Rain Boots
Wendy K. Mages
I pull on my sleek, black Anne Klein rain boots, grab my rain coat, my umbrella, and a second-hand briefcase I rarely use, and head out the door. Despite the torrential rain, I’m attempting to look as professional as possible, as I’m more than keenly aware of the vast amounts of knowledge I have yet to acquire. I’m a second-year doctoral student and I’m on my way to my first interview for a job as a teaching fellow in the psychology department. I really want to land this job; I need the money and the experience. So, in an attempt to conceal my lack of experience and any deficits in my content knowledge, I’ve forsaken my grad-school jeans and sweatpants and disguised myself in a navy blue business suit and my rather old, but still elegant, Anne Klein rain boots.
I’m nervous and excited as I begin the walk across campus. I want to nail this interview. So, I’m carefully considering everything I might say in the interview, when I step off the curb into a puddle. I notice the water is deeper and colder than I expected. I can feel the cold right through my boots, but the rain is relentless, and the puddles are unavoidable. After stepping into the third or fourth puddle, I start to realize my feet aren’t just cold, they’re actually getting wet. My boots look great, but they’re pretty old and clearly no longer a match for a Nor’easter.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been caught in the rain and had to slosh around in water-logged shoes. So, I keep walking. I’m hardly going to let damp feet ruin my interview and my chance to snag the first of what I hope will be a career of academic teaching positions.
A few unavoidable puddles later, I feel a gush of water on my right toes. Then I feel the same gush on my left toes. It seems the glue that holds the soles onto the boots has begun to dissolve, but, if I turn back, I’ll be late to the interview. I have no choice but to continue on.
With every step the soles become more and more detached. By the time I enter William James Hall, my boots have begun to make an odd flapping noise as I walk.
I am forced to shuffle along to keep the soles from becoming fully detached and to try to minimize the indiscrete flapping sound, which only draws attention to my unseemly situation.
I realize shuffling across the lobby must look rather peculiar, but what are my options? I can’t walk into an interview barefoot. I decide to pretend like nothing’s wrong. I shuffle into the elevator, and when I arrive at the correct floor, I shuffle down the hall to meet the professor I hope will hire me.
The young, clean-cut professor welcomes me into his office, and begins the interview. There I am, sitting in a business suit, with disintegrating boots that at any minute can dissolve the good impression I am trying so hard to make.
Halfway through the interview, the professor offers to give me a copy of the syllabus. This looks like an auspicious sign, until he realizes he’s out of copies, and says, “Why don’t you come with me, so I can show you where the copiers are located?”
“Great!” I say, but I begin to panic. I don’t think my boots can make it all the way to the copiers and back. Carefully, I stand up and shuffle along behind him. He says nothing about the peculiar shuffling. I can’t tell if he just doesn’t notice, or if he’s too polite to say anything. He makes a few copies and we head back to his office. Again, I shuffle along behind him, terrified that at any moment my boots, and my dignity, will become totally unglued.
Finally, the interview is over. I’m relieved to have made it out of there while I still have boots on my feet. I shuffle back to the elevator and out into the empty lobby.
At this point, the soles of my boots are only attached at the heel. It’s clear they won’t survive the walk home. I’m not sure what to do, when I hear a voice. I shuffle toward the sound of the voice and find a maintenance man in what I think might be the mailroom. I shuffle into the mailroom, introduce myself, and explain my situation. The man looks at me and my boots and, as if this is a problem he solves every day, he grabs a roll of packing tape, and helps me wrap the tape around each boot. This is just what I need to make it home. I thank him and, with my boots fortified by packing tape, I head back out into the rain.
I will be forever grateful for the man in the mailroom and for the help he graciously offered me. At universities, the professors, their prestigious publications, their miraculous discoveries, and their heralded awards get a lot of attention. But I’ve discovered there are a lot of unsung heroes, ingenious dedicated people like the man in the mailroom, who provide the glue (or in my case, the packing tape) that holds everything together and keeps the university running.
A few days later, when I learn that, despite my self-destructing boots, I managed to land the job as a graduate teaching fellow, the details of the interview have already begun to fade. Yet, I will never forget the man in the mailroom or the kindness he showed me on that very rainy morning.
Wendy K. Mages
Wendy K. Mages, a Pushcart Prize nominee and award-winning poet and author, is a storyteller, educator, and researcher who earned a doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a master’s in Theatre at Northwestern University. As a Professor at Mercy University, she researches the effect of the arts on learning and development. To complement her research, she performs original stories at storytelling events and festivals in the US and abroad. Please visit https://www.mercy.edu/directory/wendy-mages and https://sites.google.com/view/wendy-mages-storyteller to learn more about her and her work and to find links to her published stories and poetry.