Answering the Caterpillar.

Yesterday afternoon, I drove back from the dentist and stopped to pick up lunch and a drink before I returned to my final afternoon at my job.

As I stood on line at Peet’s coffee, the tall cute guy behind me rifled through his pocket, and out fell a green Crayola marker. Without a cap.

This only happens to two types of people: wackos, and teachers. I took the risk.

He replied he was a teacher. And then came the most dreaded question on the face of my earth:

“What do you do?”

It’s one of the first questions people ask when they don’t know one another. It’s a function of the desire to orient and locate you on the web of society and potential commonality: What do you do for a living?

And, honestly, the idea of answering this question has kept me from dating. Because what people are asking is not simply where are you employed, (to me) it’s asking if you are employed, what your social status might be, what your interests are, what your value of your self is.

They are asking, Who are you?

And I haven’t wanted to answer for as long as my response has been, I’m a glorified secretary.

Sure, over the years when I’ve spoken to friends about this, they’ve replied, you don’t have you put it like that. You are a marketing specialist, you are in customer service, you are an executive assistant, an education administrator. You support the people who make things happen, you run offices, you hire and fire people, organize office events, facilitate publications. You reconcile expense reports.

AND ALL THIS READS TO ME LIKE GLORIFIED SECRETARY.

FUCK!

And, the point is that I haven’t felt comfortable telling others that’s what I do for a living.

Because it makes me feel less-than. Because I interpret what I do as not good enough for me. Because I feel that it doesn’t speak to all that I am as a person, and surely, answering that one question for anyone is never an indication of who they are as a whole.

But, I have felt it a pretty good indicator.

I am small. I have zero power. I do boring repetitive tasks while chained to a computer desk. I get condescended to and underestimated. I have the copy machine repair man on speed dial.

BLECH!

Get out of here!

I don’t want to be that person. Because, I’m not that person. It’s stuff I can do, but it’s not all of me.

Perhaps, though, it means that I need to hold others' answer to that question more lightly, because I’ve only had one answer to that question for a very long time, and it’s never spoken to who I am as a person. So maybe I can be more open-minded toward others whose answers don’t titillate me.

But, whatever comes of my relationship to others’ answers, I know that I haven’t been able to budge my relationship to mine, no matter how much work on “self-acceptance” and "perspective" and "gratitude" I’ve done. And so, the only thing to do is to change my answer, not my relationship to it. Yet.

So, yesterday, when cute, marker-covered dude looked into my eyes, and asked me what I did, I was able to answer easily, truthfully, and proudly: I’m a teacher, too.

(you know, part-time, after school two days a week, but, it's a start!)