Wanted: Significant Something

I've developed a curiosity with the human experience, relationships/dating, and the "self advertising" that has quickly become a major part of all of the above. I've read hundreds of personal ads in the interest of art (and my own curiosity) and even wrote a few of my own. Occasionally, a creative one will catch my eye and I wanted to share them...here's one of hopefully many more to come. It's titled "Wanted: Significant Something"

Description/Position Summary:
My company’s public relation’s department currently has a part-time opening for a ‘Probationary Friend’. You must understand this is an entry level position and as such, you may be terminated at any time for any reason.

However, the right candidate will rise quickly and could possibly be interviewed for the lucrative full time position of Significant Other at a moments notice. Keep in mind, we are looking for only the best and brightest talented individual to fill this position. The Significant Other is a cornerstone of our company and can be a very rewarding position. This person will where many hats and be able to change them tactfully and gracefully to suit the given situation. The Significant Other is responsible for contributing (at least in part) to emotional stability and support, physical tenderness and excitement, as well as mental stability and entertainment. The exceptional Significant Other may also pursue the “Life Partner” Track, which will lead to a much broader spectrum of benefits and responsibilities. Our ideal candidate will possess the following characteristics:

-Be self-motivated
-Be a great team player
-Have great creativity
-Caring: not only for themselves, but the company as a whole
-Detail-oriented
-The ability to work long hours and overtime
-The ability to finish work in a timely manner
-Open to direction and adaptable to change
-Must have excellent written and oral communication skills
-A great ability to multi-task
-Excellent time management skills
-The ability to work in a fast-paced, occasionally stressful environment
-The ability to prioritize based on limited information
-Must be able to work independently
-Excellent problem solving skills
-The ability to work very closely with a partner
-The ability to meet performance quotas
-A winning ‘can-do’ attitude

Desired Skills:
-The ability to lie comfortably in front of a movie
-The ability to ask and answer questions over dinner or drinks
-The ability to chase sunsets at a moments notice
-The ability to understand that no one is perfect
-The desire to make the company greater than the sum of its parts
-The desire to take and use vacation time effectively and often
-The desire to find a compromise between two differing view points
-The desire to smile early and often
-The desire and love of love

Qualifications/Requirements:
Candidate must have a high school education or better. Candidate must also have 2-5 years experience of related experience. No beginners please!

Salary/Benefits:
Salary is commensurate with experience. Great benefits package for full time employment!

This company is EOE.

Against the Grain

I've had very little to write here other than....

• "dating" is strange and nearly a non-existent practice of our generation
• online personals seem like a human sears catalogue
• if girls spent as much time and energy on their education/careers/something worth while as they do on their waist lines, makeup, and hair in the pursuit of male attention...so much more would be accomplished
• and that I, inexplicably, just can't seem to relate...

"Today I was a terrorist"

The clock ticked idly on the wall as I stood in the lobby watching a team of firemen in their rubber-duck HasMat suits carry the last of my fellow victims across the grass to the yellow tent erected on the other end that I’d come to learn was a “Decontamination” station. I’d been “dead” for three hours give or take and by this point I was the last “victim” in the auditorium around which all the commotion had been staged. It was my entire fault.

My mother, a contractor and member of the controller team evaluating responders during the exercise, had asked me if I would like to volunteer to be a “victim” in an exercise they were holding at the fort and if I wouldn’t mind being “decontaminated”. The very word provoked a number of questions but I arrived Wednesday morning armed with a backpack full of snacks and my bathing suit under my clothes. I was ready.

Mom didn’t mention anything about being a terrorist.

The evidence was highly suggestive, a letter detailing a possible motive for the attack, tucked into the furthermost pocket of my backpack. The fire alarms of the building were set off and the victims waited to be rescued. There were five of us staged in the auditorium—not including two heavy looking dummies that also required rescuing—and fourteen in total. It was an hour before firemen entered the building and three more had passed before firemen packaged my limp body on a yellow sled and dragged me from the building with my backpack as evidence.

An initial decontamination shower had been unleashed in front of the building and the team of firemen carrying me paused beneath it until I was thoroughly soaked. I shivered despite the sun and I tried not to smile as the firemen overhead remarked that for a dead body, I sure seemed cold. I squeezed my eyes shut as I was transferred from the sled to a portable conveyor belt inside the HasMat decontamination tent. When I opened them, the four pretty female GI’s leaning over me were discussing procedure. “This is where we’d remove your clothes and begin decontamination”, one of them said to me. I piped up and told them I’d come prepared and they processed me without hesitation, fed my arms and head through a plastic body bag, and folded my arms over my chest. My bag was searched and the evidence eventually made it’s way into the hands of the authorities.

They told me I could go home.