The Cabinet by Un-su Kim

Author:Un-su Kim [Kim, Un-su]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857669247
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2021-10-14T22:00:00+00:00

DRINKING CANNED BEER

Everyone has times they want to forget. 1997 was such a time for me. Nothing compares to how bad of a year 1997 was. My banker friend once said this to me:

“Unhappiness never comes in installments. It always comes in one big lump sum. That’s why it’s always so tough to deal with unhappiness.”

It was January of that year. My mother had collapsed. By the time we got her to the hospital, it was too late. At the emergency room, the resident was useless and flustered, and the nurse seemed to be having difficulty understanding my explanation of what had happened. Back in the ambulance, my mother had been holding my hand like she knew she was going to die. “Son, get a stable job. One that’s good.”

I guess these were what my mom thought were the most important words with which to part her pitiful son.

My bum of a father – who may be still alive, I’m not sure – left when I was just a baby; after that, it was just my mother and me. Because the only relative we had was my uncle, my mother’s funeral was as lonesome as her life was miserable. After they put my mother into the incinerator at the crematorium, I said this to my uncle:

“I guess I’m an orphan now.”

My uncle stomped out his cigarette on the floor before saying:

“Don’t sweat it, kid. We all end up orphans, in the end.”

I graduated from college that spring and was cast out into the world. Needless to say, I wasn’t the least bit prepared for it. Since the fall semester of my senior year in 1996, I had applied to a total of 126 companies and failed to get a single offer. As though to say they were uninterested in meeting someone like me, seventy of them outright passed on my resumé. Another fifty rejected me after I took their test. I did get six interviews, but I failed all of them. One salt-and-pepper-haired interviewer asked me if I could bring anything special to the company. Being seated in the middle of the board of interviewers, he looked like the CEO. I was terribly nervous as I said, “I don’t have any special skills, but I’m confident I can do whatever work comes my way.” A smirk formed on the corners of the interviewer’s mouth as he said, “And when I was your age, I was confident I could conquer the world. But now look at me, sitting here talking to some naïve kid fresh out of college.” He was right. Now that I thought about it, my answer was naïve. Confidence wasn’t enough in the twenty-first century. It wasn’t the Wild West anymore. What I needed were certificates that vouched for my skills, not confidence.

That summer, I broke up with my girlfriend of 8 years and 7 months. Well, to be more accurate, it wasn’t that we broke up, it was more like I realized she had already left me.

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