Just Call Them Up!

Following is a transcription of a phone conversation I had with my mother last night. I love my mom, and she was only trying to be helpful in that mom-ish way, but good heavens it was so intensely irritating.

Place names have been changed. "Ivy University" is where I work/my husband goes to school; "Small University" is the school at which my mother is a professor. It is a good enough school, particularly in her program, but it is smallish.

Her tone: bright and enthusiastic. My tone: enthusiastic at first, then rapidly deteriorating.

***

Mom: I saw a job that would be perfect for you! It's copy editor at an Ivy magazine!

Me: Oh really? Which magazine?

Mom: An *Ivy* magazine! A journal! You should apply!

Me: What's it called? Where did you see this posted?

Mom: It was in the AWP Job List. It's for copy editor and you'd be just perfect!

Me: I'm sure I would, but I'm totally underqualified for something like that.

Mom: No you're not! You'd be great!

Me: I could do the job very well, I'm sure, but according to my resume I am unqualified.

Mom: Well, if they'd just give you a chance...

Me: In the real world, no one is going to do that. I'm not going to make it to the interview phase, sorry. What magazine was this, again?

Mom: Ivy! Ivy Review. Ivy Magazine.

Me: There is no Ivy Magazine, Mom. (Ivy Review is something completely unrelated.)

Mom: Well, it had Ivy in the name! It was at Ivy! Just look it up on the Ivy website!

Me: I look at the job listings every day. It's not on there, I assure you.

Mom: Well, call Ivy information!

Me: Huh?

Mom: Call Ivy information! There are little old ladies who answer the phone, and...

Me: What should I ask for? I don't even know the name of the magazine. (I don't mention the fact that there are no more little old ladies; it's all computers now.)

Mom: Just ask for all the magazines at Ivy and call them!

Me: Mom! This isn't Small U! There are literally hundreds of publications with "Ivy" in the title, and not all of them even have anything to do with Ivy.

Mom: Oh, I know, like Ivy Review. Just call them up!

Me: Call who? Where was this listed? Can you just forward me the listing? This is pointless.

(We change the subject and move on.)

***

My mother cheerfully refused to hear a word I said, and has no idea how employment works these days, but what really abrades my nerve endings is the implication that she honestly doesn't understand why I am not the Editor of Ivy. Why, just call them up!

She really doesn't get the work world, though. She's always been extremely fortunate at finding jobs -- never had to do the out-of-work English major thing, just stepped from grad school into a professorship. Of course she is excellent at writing and teaching others to do so, but so are many Gap cashiers and waitresses and latte jockeys. She doesn't understand that there are kajillions of better-qualified, more desperate Ph.D.s out there waiting to apply for any $12/hour editorial assistant jobs that might swing my way, because the economy is a shambles. She is vivacious and beautiful and completely innocent of the realities of the gritty, boring, drudgery-filled world of post-graduate English major life. Really it's quite charming, this innocence, until you brush up against it in just the right way. I suspect she has no idea why I do what I do, and why I consider myself lucky to even have health insurance and the pittance of a salary I command (which I find more than sufficient, but still). She'll never say it, but she must think I am not the editor of the New Yorker because I am a big stoner slacker, slacking around, slacking off, slackety slack slack.

I will admit that there is probably more projecting going on here than in a high school AV club. And I know she is just trying to be helpful, and she loves me and thinks highly of my copy editing abilities. But whatever. I would like to wallow, for a moment here in my late twenties, in the dregs of whiny teenagehood.

Ahhhh. Oh that's good.

Comments

[Mollie]

Good Christ I sure know just how you feel.

But would you please get up off your slacker ass and take a run for the presidency of this God-foraken country? I mean, really. You'd be perfect! I'd vote for you! Absentee, of course, but I'd vote for you! Just call up the Democratic National Committee! Or you could just show up for the convention and talk to someone there! It's easy! I'll be looking for you on the ballot.

Love,

Your Spore-Sista

[Julia]

Can I revel with you?! Slacking was my minor in college. I miss the security-blanketness of it all.

[Jo]

I'm too much of a firebrand -- an outsider -- a screamer! The DNC would never have me, an unelectable uppity woman. Plus I'm totally unqualified.

Therefore we are left only with the option of takeover by slacker military force! Motto: "We'll get around to it...eventually. Now go away, we're watching Space Ghost."

[getupgrrl]

I want some of your pot.

By the way, we have the same mother. How's she doing today?

[Jo]

Hey, just come on over and we'll...
wait, what pot? What's pot? Is that a fertility drug?

Sigh. Evidently not.

Mom's doing well today. After all the hullaballoo, she couldn't find the job listing, having thrown out all household papers and deleted all "nonessential" emails (this is all true) so it will fade into obscurity forever.

The closest thing I could find on our website was an Editorial Assistant job that required a background in Islamic Studies and fluency in Arabic and multiple modern European languages. With my high school Spanish and that Women in Islam class under my belt, I'd be just perfect.

[Mollie]

Perfect.

[Julie]

No matter how hard they try, our mothers just can't be what we want them to be. I was telling getupgrrl that I think we should construct a phone tree to solve this problem.

When you need polite denial and pathological optimism, you can press 1 to connect to a hotline that will ring cheerily in my mother's kitchen. When I need a dose of clinging anxiety, I'll press 2 to speak to someone else's mom. Dial 3 for passive-aggressive guilt. On down the line.