I had this dream, once upon a time.
I was your typical no-account, deadbeat, layabout languishing in the minor Ivy League, minding little more than my academic momentum. I watched my peers press their professors for letters of recommendation. I saw them jostle each other in the overpopulated mortar that was the monthly career conference, only to be ground down by the pestle of prosperity when it dropped, unceremoniously, from the peak of 2008.
Graduation was a rude awakening for freewheeling wayfarers like myself. Summer of 2009 saw unemployment climb and house prices drop. Millennials moaned and Wall Street danced like Cupid with a bad case of clap. Everything was terrible, nothing worked, and gasoline was expensive. Everybody was reading the Book of Revelations and gargling holy water… just in case. No-account laidback louts like me were suddenly questioning our post-collegiate plans.
I had this dream, once upon a time.
I was going to take my beat up ’97 Dodge and travel the country like a neo-classical Neal Cassady. Getting myself into trouble and working my way back out again. I’d stop in no-account, laidback towns earning a few bucks before moseying on. There is an impressive highway linking the lower 48, and I had already seen much of it.
I wanted all of it. I got none of it.
There was a great, creeping fear welling in the bosom of the nation and crawling its way to the surface. No matter how much we scratched, it just didn’t get rid of the itch—bailouts and buyouts and interest rates, oh my. Everything was inflated, no one was hiring and everybody shut their mouths when the job creators took their cue to slash pensions, benefits and paid time off. So I drove my beat up ’97 Dodge to southern California, where it died in a car fire.
At over 38 million, California’s population is twelve percent of the United States. As you might imagine, the unemployment rates of Los Angeles reflected the national pastime of the Great Recession: Quiet Desperation. In 2009, the state’s unemployment was 11.6 percent. In 2010, it was 12.6 percent. In 2011, it was 12.3 percent and in 2012, 10.9 percent.
I thrust into the crawling chaos of LA commutes with no sharper implement than a liberal arts degree. I was a mad coyote on the 405, howling from shady internships to sub-standard service gigs. I did deplorable things for money: hawked Hollywood knockoffs in downtown, door-knocked for donations to environmental entities, spun signs, and suffered sunburns.
I did all these things because my previous ambition was no more definite than to “just get by.” And, dear reader, I did. Eventually, I entered the white-collar world and carved out a cubicle of my own. Still, every night I unroll my stained and rumpled Thomas guide and trace the journey of a parallel person in a universe just next door to this one.
I had this dream, once upon a time.
It followed the second star to the right down that cross-country highway and went straight on till morning.
Today, it’s just the end of a silly story.
