{"id":1080,"date":"2012-07-16T21:53:21","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T02:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/?p=1080"},"modified":"2012-07-17T12:32:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T17:32:37","slug":"opportunities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/2012\/07\/16\/opportunities\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunities"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At first I demurred — and I was such a pretentious <\/em>little dirtball that I might\u2019ve actually said, \u201cI demur<\/em>.\u201d I\u2019ll get to the context in a minute, but\u00a0today’s hot summer wind calls to mind a July day that taught me something about opportunities.<\/p>\n

Another epic post-church Sunday rush had finally wound down at the pancake house. Stuck over a hot grill since 5:30 in the AM, I couldn\u2019t wait to scrub off the grease and collapse on the naugahyde couch in the cool of my parents’ basement. As I walked out of the kitchen, I saw a couple of the twentysomething waitresses outside, making plans. Terry\u00a0said\u00a0her band was playing at Kaposia Park that afternoon and\u00a0invited me to\u00a0stop by and sit in on a few songs.<\/p>\n

I liked Terry.\u00a0She was\u00a0too serious for some of the cooks, but even as a kid I\u00a0respected people who took their work seriously. And, when we weren\u2019t swamped with orders, I noticed she used\u00a0the same tone of voice with everyone from the shift manager, to the cops drinking coffee, to the busboys working the carpet sweeper. That made her a good egg in my book. Somewhere along the line, she told me she sang in a country band and I\u2019m sure I must’ve yammered on about my rock star aspirations.<\/p>\n

Out\u00a0in the parking lot by the walk-in cooler, I said, \u201cIt sounds like fun, but I\u2019m just not into that kind of music. No offense.\u201d<\/em> \u00a0I\u2019m sure it was the \u201cno offense\u201d that did it. For a second, Terry flashed me\u00a0the sort of\u00a0look I’d get if I\u2019d dropped a plate on the floor. Then, with just a hint of a smile on just half of her face, she said, \u201cWell, you must be one heckuva musician if you can afford to be so picky about opportunities to play.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

A direct hit – and totally disarming. She knew I\u00a0was a\u00a03-chord wonder, more scared of the stage than averse to the genre. But instead of calling me out on it, she was offering a face-saving invitation: C\u2019mon, man, are you serious about this or not?<\/em> I said I\u2019d try to make it.<\/p>\n

By the time I got to the park, there was a big joyful noise coming from the pavilion. I don\u2019t recall much after that, except that the band\u00a0was fast, loud, and awesomely sloppy\u00a0and that Terry (who’d literally let her hair down) was an engaging\u00a0frontwoman on stage. Eventually, I sang along on some sing-alongs, including Mamas Don\u2019t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys<\/a><\/em> and Good Hearted Woman<\/a><\/em>. My guitar stayed in its case and I\u00a0had to\u00a0freestyle-mumble the verses, but I stomped my\u00a0feet and shouted along on the choruses. Though I didn’t make much of a contribution, I felt more happy, relaxed, and energized than I\u2019d been in weeks.<\/p>\n

I never\u00a0grew into\u00a0a real musician, but I still think of Terry when confronted with new opportunities. I say no sometimes, but I\u00a0try to make sure my knee-jerk negative reactions aren\u2019t driven by the fears and insecurities I felt at 17. Now that I’m more\u00a0“senior,” students\u00a0are starting to\u00a0ask\u00a0me for career advice.\u00a0Often, where\u00a0I’ll see tremendous career opportunities they’ll\u00a0just see a bullet to be dodged. I\u2019ll\u00a0gently suggest that it might <\/em>not be so disastrous to take that research assistantship or collaborative opportunity or post-doc position, even if it doesn\u2019t perfectly align with their current career interests. And when I’m feeling\u00a0especially bold or\u00a0the\u00a0summer heat\u00a0just summons my own travails, I\u2019ll offer half a smile and say, \u201cWell, you must have one heckuva lot going if you can afford to pass on an opportunity like this.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

photo courtesy Curtis Gregory Perry<\/a>, flickr.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At first I demurred — and I was such a pretentious little dirtball that I might\u2019ve actually said, \u201cI demur.\u201d I\u2019ll get to the context in a minute, but\u00a0today’s hot summer wind calls to mind a July day that taught me something about opportunities. Another epic post-church Sunday rush had finally wound down at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/files\/2012\/07\/diner2_500-e1342546325958.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1080"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1122,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1080\/revisions\/1122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}