Desprate for money I found myself in a booth at Ruby Tuesday's in Mount Vernon Ohio, in employee training. Everyone else there looks like seventeen-year-old twenty-one-year-olds. Kids who go to christian colleges always do. The one across from me has questions that no one else has. If I have two children, but I'm still a dependent on my parents taxes, do I get to fill in both on my tax forms?

I notice immediately that selling out ("taking the job") will supply me with cheap medical coverage, something I have sorely missed ever since high school. I think of teeth I can get filled and medicines I can have perscribed. After two hours of training from the head trainer, I am entirely fed up with this horrible place. It's taking so long because, in addition to leading orientation for ten people, he is waiting on four tables.

It then occurs to me that I have been meaning to call Ben, because painful things in his past will be hilarious in light of similar developements in my week. I have to call him while I'm still in Mount Vernon, because Ohio is a black hole. I park in front of The Alcove Restaurant in downtown, an area only recently recovering from a sudden exodus to the large parking lots of the surrounding strip. When he doesn't pick up, I walk inside and secure an interview as a server and promise myself I will never fill out forms for Ruby Tuesdays again.