Career Day

“We’re running out of time, please continue,” Mrs. Finch said, while tapping her nonexistent wrist watch. I still knew what she meant by tapping her bare wrist, unlike these kids, who had never seen a wristwatch. They looked at their phones for the time and had no idea what the hands on the clock above Mrs. Finch meant.

“Yes, Ashtyn, I’m a writer.” I said. I sat on a stool in front of a bunch of kids, one of them being my niece, telling them about my career as a writer, because my sister was too bothered to come to her daughter’s career day at school.

“What have you written?” the little girl asked.

“Oh, lots of stories, but none of them have been published to a wide audience.” I turned to the teacher, “Are we allowed to smoke in here?”

“In a first grade classroom?” she asked, in a high-pitched voice.

I stared at Mrs. Finch with my hand halfway into my pants pocket waiting for approval. “My first grade teacher smoked during class,” I shrugged. “Of course, I was six years old decades ago,” I snorted.

Mrs. Finch didn’t think I was funny. “No, you may not smoke!” Mrs. Finch said, exasperatedly.

I pulled my empty hand out of my pocket.

“I’m sure writing is a fun, little hobby,” a dad from the back of the classroom smirked. He was a heart surgeon who talked about how smart and important he was right before it was my turn to get up and talk about how I never get published by any of the big publishing companies. “What is your real job? “You must pay your rent somehow, I imagine,” he added.

Some of the other dads chuckled. They all wore suits and ties and had stridden into the classroom with aires of importance.

My lips were pursed because I had almost taught all these little first graders how to tear down a bitch using a thesaurus for the word fucker. “Well, Taylor’s Dad,” I began tersely.

“It’s Tyler,” he interrupted me.

“Fine. Well, Tyler,” I began.

“I’m Dr. Banks,” he said curtly. “My daughter’s name is Tyler, not Taylor.”

I sighed and brushed my hand over the smokes in my pocket. I really wanted to be done with career day at my niece’s school.

I straightened my posture and took another long breath. “Alright then, Tyler’s dad, I think it’s great you could take a day off performing open-heart surgery. I’m sure your patients are understanding and have no problem delaying their life-saving operations so you could be here for Taylor,” I paused, “Or Tyler,” I sighed, “Whichever one it is. Look, I’m just a writer, who has only self published, and really, that’s all I’ll ever be, but you know what doctor? I’m trying.”

All the kids stared at me. Most of them had their fingers up their noses.

“Do you write about dinosaurs that talk?” one boy asked.

“My favorite book that I’ve written is about a girl like I was growing up. She has to figure a lot of things out by herself, because her sister was an annoying little,” I paused to glance at my niece. “My sister was bossy and didn’t want me tagging along and she had a boyfriend who had a crush on me, and,”

“That sounds boring,” the boy groaned.

“Harper,” the teacher said, with her teacherly admonishing voice.

“Do you mean me?” the boy asked. “Because there’re three Harpers. Me, and the two girl Harpers.”

“Really?” I chuckled. “Three Harpers? What ever happened to all the Stephanies and Ambers and Lisas?”

“My grandma’s name is Stephanie,” one of the Harpers said.

“My name is Axel,” a boy announced proudly. “There’s an ‘x’ in my name, which makes it cooler, my dad said.”

“Well, that’s a name, I guess,” I muttered.

“Aunt Liz,” my niece spoke up, “are you done talking yet?”

“No, Brextynn,” I replied sarcastically, emphasizing her ridiculous name my sister had given her daughter. “You want career advice, kids? Don’t be a writer. It’s a dumb job that doesn’t pay money unless you write about wizards, magic trees, dragons or unicorns. The end.”

I started to scoot my butt off the teacher’s stool, but my butt cheeks had become numb, and I didn’t want to walk like I couldn’t feel my butt anymore. I already looked pathetic next to the doctor, the lawyer, and the hedge fund guy. I still didn’t know what hedge funders funded. He made himself sound really important though.

“What about mermaids?” a kid asked.

I got back on the stool and shifted my butt cheeks to encourage blood flow and hopefully less numbness.

“Sure,” I sighed. “Dragons, unicorns, and wizards are popular. I suppose a book about mermaids would make a lot of money too.”

“Maybe you should just write about mermaids then,” a girl suggested.

“Overrated,” I replied.

“What’s that?” She tilted her head like a confused puppy.

“It’s when you wait for a movie everyone says is so good, but when you watch it, you question why you spent your money on something so dumb.”

“Well, I like mermaids,” she huffed.

“Great, go write about them,” I huffed back.

“Why do people not buy your stories? Why don’t they like them?” a shy, little girl timidly asked.

“I don’t know,” I sighed.

“Perhaps there’s no real value in storytelling,” that smug heart surgeon said.

“How many of your patients die when you cut them open?” I asked bluntly.

All the kids pulled their fingers out of their noses and turned to look at either Taylor or Tyler’s dad.

“On rare occasions, a patient might die, but that’s not a reflection of my surgical abilities,” he said, defensively. “I cannot control their enormous penchants for eating fried chicken and gravy at every meal.”

“Yes, well, I can’t control literary agents’ lack of humor, or their inabilities to grasp subtleties.”

“Perhaps you should request the real writers to take a look at samples from your book,” he goaded me.

“I have, Taylor or Tyler’s dad, but they decline to work for me.”

He laughed. It was a big laugh too. “You can’t even pay people to read your stories and fix them?”

“About half of them offer to read my manuscript,” I crossed my arms, growing bolder. “That’s about the same percentage of people who walk out of your operating room alive!”

“Surgery is not storytelling; they’re not even in the same realm of importance. People die without my skills. Nobody would die if you never wrote another story.”

I felt so incredibly worthless across the room from someone who actually made a difference in the world. The only thing I knew how to do was to tell stories. So, I told the class a story.

“Cindy waited all year for her heart transplant. Her body grew weaker with each passing day. Her mind was still bright and alive, thinking of all the things she would do after she got her new heart. She would walk to the pond to feed her fish. She hadn’t been able to go outside in so long. She missed the smell of the morning pond, and the sounds of fish fins swishing water excitedly, awaiting her arrival. She used to throw out little dry balls of fish food, then sprinkle some in the shallow areas for the smaller fish. She wondered if her mother was feeding them enough now. Money was dwindling while hospital bills were piling. There might not be enough food for all her fish, and the littler fish might starve without her there to look out for their wellbeing.

Cindy’s little brother came to her bedside after school and before his baseball practices. He smelled like school, and Cindy missed school. She missed her friends who stopped coming to see her. It was boring to sit with a sick girl. Cindy’s mommy had told her that they were scared to bring germs to her frail body, but Cindy knew her friends didn’t want to sit and talk to a sick girl when they could be playing soccer in the park.

Weeks passed. Cindy’s health had deteriorated so much that her mommy had to stop working at the grocery store in order to watch over Cindy in case she stopped breathing. Cindy’s daddy never had time to see her because he had to get two jobs to pay her medical bills. Cindy missed her daddy, but Cindy knew she was expensive, and the banks had no heart.

Cindy wanted her new heart so much! After she had her surgery, she could go play. She vowed to make a lemonade stand to help her parents pay for her new heart.

One morning, she heard her mommy scream. Cindy was too weak to get out of bed, and too tired to call for her mommy.

Her mommy suddenly threw open Cindy’s bedroom door. She was crying, but also smiling. “Your heart is at the hospital, sweetheart! We’re going to get your new heart!”

Cindy’s eyes didn’t get wet. She had no energy left to cry, but she was so, so happy! She would feed her fish and sell lemonade soon!

Cindy’s mommy carried her into the emergency room crying and smiling so big. She had left the car outside in the parking lot with the doors still open. There was not a second to lose! They must hurry and get Cindy in her hospital bed so her surgeon could cut out her bad heart and replace it with a strong, healthy, new heart.

A nurse took Cindy from her mommy’s arms and sat Cindy down in a wheelchair. She looked back at Cindy’s mother with terribly sorrowful eyes. “I’m so sorry. The surgeon is not here today. He’s away at his daughter’s school for career day. Cindy’s heart was sent to another hospital, where a responsible and good surgeon is working today.”

“Daddy!” Taylor or Tyler screamed, “You killed Cindy to come here!”

One by one, all the little Harpers, Braelynns and McKinsleighs started crying hysterically.

That heart doctor was really unimpressed with my sense of humor now, but I quite enjoyed my niece’s career day.

“I’m as relevant to writing as you are to saving a little girl’s life,” I told him. Right now, we’re both horrible at what we do.

I turned and left, the sound of little girls crying and calling him a bad doctor still echoed through the hallway as I opened the main door to the school parking lot and walked out smiling.