When I was eight years old, I wanted to be a hotshot quarterback in the NFL. At twelve, I had my sights set on quantum physics and all things subatomic. Three years later, I thought hosting a late night show would be the ultimate dream job.
But now, at the tender age of 22, I’m not so sure about my earlier career plans. Six weeks from graduation and the requisite pains of looming self-sufficiency, I’ve had to discount most of my previous designs on how to make a living as impractical. I don’t have the arm for the football gig, I don’t have the brains for professional science and I definitely don’t have a funny bone big enough to please America night in and night out.
My crisis is a serious one, especially given that I’m headed to law school next year. But do I really want to go to law school this fall? Do I really want to waste my time with three more years of “reading” and “writing” just to earn the “opportunity” to toil away for another 40 years at some “firm”? Are rhetorical questions and excessive quotation marks really going to be effective in conveying my indecision and pre-“real world” life angst?
These issues plague me on a daily—well, bi-weekly—basis. Fellow seniors know all too well the worry associated with planning for the rest of one’s life away from the Ivy Tower. Instead of discussing the night terrors precipitated by these thoughts, I have an overwhelming, Billy Madison-esque, Ferris Bueller-ish urge to tell my younger readers (including any literate pre-frosh out there) to enjoy their ignorant bliss while they still can. The future comes far too quickly and the last thing you want is to be caught with your pants down. Unless, of course, exotic dancing is what you had planned all along.
But, to get back to the matter at hand, I’ve realized that I need a more feasible dream job. So, I’ve recently been thinking long and hard about what I want to be when I grow up—and I believe I’ve finally settled on the pursuit that best balances the key criteria of any truly noble and worthy fantasy profession. This career provides comfortable pay, a reasonable amount of fame, a ridiculously low level of difficulty, requires little or no prior experience and places one in close proximity to attractive women who are willing to overlook the male-pattern baldness and overweight physique that are Mother Nature’s way of amusing herself at man’s expense.
So, after deep and sincere soul-searching and moderate-to-heavy drinking (thank you, Senior Bar), I have decided that I want to be a United States Senator when I grow up.
Let’s consider the requirements for being a U.S. Senator. Impressive intelligence? Nope. Good looks? Not necessarily. Tact? Hardly. A strong moral compass? Yeah, right. In other words, it’s already looking good for yours truly.
In fact, after thorough research and field observation (including a brief stint as a personal office intern—no, not that kind of “personal”), I’ve concluded that one is only required to have two things to be a senator—age and votes. That’s right, if you’re over 30 and can somehow convince a couple million people to vote for you (it’s even fewer people for the smaller states), then you can punch your ticket for D.C. and six years of blissful pseudo-employment.
As for the first criterion—age—I suppose there really isn’t anything I can do other than just wait to get older. Using my trusty TI-82 graphing calculator and assuming that time will continue to flow at a constant rate, I’ve determined that I will be eligible in time for the 2010 election cycle. And seeing as though I have seven and a half years until my 30th birthday, I should probably find something constructive to do in the meantime.
I figure I may as well try to position myself to achieve the second criterion—duping a lot of people into voting for me—in the interim. Based again on significant analysis and laborious observational studies, I’ve ascertained that any successful candidate for the U.S. Senate needs three things: some popular, if patently moronic, issue or slogan, lots of money and an attractive (or, failing that, accomplished) trophy wife.
As for my issue or slogan, well, I have to consider what state I eventually want to represent. For example, if I move back to my lovely home state of Florida, my issue would probably be securing huge government benefits for Cubans and old people, placing a particular emphasis on old Cuban people. If I stay in Massachusetts, my issue would likely involve exploiting some loophole in order to use federal tax increases for the improvement of the local baseball franchise. The slogan for this initiative could be simple and stirring, speaking to the everyday man—probably some variant on “The Sox are wicked pissah! This is thah yea-ah! NO-MAHHH!” A move out west may necessitate such campaign battle cries as “Brigham Young, Brigham Old, just Brigham to the polls to vote” and issues such as ending the soft bigotry of altered television programming due to the time zone differential.
But stupidly popular issues and lame slogans can only go so far; what I will really need is money and lots of it. To that end, I’m getting a leg up on my future competition by forming a political action committee (PAC)—read: “slush fund”—to cull the assets from various quasi-legal business ventures (selling fake underage IDs to middle-aged women, selling Tony Robbins motivational tapes to under-motivated people and operating the most lucrative midget-only casino this side of the Rio Grande, to name a few). This PAC, combined with sizable donations from rich Harvard kids I’ve pretended to befriend over the years, should put me well on my way to purchasing at least one 30-second commercial, possibly two.
Last and perhaps most important, I need to find myself an attractive, photogenic and affable trophy wife for those 30-second commercials, not to mention for the cocktail parties, photo-ops, campaign rallies and, of course, my personal enjoyment. Knowing that anywhere from 10 to 12 people are reading this (including maybe three or four women), I want to take advantage of this opportunity to advertise the open position of Mrs. Daniel E. Fernandez, Esq.:
If you are an attractive, photogenic and affable woman, are between the ages of 18 and 25, and desire a life of excitement and social importance (and don’t mind bearing between two and four children in the process), please contact one of the Political Spouse Search regional directors and ask for an application. Being named Missy or some other WASPy derivative ending in “y” is a bonus, as is any prior modeling, acting or aerobics instructional experience.
I look forward to reading through all of your materials, though mostly just looking at the required theme photos (I believe the suggested themes are “Patriotic Americana” or “Oh no, the drinking fountain is spraying water everywhere”). Good luck in the process and just know that though there likely will be a spike in applicants this year, the Committee on Marital Admissions will give each file the care and attention it deserves.
So there you have it—a foolproof plan to get the perfect “respectable” dream job. To further demonstrate my natural political acumen and uncanny ability to answer the tough questions posed of those in my future profession, I will now open the essay for any questions you may have:
Q: Dan, aren’t you concerned that sharing your “scheme” in such a public way will allow potential rivals to plan accordingly?
A: Not at all. The only people who read FM are too talented for (and, therefore, disinterested in) political life, are incapable of comprehending the simple directions I’ve outlined above or have extensive criminal records. I’m confident I can defeat roughly 60 percent of FM’s readership and last time I checked that’s good enough for democracy.
Q: Mr. Fernandez, this is a ridiculously ill-conceived idea, not to mention a shoddily-written essay. You should be ashamed of yourself. On behalf of the reading public, I demand a thorough apology and call upon the editors of this magazine to publicly castigate you.
A: Way to ask a question there, buddy. Listen, just because you’re jealous that I’ve devised such a great plan doesn’t mean that you have to get all nasty with demanding apologies and such. Also, I have no idea what “castigate” means, but if it’s anything like “endorse,” then I guess I would have to agree.
Q: Hi Danny, it’s me—Mom. Are you really serious about this whole Senator thing? I always thought you wanted to be a racecar driver or an astronaut. Or, perhaps based on playing to your strengths, a professional bed-wetter.
A: Holy crap, Mom! Shhh! My future constituents can’t know about that. I mean, seriously, the only sheet-soiler to make it to the U.S. Senate was John F. Kennedy ’40 and look at what happened to him.
Alright, enough is enough. I have to get going now to prepare some speeches, shake some hands and kiss some infant children. Thanks for bearing with me through this, my bi-weekly pre-graduation life crisis. Faithful readers, I will remember you all kindly and will act accordingly and corruptly when I finally get to the pinnacle of my senatorial success, wherever and whenever that may be.
Unless, of course, this entire plan doesn’t work out and I’m forced to figure out something else to do when I grow up. Or maybe that’s the answer—I can avoid the trouble of finding an awesome dream job if I just refuse to grow up. Somehow, I don’t think I’ll have any problem with that for the foreseeable future.
Daniel E. Fernandez ’03 is a government concentrator in Lowell House. He will never be a Senator or marry a hot woman—especially after this endpaper.
