Cool, Calm & Contentious - Merrill Markoe [45]
“You’re speaking in that building over there,” my driver said, pointing toward a generic-looking beige brick university building with a small sign pasted on the front that said “Career Fair.” As I pushed through the glass doors into a massive, open room that was silent except for the sound of my heels clicking on the expanses of gray linoleum waxed to a super-high-gloss sheen, I was instantly reminded of what they called the “cafetorium” at my grade school. There were the familiar towering stacks of long gray lunch tables, the acoustic-tile ceiling dotted with those lighting fixtures that look like upside-down ice trays. And there were differences as well as similarities. I definitely didn’t recall my grade school cafetorium having an enormous cauldron of Soft & Dri deodorant samples underneath a sign that said “Free! Help Yourself!”
Just a few feet beyond the antiperspirant buffet was a specter that still haunts my dreams: rows and rows of molded white plastic chairs, all of them empty.
At the far end of the room was a small stage decorated with an easel that held a blowup of a Cosmopolitan cover beneath a banner that said “Soft & Dri.” And on the apron of the stage was a bulky gift basket, overflowing with Avon products: moisturizers, cleansers, fragrances, shampoos, conditioners.
A wave of nausea hit as I realized that the basket was for me.
With a half hour to go until my talk, I stood frozen, pretending to read a piece of tourist literature about the area that I’d grabbed from the hotel. It wasn’t reassuring to learn that the biggest local attraction anywhere nearby was a medium-sized swamp. By now I was filled with so much anxiety that I was unable to decode the English language, so fixated was I on the thunderous sound of that empty room.
A tiny, hopeful voice inside me spoke up, urging me to relax. “Remember the hectic pace of college life,” it said. “Students always show up late for everything!” Then a bigger, darker, smarter voice appeared from somewhere to counter: “Doesn’t someone always come early if there’s going to be a crowd?”
When at last I heard footsteps, and a lone teenage girl walked in to take a seat in a middle row, I wondered if I should run up to her, embrace her, take her out to buy her dinner and deliver my talk to her over coffee? Or should I simply shake her hand and tell her, “You’ve gotten your makeover, you’ve had your chart done. There’s not much more I can add. Be sure to grab some free deodorant on your way out! And thanks for showing up!”
“We’re going to start in a minute,” said my driver, Mr. Bright Green Beer-Logo Ensemble, making a surprise re-appearance as career fair liaison and seminar emcee.
I now counted an audience of eight girls bobbing in that sea of four hundred white chairs. But, I reminded myself, they’re not just eight random college girls. They are eight future writers from Lafayette, Louisiana. These are girls who deserve to be treated respectfully and to be encouraged. There could be a young Eudora Welty or Harper Lee among them! Who knows? They might always remember this day.
Summoning a sense of purpose and dignity, I strode to the front of the room. I would make a difference in these young lives, dammit. I looked into the faces of the students who had come out to hear me. Nothing about them was easy to read. But wasn’t that always the case with young people? They were all in their early twenties. That was a time when they were still moldable not yet congealed. They were a group of eight girls who already knew that they wanted to write. I hadn’t known that about myself when I was their age. I was moved that they were placing themselves in my hands, looking to me to tell them more about the thing they most loved to do. I would not let them down.
“Move your chairs into a circle,” I said, dispensing with formality in an attempt to make this career day experience more personal and therefore more memorable.