Grindstone Cowboy’s observations from the trenches

I’ve lived at home the past four summers, because, for some reason, it’s easier to find a… I’ve lived at home the past four summers, because, for some reason, it’s easier to find a job in my hometown of 6,000 people than in Pittsburgh. The economic opportunities of Knowledge Town just can’t compete with those of this rustic hamlet a mere 300 miles northeast. (Preceding sentences sponsored by the Athens, Pa. Chamber of Commerce.)

I go where the money is, a bloodhound sniffing out the ripe teat of Mammon. I am nothing if not an unambivalently enthusiastic wage-slave, happily auctioning off my time to the highest bidder. Show me the money, I say, so that I might curl up beside it, hold it close to my chest and whisper, “Yes, my pet, yes. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

Though I work all summer in the offices of a major defense contractor, I’m about as close to a whore as you can get without taking off your pants. Which I sometimes do, but only on Pants-Free Friday.

Many of my friends are in the same situation, having to work to pay for school so they can get a degree enabling them to work more. After all, the college diploma is your passport to the “real world,” which is, I believe, populated entirely with successful people who’ve proven their worth through an intense, four-year program of waking up around noon for a couple hours of class before plopping down in front of the X-Box.

I’ll try not to sound too bitter or Fight Club-y, but I’m beginning to suspect this whole “real world” idea was something of a scam. I’ve done four tours now, four summers paying my dues in the abattoir of the soul known as Corporate America (is that redundant?) and I have to ask: Is this really what we’re preparing so diligently for?

The real world seems to revolve around The Job. You’ve already noticed that – virtually every time you meet someone new, the question is “What’s your major?” followed by, “What do you want to do with that?” The implication is that college is nothing more than a trade school, or, more likely, a really long motivational speech by the people running the gristmill, meant to instill the higher calling of earning that first big paycheck.Some people will tell you otherwise, saying that college is not just a lesson in going along to get along, but that you’re here to “learn how to think.” Think about the meaning of the phrase “empty platitudes,” so you’ll be ready the next time such drivel slimes its way into your ears. And maybe you’ll wonder what it means that someone is presuming to tell you how to think.

Spending those central eight hours a day – probably two or three hours actually working – in an office has some interesting side effects. The first is that it wears you out. All those college-educated people spend a lot of time doing stupid stuff, stuff that doesn’t really matter, and that’s very tiring. The assembly line of hours bears down on you and your life shifts into autopilot. You start thinking of yourself in the third person, as The Grindstone Cowboy. You start to wonder why the hardest-working country in the world takes the least vacation and why all that hard work doesn’t translate in higher productivity. Oh, to suffer the dull stings and hours of average fortune.

The sea of routine spills over into the secondary parts of your life. Everything blends together, like a bad Seinfeld rerun about nothing. It’s suddenly easy to forget what day it is, and you start talking about what day it feels like, as though all the little synapses in your nervous system have synchronized to the punch clock. Every weekend is a far-off mirage of hope; you go to The Job and then try to fit your life in around the edges.

What happens is you give control of eight hours of your day to something else. When you’re not in control, you resign yourself. You willpower fails, and then your imagination. You can no longer see beyond what’s right in front of you, forget how to be anything else. The world shrinks to the size of the same place, the same day, the same bar, the same conversation.

Honestly, though, maybe it’s not as bad as all that. I could just be projecting my own restlessness onto people who feel, not quiet desperation, but, if not contentment, then acceptance. It’d be silly to pretend to know their ambitions; maybe this is what they’ve always wanted. Maybe comfort and stability are their own kind of happiness, alien to those who don’t believe in that vision of life. It’d be small-minded, refusing to admit that some people – most, perhaps – can be satisfied by the everyday. That’s the definition of peace, right?

Yeah, I do understand that. My friends who have returned home after college to settle into whatever’s waiting for them, I can understand. Sometimes you try to go home again, and it’s soft and enveloping like a womb. But it’s not for me.

My time here is almost up, and it’s a little too easy to leave, because I’ve had an escape plan all along. I want to leave something behind for these strangers – a talisman. It’s not finished yet, but in a week, just before I go, I’ll unveil my full-size, dry-erase marker rendering of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Left behind not in the spirit of judgment or condemnation, but in commiseration.

Email Jesse Hicks at jhicks@pittnews.com.