Missed Chances

My dissertation adviser is coming to the local college to give a talk in a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to seeing him again, but feel a little apprehensive, like you do anytime someone you admire comes around with that how-did-your-life-turn-out question trembling at the back of his mind.

To a career academic, my life may not look like a happily ever after story. I didn't end up with the big prize, a tenure-track teaching job. Now even one of my closest friends, an academic, has taken to lecturing me about various subjects, perhaps because I often venture opinions bluntly, rather than couching them carefully in academese. So what do I say, to anyone who has chosen what I think of as the sell-your-soul-to-your-job path in life? That there are other paths to intellectual fulfillment? Will whatever I say come out as defensive--or worse, patronizing?

I think it's easy to assume that the other guy has gone down the wrong road, if he's not on the road you're on. What we all want is to consign everyone who did not make the choices we made to the city of missed chances, like in the Stephen Dobyns poem "Missed Chances."

In the city of missed chances, the streetlights
always flicker, the second hand clothing shops
stay open all night and used furniture stores
employ famous greeters. This is where you
are sent after that moment of hesitation.
You were too slow to act, too afraid to jump,
too shy or uncertain to speak up. Do you recall
the moment? Your finger was raised, your mouth
open, and then, strangely, silence. Now you walk
past men and women wrapped in the memory
of the speeches they should have uttered--
Over my dead body. Sure, I'd be happy with
ten thousand. If you walk out, don't come back--
past dogs practicing faster bites, cowboys
with faster draws, where even the cockroach
knows that next time he'll jump to the left.
You were simply going to say, Don't go, or words
to that effect--Don't go, don't leave, don't walk
out of my life. Nothing fancy, nothing to stutter
about. Now you're shouting it every ten seconds.

In the city of missed chances, it is always just past
sunset and the freeways are jammed with people
driving to homes they regret ever choosing,
where wives or helpmates have burned the dinner,
where the TV's blown a fuse and even the dog,
tied to a post in the backyard, feels confused
uncertain, and makes tentative barks at the moon.
How easy to say it--Don't go, don't leave, don't
disappear. Now you've said it a million times.
You even stroll over to the Never-Too-Late
Tattoo Parlor and have it burned into the back
of your hand, right after the guy who had
Don't shoot, Madge, printed big on his forehead.
Then you go down to the park, where you discover
a crowd of losers, your partners in hesitation,
standing nose to nose with the bronze statues
repeating the phrases engraved on their hearts--
Let me kiss you. Don't hit me. I love you--
while the moon pretends to take it all in.
Let's get this straight once and for all:
is that a face up there or is it a rabbit, and if
it's a face, then why does it hold itself back,
why doesn't it take control and say, Who made
this mess, who's responsible? But this is no time
for rebellion, you must line up with the others,
then really start to holler, Don't go, don't go--
like a hammer sinking chains into concrete,
like doors slamming and locking one after another,
like a heart beats when it's scared half to death.

Maybe we can't get it all straight once and for all. Maybe all I can do is overcome my pride enough to say some of what I think, and a little of what I feel. Maybe this is one of the many tests of adulthood, and as Indiana Jones says in The Last Crusade, "only the penitent shall pass."