not working for the white man

I once had a job interview with a cross-eyed albino, and he was an asshole. I was talkative, outgoing, personable, and all of the other things that I am generally not outside of a job interview or court hearing, and he treated me like you would expect a man who had grown up both cross-eyed and albino to treat a man who had not. Still, I was the best Rex I could be. I just kept making excuses for him in my mind and trying to figure out what he was looking at. I told myself that I would probably be twice the asshole in his place.

Also, some of us have always been cross-eyed and albino on the inside, and I could relate, sort of.

At any rate, I bore him no ill will throughout the flood of condescension and snippy comments, and I instead found myself wanting to hold him to my bosom and pat his little cotton white head and tell him that it was okay.

But I didn’t because he also smelled like garlic.

The other thing I kept thinking of was Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre, in which a Georgia dirt farmer searches in vain for gold on his property. He and his sons eventually kidnap the albino who lives down by the swamp in a last ditch effort to find the gold, as albinos are supposed to have the gift for finding gold. It doesn’t work out, of course, and the albino ends up running off with the farmer’s daughter.

I was thinking about this and didn’t hear one of his questions. I had already allotted him a good five minutes of my attention span, and that is all anyone could hope for, regardless of employment ramifications or the uniqueness of one’s pigment.

He was obviously angry at having to repeat himself, but I no longer cared. The job didn’t pay enough to have to deal with him, and I thanked him for the interview and left.

There was a lesson here that the story was supposed to lead into, but I seem to have forgotten it.