Career Day Realities

Stumped up to the front of the classroom and hoisted myself onto the teacher's low wooden desk, right beside a tub of colored chalk. Twenty pairs of wide eyes stared back, waiting for gadgets and daring escapes. I didn't bother smiling. Unfolded that creased betting slip from my pocket and laid out the bleak truth of intelligence work: stale biscuits, fluorescent lights that hum till your teeth ache, and forty years of misfiled carbon copies in a cellar smelling of wet cardboard. I tapped the chalk box with a heavy knuckle, watched their hopeful grins slowly dissolve into glazed bewilderment, and let out a dry, satisfied sigh. Saved twenty kids from a life of utter misery before the morning bell even finished ringing.