Welcome back to the series where I tell the same story 100 ways. Today:
Zoom in
Worst job of my life? How about of my life so far? Before college, after my senior year of high school, I spent a summer terrorizing (not in Peru, but in upstate New York) the town of Lima, doing sales not in a store but in people’s homes — kitchens mostly. I gave a staggering 90-minute sales pitch, then spent a few minutes trying to turn their no into a yes. I made a single sale, when my mom bought a jackknife for my dad in a moment of generosity. As I opened the mailbox and grabbed the package — my first moved unit! — time stood still.
Zoom out
Click. Snikt. It took less than a second for the edge of a jackknife to slice the pink flesh of my palm. I spent some minutes writhing in the passenger seat as my mom drove the car into a gas station. We spent a few more minutes fixing me up. We weren’t near the airport yet; we were still on the backroads of Livonia, a half-hour from the city. This was an embarrassing end to three months of driving to sales calls all around the Finger Lakes region. A year later, I worked for a donut chain based in Canada, not the most glamorous job ever in the world.
Last week I mentioned I was writing some autobiographical fiction. I’m pretty happy with my first draft — let’s hope my writing group fixes that — and I’ll be writing more autofiction. I’d spent the last three years mostly writing scifi, fantasy, and fabulism. I feel a bit bifurcated, and unsure what “my voice” is — a reason I ended up doing this Sharp Knife project. Why not try out all the voices?