I presented myself at the Placement Office. I was on file. My
percentile was the percentile of choice.
"How come you were headman of only one student organization, George?" the Placement Officer asked. Many hats for top folk was the fashion then.
I said I was rounded, and showed him my slash. From the Fencing Club.
"But you served your country in an overseas post."
"And regard my career plan on neatly typed pages with wide margins."
"Exemplary," the Placement Officer said. "You seem married, mature, malleable, how would you like to affiliate yourself with us here at the old school? We have a spot for a poppycock man, to write the admiral's speeches. Have you ever done poppycock?"
I said no but maybe I could fake it.
"Excellent, excellent," the Placement Officer said. "I see you have grasp. And you can sup at the Faculty Club. And there is a ten-percent discount on tickets for all home games."
The Admiral shook my hand. "You will be a credit to us, George," he said. I wrote poppycock, sometimes cockypap. At four o'clock the faculty hoisted the cocktail flag. We drank daiquiris on each other's sterns. I had equipped myself - a fiberglass runabout, someplace to
think. In the stadia of friendly shy new universities we went down the field on Gulf Coast afternoons with gulls, or exciting nights under the tall toothpick lights. The crowd roared. Sylvia roared. Gregory grew.
There was no
particular point at which I stopped being promising.
-- Donald Barthelme, from "See the Moon?", collected in Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts
(1968)