Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish. ---Michelangelo
At the U.S. Vets homeless veterans shelter in Inglewood, California, one of the requirements for allowing us military veterans to rent a bunkbed from them is that we attend a meeting every morning.
At this 8 o'clock Motivational Abuse Meeting, a case manager, a different one each morning, either reads from some tattered old alcohol recovery book or reiterates the party line on shiny shoes, pressed pants, neat ties, whatever.
The alcohol recovery book diatribe bores me because I've never been an alcoholic. Neither have the veterans sitting around me in this meeting. In fact, the only person in the room who looks like he is suffering a hangover is the case manager running the meeting. But we all agreed to be treated like criminals and drunks as a condition for renting the bunk beds, so fair is fair.
Then we each read our cheat sheets, a list of five prospective employers we don't really intend to contact during the day. We read these lists of imaginary employers in as droning a voice as we can muster at this morning, uh, muster. We are thirty or so drones droning the names of 150 employers that are not going to hire us today.
As we drone off our Disneyland of job contacts, the case manager has to find new and interesting ways of letting us know that we are not really qualified for any of those jobs and might as well go hang out at construction sites looking for janitor or security guard work.
That's his job.
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