As an adult in this society it is customary for those you meet to base their initial impression of you on your occupation. Sure, they might consider your looks or your clothes, but its a safe bet that, after “hello,” the first thing out of your new acquaintance’s mouth will be, “what do you do?”
    Imprecise as it is, one easily understands that the question isn’t to be taken as “what do you like to do,” or “what do you do when you are alone with a tube of chapstick and a pair of dice?”
    It is intended to be taken as “what do you do with your soul in exchange for filthy lucre?”
    Your answer is important.
    It guides the relationship to come; it predisposes your new conversation partner to either hate, love, respect, despise or pity you. Are you a substitute teacher? Then a bit of respect and pity is coming your way. You must be so dedicated to the kids, its such a shame that you don’t have a full time job.
    Are you a lawyer? You must be smart, and will make a valuable friend to validate my own worth.
    I seek to defy the expectations of those who numbly follow these social conventions, those people so unaware of their prejudices, slavishly adhering to the tenets of this wretched ritual. Only by shattering the structure of the thing can it be changed, so brittle and deeply cast is it.

    This is why I have taken to telling people that I’m an electronics engineer responsible for designing control systems used in both kidney dialysis machines and gas station wall-mounted condom dispensers. I then go on at length about how you’d be surprised at how many components the two devices have in common and how similar their roles in modern culture are.

    By balancing the plausible with the beatific in this fashion, I separate the observer from their preconceptions and force them to consider me not as what I get paid to do, but what I am as a man. As they reluctantly consider latex sperm collectors and life-giving renal replacement therapies at the same time they find their only logical choice is to discard the information entirely and look at me anew.

    I bask in the fresh assessment, even though it is usually at this point that they decide I’m a pear-shaped, slovenly fellow worthy of disdain and smelling of beans and cat.