An awful, awful nightmare

Last night, I had the worst nightmare. I was in a boardroom full of well tailored suits who were interviewing both me and my current boss for the same job as an associate editor at a small progressive political publishing company. We were sitting side-by-side getting interviewed simultaneously!

However, it was unlike any interview that would ever take place in the waking world. The first question was, apparently, to test memory and fluency in French. Of course, I didn't know that at the time. The publisher read aloud a three minute passage from some French book. When she was done she prompted E. and started repeating it back to her word for word. He only repeated back about one minute, which was all he could remember, but it was decidedly better than the 3 words I managed to utter before hearing one of those game show bells that screeched to tell me that I got a word wrong. Humiliation.

Next, the boardroom conference table dissolved and two pool tables took their place. The next round of the interview would be a competition. Immediately I throw my hands up in an "I'm fucked" display of defeat. The last time I played pool was at Jillian's on Landsdowne St. (for any of you Bostonians) during my Boston College summer o' clubbing days and I didn't even bring my glasses because I thought I looked cuter without them. (Yes, this was the never never-time, before HB.) How did four-eyes play pool without my glasses, you ask? Horribly. I might as well have not had my glasses on for this round of the interview, that's how badly I played.

When the pool tables disappeared, we were no longer in the boardroom, but outdoors on a beach at night. There were tiki themed decorations all around and a huge bonfire. The publisher's husband just came back from Mexico where he captured and brought back rare Mexican eel, which both me and E. had to taste. I guess this was the only part of the competition/interview that I passed because I thought the eel tasted like chicken, but E. refused because he was a vegetarian. Go figure. The only thing I could do right was eat.

Finally, I woke up disoriented, upset, and defeated. First, no interview would ever be like that (well, I keep telling myself that) and second, a senior editor would never apply for a job as an associate editor at a smaller company. Still, I feel a little humiliated even though none of it really happened (I keep telling myself that too).