I envy those people who have always known what they wanted to do when they grew up. The only occupations I remember feeling passionate about as a youth centered around horses and ballet - not too promising for a city-dweller with two left feet. Reading was always my favorite pastime, so by the time I was old enough to enter college it was pretty much a no-brainer that I should major in English. I had the romantic notion that at the end of four years I would be magically transformed into a highly intelligent and sophisticated creature capable of writing the Great American Novel - and since I enjoyed reading so much myself, the idea of earning my daily bread with my pen seemed like a great idea. (This will seem quite an antiquated notion to those of you who deem cursive writing to be an unnecessary skill, superfluous to modern living - but I digress.) The fact I have zero aptitude for thinking up clever story plots or crafting interesting, believable characters didn't enter much into my thinking at the time. If worse came to worse, I vaguely supposed I could always be a college professor, like my mom. After all, I truly enjoyed sitting through good lectures, and I could usually produce whatever was asked of me at exam time without much difficulty. The fact that enjoyment of well-crafted lessons had very little (if anything) to do with what it takes to produce them never entered my pretty little head! It was therefore a great shock to discover, as graduation approached, that I was totally unprepared for the Real World and it dawned on me that I could no longer use the University as a place to hide from the harsh reality of being a responsible, self-sustaining member of society. The dreaded day finally arrived when I had to leave my academic hidey-hole and venture out into the wide, wide world.

I was 2/3 of the way through school when I began hearing ominous rumors about the fate of those students ahead of me who had graduated with a degree in literature and were not finding work. It was said that even PhD's were doing  menial jobs like driving taxicabs. With the unfounded optimism so typical of (ignorant) youth, I paid little attention to these stories, blithely assuming I would no doubt fall into something befitting my situation when the time came. Thinking the big city would hold much more in the way of potential jobs than the little college town in which I was living, I moved to Chicago. After settling in a studio apartment (a whole story all by itself), I began pounding the pavement looking for work, only to find those ominous rumors were actually true. There weren't any jobs for those of us foolish enough to arm ourselves with nothing other than a B.A. in English. Setting my sights on something less glamorous than I had originally hankered for, I searched for anything to keep the proverbial wolf from the door. Everywhere I went I was given the same discouraging message, "We're sorry, Miss. You are overqualified for this job." The few places that thought I might suit them gave me typing tests which I promptly failed due to insufficient speed. After two weeks of this ego-crushing litany, I finally snagged a job with a small firm that specialized in teaching banks to computerize - with the proviso I pass a 6-week typing course to get my typing skills up to speed.

My job title, "Administrative Secretary and MTST Operator," was laughably grandiose. It should have been "Assistant Lackey" or "Drudge-in-Training." I was stuck in a cubicle the size of a postage stamp with another woman (my boss) and given the privilege of typing gibberish (**...987#**@42^//76++=17...) by the hour into a machine something like a "Selectric" typewriter hooked up to an adjacent machine that punched holes into cards. And to think I used to find reading Chaucer a bore!

The most indelibly fixed memory I have of my first job in the big city centers around the day I was asked to fill in for the receptionist, who had asked for and been granted a day off for some reason or other. To fill in for her I needed two things: to look good and to sound professional. Well, I thought to myself, no problem! I can speak with a perfectly adequate butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth telephone persona when I choose, and there was one particular outfit I had gotten numerous compliments on during my brief stint with the company, so I thought I was all set. Everything was under control. This assignment was going to be a breeze!

As I readied myself for work that fateful morning it seemed as if my outfit was a bit snug, but I didn't really stop to think about it. I didn't care for this particular outfit myself - in fact, the truth is I hated it! But one does what one must. I knew what proper business attire was and was not, besides which people seemed to like the dress, for reasons beyond my comprehension. I knew this little number was perfect for playing the role of Receptionist-for-a-Day. It was a polyester knit dress featuring a drop-waist accented by a wide, hot-pink belt. The collared bodice was white, and the mini-skirt (we're talking 1973 here) beneath was a Pepto-Bismol pink-and-white diagonal plaid. There was a long zipper at the back from the nape of the neck to below the dropped waist to allow for ingress and egress. I climbed into the dress that morning much more concerned with perfecting my make-up and hairdo than double-checking my clothing.

It happened I lived just off a main thoroughfare, affording me the option to take either the train (part elevated, part underground) or the bus down to the "Loop," the main business district in which my job was located. It was a two-block walk to the train station, but the train commute was much faster overall than the bus ride downtown, so I decided to go for speed rather than scenery that morning. It turned out to be a momentous decision. It was summertime, and the weather was miserably hot. Somebody had already lowered the windows in the car to allow for greater air flow, and as we got nearer and nearer downtown it seemed even windier than usual to me. Soon we made the descent into the underground tunnel, and the wind continued to blow around me as the view from my window turned black and the incessant clickety-clack of the rails subtly shifted its tone. Before long we reached my stop.

Have you ever ridden in a subway? If so, you'll remember the strong WHOOSH of air that accompanies the opening of car doors. I was in the act of stepping from the train onto the station platform when this warm, strong blast of rapidly moving air struck. Suddenly, I became aware I was standing in a crowd of people - all strangers and yet familiar, due to the fact the same folks rode the same train at the same time day after day - in nothing more than my slip and bra! Unbeknownst to me, the plastic zipper in my dress had been damaged by the industrial-strength heat put out by the coin-operated dryer located in my apartment building basement. The zipper had broken sometime during my ride down to the Loop, leaving absolutely nothing to keep my dress on my body. Naturally, the big gust of wind at the platform blew the bodice of this (cursed, hateful) dress clean off my body!

If you're under the age of 40, you probably can't even begin to understand how I felt. Back in 1973 people wore modest clothes to work, clothes that deliberately concealed body parts specific to gender. We liked it that way. Anything resembling an undergarment was just that: an item of clothing to be worn underneath one's clothes. We had absolutely no desire to walk around with our lingerie showing. Much of what passes for ordinary business garb today would have been considered downright pornographic back then! Yes, we wore mini-skirts, but even those were tame by today's standards. At that moment in time I can see that it would have been better for me to have had genes from at least one or two bohemians somewhere in my ancestral tree, but as it is, I come from a long line of prim and proper bourgeois stock, all of whom were simultaneously shouting a deafening chorus of "Shame on you, Susan!!!!!!!" directly into my subconscious. I would have been humiliated enough to be seen wearing something with a plunging neckline, but to find myself standing in public wearing something with no neckline at all was incomparably worse! I was...well, frankly, words fail. "Mortified" hardly begins to describe how I felt. It was embarrassment beyond the pale. I wished for the ground to open up and swallow me whole. The Almighty, however, declined my petition for instant annihilation, leaving me no choice but to go forward - forward three long city blocks to the building in which my company was housed.

How I ever made it up the multiple flights of stairs to the sidewalk remains completely buried in the deepest recesses of my brain. What I do remember (with painful clarity) are the comments and looks thrown my way by various members of the rush-hour crowd. "Excuse me, Miss; do you know your dress is falling?" It was a temptation not to snarl back at them, "Really? You don't say!" or "Nah, I hadn't noticed that." It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep putting one foot in front of the other as I clutched the shoulders of my dress in a death grip and held them against my own hideously bare shoulders in an attempt to minimize the perverse effects of the outdoor wind that continually threatened to undress me yet again. They don't call Chicago "the Windy City" for nothing! By the time I finally stumbled into my office my face was the color of an overripe tomato and my pulse and blood pressure must have been off the charts. It's probably no surprise I concluded not long afterwards that being a so-called administrative assistant in the Windy City wasn't the job for me.