks, as an independent consultant. When people ask you how you got into the consulting business, smile as if there is a grand prize behind your eyes.

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