Where I Went Wrong

RTT texted last night on the three-way text channel he shares with me and his brother: Hey y’all so I just got my last official paycheck and turned in my work computer for the end of the Ithaca campaign. Simply because the Ithaca team was shut down entirely in the company transitions going on.

How are you feeling? I asked.

My boss is pretty confident that I’ll be brought back on next week, she’ll have hiring powers and reiterated a couple of times that “I should be back next week” but as of now am technically unemployed.

I’m pretty optimistic I’ll get rehired but I’m also a realist that me and her are friends so she wouldn’t wanna get my hopes down. I’d guess like 60-70% chance I get rehired next week and if not that sucks but my resume just got a lot healthier.

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I was surprised but not surprised.

I knew the terms of RTT’s contract. When RTT was hired last spring, he was specifically tasked with working on Ithaca’s Reimagine Policing initiative, which was on the November 2022 ballot.

I fully expected him to be laid off after the election. When he wasn’t, I was puzzled but gratified and concluded his work for them had been so spectacular—and it was spectacular—that they’d decided to make him a permanent fixture.

But it was a bit mystifying because the parent organization is actually based in D.C. And if he was no longer needed in Ithaca, I figured they’d ask him to move there.

He never gave up his lucrative bartending side hustle. And he is a saver who squirrels all his nuts away for the winter. So, he’s not hurting for cash.

But as all parents know, you are only as happy as your unhappiest child.

I couldn’t tell if he was unhappy, of course. Text messaging is singularly useless for emotional subtext. Even with emoticons.

But I imagined him unhappy, and that made me unhappy.

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It also puts the future of the Guatemala trip in peril since unless RTT is employed, I doubt he’ll want to invest the surprisingly large amount of money it takes to fly from NYC to Guatemala City into a plane ticket.

I’d been waiting to buy my own plane ticket with RTT because we’re both flying out of NYC, and besides, I really don’t want to show up in Guatemala City on my own. Antigua is fabulous, but Guate is a snake pit.

Ichabod has already bought his ticket.

And I want to go!

The small, still voice within is saying, You must see Easter in Antigua.

So, I guess I’m just gonna buy my own plane ticket today and hope it all works out.

Which it will, of course.

One way or another.

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Anyway, the conversation put me in a tremulous mood.

So, I decided to take to my bed and do the early 21st-century equivalent of smelling salts—TV!!

I can now definitively pinpoint where I went wrong.

And that was I signed the wrong recruitment contract back in Bardo 71 years ago.

I really should have signed up to become a vet in Yorkshire circa 1937.