I can still remember...

American Pie / Don Mclean










Some interviews are not about the interview or the place, but the road traveled to get there. I think my first interview of this nature was at a private school.

At first, I thought my memory of this interview was fabricated. The road traveled I had traveled before, and as I couldn’t recall any details of my potential employer nor the interview process, I had assumed the snapshots that lay in my memory were merely a collage of other things.

But the memory of my travels are clear. I know the highway. Know that the exit in question is the one just after the Home Depo is visible on the right. I remember it as early spring, when the air has that hint of better things to come, but it isn’t yet there. Days are still black and white and not even those little flowers that look like snow from afar have raised their heads, but the temperature is warm.

This location is not excessively far from any of the places I have lived, yet I remember driving there the evening before and staying at motel. I remember being very nervous about this, though I know it was not my first jaunt of this nature. I remember a divided highway, the motel of course on the opposite side, and my annoyance turning to pleasure as when I passed it by and headed further up, I found my quest. The place of my interview.

I remember making an illegal u turn to get back to my hotel and being tickled that my then favorite chain restaurant shared its parking lot. I ordered my favorite comfort food dish, early for dinner, but what else was I going to do? I ate it on the double bed of my room, nervous with a chair propped against the door and sniveling as I called home.

But why was I there? Why had I agreed to spend the night in a motel for what was no more than a few hours drive and I’m sure a few hours interview? I can picture the place of my interview; it is a campus. I can picture the red brick buildings, and I identify where I parked in the lot. I can even remember looking at my shoes as they clacked along the sidewalk and thinking about the weather.

And yet, there it ends. I can say with some certainty I didn’t get offered a job at this institution, though I cannot say what job I was applying for. This memory is so odd and hazy, that I had almost convinced myself it wasn’t real. Then one day, traveling for other reasons, there we were. The Home Depo on my right, the exit as I recalled. As we traveled down the divided street, there was the motel, the chain restaurant, all of which looking far less menacing then the emotion my memory still elicits. And there too, down the road, the red brick building and the parking lot I recall. It was then I confirmed the institution a private school, but I still have no idea why I was there or what happened.

As one who frequently remembers just about everything, albeit in round about ways. This disturbs me. However, I know, since I can’t remember, I’ll never know.