Blissfully Unprepared

The year was 1988 AD. Middle of May. Dawn of the real world. No, not the OG dumbass "reality show" that has given us decades of copycat, dumber-ass reality shows. No. May of '88 is when college wrapped up and fear set in. See, I was always terrified of becoming one of those lifeless, soulless Long Island Rail Road commuters that lived all around us. Angry men — and some women — slogging to and from thankless, pointless jobs; wool-suited, briefcase-carrying cogs in some bank’s machine. It was a naïve impression that I chose to wallow in, fully aware there were hundreds of different pursuits to, well, pursue.

I wasn’t afraid of work. I’d been working either two or three simultaneous part-time jobs for five years; easy formula…low-wage labor multiplied by long hours meant being able to do stuff. But I had witnessed what that daily commuting drudgery did to my Dad. It turned a normal gentleman into a bear with a sore ass (one of my favorites of his many colorful phrases). And I wanted no part of it. They promoted the LIRR as “The Route of the Dashing Commuter” complete with cartoon posters of slick Willies and some Wilmas literally dashing from A to B, smooth and successful. Clever word play there — dashing. That’s some award-worthy copywriting. Sigh. They never followed the cartoons home.

Summer 1988 progressed. I idled. Comfortable in my three part-time gigs and with no immediate big-boy prospects — and even less motivation — I did what every newly minted college graduate without a plan did. I planned a trip.

Thankfully while choreographing the obligatory, aimless, 13-country EuroRail backpacking assault on that poor, unsuspecting continent, a neighborhood dad of one of my best, first friends offered me a crucial piece of unsolicited input around my fruitless job search: “Dummy. You haven’t asked me for a job!” A lifeline.

He owned a small ad agency. He needed someone who could write (check!), communicate without grunting (‘k), and to run the dark room (sure).

I knew from the small, non-social part of my college experience that I wanted to “get into advertising,” or something. I’d seen reruns of Bewitched and thought Darrin Stephens had a cool job at McCann & Tate, and from what I’d heard, the frat house atmosphere that would later be depicted in Mad Man was still hanging on. Like Wall Street but without so much coke. Well, still...count me in!

This first job wasn’t that. Not at all. But he promised he’d hire me — with one caveat: if and only if I took my planned European sabbatical (from what, I don’t know but that’s what he called it, so I went with it).

So, on what may have been Icelandair’s first flight — I’d never heard of the airline, and it was broke-kid-budget cheap — I took off. For Luxembourg. I was that aimless. I just flew where the cheapest flight was flying. As an aside, go to Luxembourg. It’s friggin’ beautiful. It’s a mutt country sired by Germany, France, and Belgium that I never would have seen if Icelandair did not fly there. Go.

With two feet in Doc Martens on European soil, I relied heavily on basic English to get by and a simple phrase book where my native tongue was foreign. Backpacking only in name, I took overnight trains to wherever they were going rather than pay for a hostel. Lux francs became Austrian shillings. Remaining shillings became Deutsche marks. The German dough became lire and French francs. 1988 became 1989 with a pile of Irish pounds on the bar before me and a bellyful of Guinness stew — and Guinness — inside me. I was becoming worldly. I guess.

I’m forever indebted to Charles for making me take that trip. And for my start in the ad business — as promised — immediately upon clearing JFK customs and doing laundry. His kind offer set me up for success and begot my perfectionist approach to language. There was no room for error. You get an assignment — an ad, a brochure, billboard — and you’d better write right. Not just by being clever and engaging and pleasing to clients, but also free of mistakes. Before the Mac, any edit was an odyssey; typesetting, waxing, rolling, and tissuing. Editing rounds and proofreading final proofs also fell to me. So, I became a lunatic with spelling, punctuation, meaning, and overall communication. Sort of a professional refresher of my high school years. I was hooked.