Last Updated on February 18, 2023
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By Andrew Culture
I remember every spittle specked crease on the bored face of my school careers officer as his jaw worked on auto-pilot. He was giving me the same bit of cliched advice he gave every student in my class that day, ‘Find a job that appeals to your interests and you’ll live a happy life’. The lack of passion in his voice made his advice sound more like bitter remorse than a gift of positive direction.
Our school careers officer was called Mr.P.Knoll, and one of my more erudite fellow students pondered whether the officer’s first name was ‘Parker’. I saw his angle; this man who was supposed to top up our enthusiasm levels for a working life (in the pit-stop that is high-school) was the human personification of one of the discarded settees that were omnipresent on street corners in the neighbourhood where I grew up. He had possibly been loved in the past, but was no longer needed by anyone. Poor old Knoll may have been happy once, but this shell of a fella who ‘guided’ us had probably spent his life – just like the settees – being suppressed by a fat arse.
We had no idea whether Mr.P.Knoll was married, had been married or if there was any truth in the rumour he was a hermaphrodite, but for high-school students the truth is irrelevant almost to the point of being contemptible. We know the truth existed somewhere, but we made as little effort to search out truth as truth would make to find us.
During one particularly dull biology lesson one of my mates decided Mr. Knoll was part of a cult, one of those organisations that insists you have twenty wives, only Mr.Knoll had missed something crucial in the smallprint, and somehow the actualisation of that missed detail had turned him from a vibrantly randy twenty-something to this holistically crushed man who now spent his days punting out cliched advice to disinterested teenage turds like us.
I wouldn’t say I hold my school careers officer responsible for my current predicament – I may have ended up in here, with this sinking feeling, if I had never met Mr.P.Knoll – but right here, right now, I am pointlessly pondering whether a wholesale refusal to find a job I love might have saved me from slowly drowning in this industrial vat of melted chocolate.
Like it – killer ending – but I was initially unsure as to whether it was meant to be metaphor or reality. Also, there seems to be further confusion in the last paragraph. I would suggest it makes more sense to rewrite it as: ‘Put it this way – I would have ended up where I am right now if I had never met Mr P. Knoll, but right here, right now, I am pointlessly pondering whether a wholesale refusal to find a job I love would have actually saved me from slowly drowning in this industrial vat of melted chocolate.’
(The fourth paragraph is just one, long sentence. I’d pop in a full-stop to break it up and sprinkle a few commas elsewhere in the story.)
Thanks Jon, punctuation is a real weak point in my writing, comments like yours are a real help.
I've rejigged the last paragraph to try and make it clearer.
Ooo Androo! I really enjoyed reading this – sounds like we had the same careers guidance officer! Very nice slow, ponderous feeling to the whole thing…just the pace of refelctive thought! Brill – love it. Pen. xxxx