Gabrielle Bauer - Waltzing the Tango: Confessions of an Out-of-step Boomer

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Waltzing The Tango

To my first boss, my last boss, and my
self-appointed young bosses, Tara and Jackson

Waltzing
The
Tango

Confessions of an
Out-of-Step Boomer

Gabrielle Bauer

Copyright Gabrielle Bauer 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages
for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be
requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.

Editor: Marc Ct
Copy Editor: Julian Walker
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Bauer, Gabrielle

Waltzing the tango: confessions of an out-of-step boomer

ISBN 0-88882-230-8

1. Bauer, Gabrielle. 2. Authors, Canadian (English) 20 th century Biography.* 3. Journalists Canada Biography. 1. Title.

PN4913.B275A3 2001 C8185409 C2001-930223-1

1 2 3 4 5 05 04 03 02 01

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing
program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing
Industry Development Program, The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of
Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Credit program.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher
welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.

J. Kirk Howard, President

Printed and bound in Canada.

Printed on recycled paper.

All names have been changed to protect privacy.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited: excerpt from Housebroken by David Eddie (1999)
Dell Publishing, a division of Random House, Inc.: excerpt from Blown Sideways Through Life by Claudia Shear (1995)
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc.: excerpt from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (1994)
Pantheon Books, a division of Random House Inc excerpt from Blown by Bird" by Anne Lamott (1994)

The author also wishes to acknowledge the Canada Council and the Ontario Arts Council for their generous and
consistent support of her work, including this book.

Dundurn Press 8 Market Street Suite 200 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5E 1M6

Dundurn Press 73 Lime Walk Headington, Oxford, England OX3 7AD

Dundurn Press 2250 Military Road Tonawanda NY U.S.A. 14150

Acknowledgments

I wrote my first book as a single woman with few restrictions on my time. This book, meanwhile, took shape in the midst of a chaotic family life that required me to alternate paragraphs with night feedings. If not for my husbands warm support and my young childrens remarkable tolerance for an activity that takes me away from them, I could not have completed this book. So thanks, Drew, Tara and Jackson.

I would also like to thank my editor, Marc Ct, for his vision and dynamism, my publisher, Kirk Howard, for taking on the book, and all the staff at Dundurn Press for their professionalism and geniality.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to tell a prospective employer the truth about yourself? Not just the polite truth or even the warts-and-all truth, but the sludge that lies beneath the warts. Ive been preparing that speech in my head all my life, as a counterpoint to the sycophantic job-interview style Ive perfected over the years. In the interviewers office I morph into a wind-up doll, pull a string and out comes a platitude. Oh yes, I believe in teamwork. Overtime is not a problem. Im looking to make a long-term contribution.

But the fantasy lingers on. The seduction of baring my sludge and letting the globs fall where they may. Who knows, maybe theres an employer out there who is looking for precisely the type of person who spends large blocks of time dreaming out the window and who delivers elephant-sized gaucheries with aplomb.

I know youre out there, boss. Heres hoping this letter helps you find me.

Dear Sir or Madam:

Hire me. No, dont hire me. Ill do a good job for a while, even a sterling job, but sooner or later Ill blow it. Ill say the wrong thing at a staff meeting, or Ill take charge of a situation that I have no business getting involved in, or Ill sit in the background when its obvious to everyone else that I should be taking charge, or ... well, any number of similar foul-ups that demonstrate my lack of savoir-faire. As I said, for the most part Ill do a good job for you. Its these other things that always get in the way. Maybe thats why Ive never been promoted. I either quit or get fired before that happens.

Each time Im about to start a new job, I tell myself that this time will be different, much like an alcoholic buoyed by the conviction that tomorrow, blessed tomorrow, shell stay away from the poison for sure. Or like a woman who always hangs out with alcoholics or whatever-aholics in the hope of straightening them out. (I know hes got it in him.) I know Ive got it in me to be a good, diligent employee, I keep telling myself someone with long-term potential. Trouble is, it never happens.

It all boils down to this, I think a constitutional inability to maintain a professional stance. Professional. The highest compliment you can give a worker. Shes a professional means so many things that I am not. She never loses her cool, she knows when to keep her mouth shut, shes discreet, shes loyal ... I remember skimming through an interview with Jodie Foster in some womens magazine. Its all about being a professional, she said. About showing up for a shoot even if your kid has leukemia.

To tell the truth, I thought it was one of the most idiotic statements Id ever read. I sure hope its not what you expect from me. You can be damn sure that if one of my children gets leukemia (heaven forbid), your stupid job would be the first thing to go. Like so many late boomers (ne 1957, if you must know), I was a late bloomer that is, I sat on the fence about the breeding question for as long as I possibly could. When I finally cranked out my kids I was not only ripe for the experience, I was rotting. Oozing brown slime from every one of my pores. So Im not about to show up at your office and pretend nothings the matter when one of my kids is spitting blood.

The show must go on, you say? No, it mustnt. When you really think about it, it doesnt go on for any of us. The curtains gonna close on us all some day, even you. The only thing I can say for sure about the show is that its always changing.

Like the day I was fired from my last job. Something clicked inside me then, something finally sank in. I wasnt cut out for the working world, I realized, and I was damn proud of it. Within a few months I had launched a home-based writing business and found a publisher for a book Id written. Let them all eat cake, I thought, delighted that Id finally stumbled on a way to leave the workaday world behind.

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