Meet Tim

My college graduation came and went not with a bang so much as with a breathy little pop, like breaking bubble wrap; the potential thrill of commencement was dulled by the looming real world. I didn’t exactly have a job, although I’d planned on temporarily continuing to work as a youth pastor’s secretary. With its flexible hours, this had been a rather cushy job for a college kid, but an hour after I graduated, it suddenly looked puny as it rammed up against my student loan debt.

That summer, I did a little writing, most of which never saw the light of publication of any sort. But I did successfully submit one short essay and one truly heinous, very lamely rhyming poem to an online outfit, the former a highly unoriginal rambling on the occasion of an ex-boyfriend’s wedding.

That one earned me two or three e-mails from readers, which of course made me pink with pride. The responses were largely similar: I feel the same way, thank you for sharing, here’s to better days ahead for all of us. I replied politely to each, unsure of what to say and wary of the pseudo-intimacy I suddenly had with these faceless surfers.

A week or two later, I was goofing off online when my Instant Messenger chirped to inform me that Internet user SmithTim had sent me a message. Did I want to accept?

I recognized the name as belonging to one of the more theological of the e-mailers and cautiously clicked “Yes.” The message looked like this:

SmithTim: Hi, I’m the one who e-mailed you about your article. I saw that the address you listed was an AOL address, so I decided to see if you were online, and here you are!

Crap.

I wrote back something like, “Oh, hi.” He asked if I had any other writings online, and I directed him to the awful poem to throw him off my scent. He pretended to like it, and then shared the link with a friend, and then the friend pretended to like it, and so I had no choice but to thank him for his dishonesty. The subsequent conversation looked something like this:

SmithTim: So what fills your days?
Opaquesquid: I’m a youth pastor’s secretary. I just graduated from college, so I’m kind of in transition, I guess.
SmithTim: Where did you go to school?
Opaquesquid: Large Evangelical University
SmithTim: Wait . . . are you in Random City??? *

Crap.

About a minute went by before I cautiously typed, “Yeah,” conscious of my finger on each key, and clicked “Send,” regretting it slightly as I did, furious at myself for allowing this potential whack job to ferret out my location.

He was in Anytown too, it turned out, doing graphic design for a medical missions organization I didn’t know existed. His next message was, “Well, maybe you know some of my friends,” since he belonged to this gigantic Bible study that attracted a lot of LEU people.

Surely not, I thought. I wasn’t exactly homecoming queen at LEU—I commuted from home all four years and rarely hung out with anyone outside of class. But, to my chagrin, I did recognize one of the names he threw out, a guy I sort of half went out with a few times freshman year. Our parting was ostensibly friendly, although thereafter I sensed a pretty strong snubbing from his best friend.

“Yeah, I think I do know that guy,” I typed, hoping SmithTim and I wouldn’t become friends.

But we did become friends, or at least Instant Message buddies. We talked about things like school and relationships and church. And then one night, he messaged something like, “Hmm. I think I need some coffee. Would you care to join me?”

There was no way. For one thing, I hadn’t even decided whether or not I wanted to meet him in person at all. Plus, it was 9:00 at night, and I lived with my parents in the suburbs, and there was no way I could tell them that their daughter—who practically never went out—was going to drive into town for a coffee, not without them asking whom she was meeting. And if I told them the truth, I would have to face their freaking out.

So I dodged, steering us toward other conversation topics successfully, I thought. But only a few posts later, he queried, “Are you sure you don’t want some coffeeeee?” The extra e’s seemed to wiggle in an attempt to tantalize.

“Well, I really can’t,” I replied. “I have to pack. Going to Capital City tomorrow morning for a job interview.”

“Leaving us, huh?” That was the plan, I told him breezily, callously.

Driving to the City, I chewed on chalky antacids, and then I choked a little when I realized I’d managed to take the wrong entrance to the highway. It took a dangerous turnaround to get me back on the turnpike. My nerves didn’t get any better, even after I arrived and shook hands with the pastor of the inner city church where I was interviewing, who was probably the kindest, most disarming human being I’d ever met.

I felt this pressure applied by my recent graduation, a pressure that gave all my decisions a sense of urgency and gravity and had everything to do with proving to the world that I wasn’t going to make a mess of my life. This made trying to decide if I fit in here at this church—trying to decide what I wanted to do for the rest of my life—confusing and difficult. Did my anxiety indicate that I should pass on the job, or was I just scared of the unknown, afraid of the impending change?

When I came back to Random, I told Tim that I felt conflicted and anxious about the job. He advised me to stay.



*See, what I've done here is use generic names for stuff like cities and schools. Tim's last name isn't Smith, either, so that's not his real IM address. Carry on!