The Rebound

What a strange few weeks it's been. Since I last posted I've been given another three years until my next biopsy, which was good, and which I interpreted as a clear sign that I should take a certain job which had been offered to me and which was set to pay me ungodly sums of money.

To this kid from Flint it was an obscene amount of cash. After I verbally accepted the offer I walked around repeating the figure in my mind. It seemed like the kind of number that only one of life's real Winners would ever bring home. Yes I was one of life's real Winners.

I went to Houston on business, for my "old" company. I was just waiting for the final letter from the new job, the letter which wrapped up all the details, the letter which would serve as my conveyance to the new land of riches and professional conquest. All week I felt sorry for the people at my "old' job. They seemed slothful and ashen; they went around making mistakes. The coffee cups drooped in their hands. They had pimples and bags under their eyes and after lunch their cheeks filled, like tiny sails, with oniony belches that they stifled behind clenched fists.

Thursday came. The recruiters from the new job assured me that it was only a matter of getting the paper into an email and that the arrival of my final offer was imminent. I congratulated myself for my talent, my brilliant negotiations, my all-around pluck. I went into my boss's office at the old job and, as gently and carefully as I could, trying to spare her feelings, I let her know that I would most likely be moving along to greener pastures.

As I drove along Horatio Alger expressway to the airport, my cell phone rang. It was a strange lady from the "new" job. She wanted to know the terms of the deal I'd struck. I told her. She replied that such a job was impossible, that it didn't exist, that the deal, in a word, was off. And just like that, my new job was gone, the bright chiming fields of rotating Mario Bros. coins in which I jumped with maniac glee, evaporated. My sense of invulnerability, my understanding of the rightness of the world, gone.

Suddenly my old job became rather charming, quaint, and comfortable. I asked myself if the faults which has seemed to obvious before weren't instead shortcomings on my part. This was the first step in my long preparation to re-claim my old job before it was too late.

From one crisis to another: that's how I roll.