You Don't Need Anything Else, Do You?

So the concept of needing things in this day and age, in this corner of the world is a little absurd.  Really, we all have more than we need.  Things we didn't even know that we needed, we need -- and, for the most part, we have and we have in spades, right?

So I started thinking about times when I had slightly less than I needed.  I have always had more than enough, like in the big scope of things.  A car -- sometimes a good car, sometimes the 15-year-old Colt on loan from a missionary friend in Africa.  Shelter -- sometimes cushy, others not so much.  Food -- sometimes more (like at happy hour buffets), sometimes. . . well, you get the picture.

So, let the record show that I have now and have always really had more than I need.  I am now and have always been grateful for my circumstances and would never really complain  That said. . . .

When I graduated from college, my mother said that the best thing for me to do would be to move "home" -- to El Dorado, Arkansas, a place I had never lived where my parents had moved upon my going to college four years previous -- and have foot surgery -- cosmetic surgery that she has felt a compulsion about since I was a child.

On many levels, that didn't appeal to me.

I had been living -- with these feet -- on my own for four years now.  On their nickel, but on my own.  I wasn't sure how well my "grown-up" choices would go over under their roof.

So, armed with certain knowledge of what I didn't want to do, I faced, rather uncertainly, what I might want to do.  As usual, my parents provided me with the escape hatch for their previous -- unacceptable -- plan.

"Your dad and I are going to Washington, DC, for a week in May.  You can go with us."

"And then you can move home with us, and have those feet operated on. . . ."

Yes.

And no.

So, one sunny Sunday morning in June, 1986,  I piled in the car with my parents and tried not to swear for the next 20-odd hours.  We checked into a hotel in Tyson's Corner, about 35 miles outside of the Beltway.  Me?  Still trying not to swear.

The next morning, my parents hopped on a bus to meet their senator and discuss the plagues facing small newspapers in the rural south.  I hopped a different bus and walked into the office of the employment agent who would change my life.

Around lunchtime, my parents called to tell me about the lovely young lady they had met on The Hill.  I told them I had a job interview.

By happy hour, they called to say I might be able to get an internship in the Senator's office.  I told them I would be working as an administrative assistant for a power broker at EF Hutton.  Starting at 9 the next morning.

At that moment, I did not need anything else, did I?

I spent the night in the hotel in Tyson's Corner, and the next morning loaded my heels in my briefcase and loaded myself on the bus to Washington Square and into my career.

Goodbye, bunyonectomy.  Hello, world!

My parents gave me the number of that lovely young Hill-type and I ended up sleeping in her roommate's room (he was not there, by the way) for the next few weeks.  Until I moved to the cushy Georgetown condo of a co-worker, then the grand Adam's Morgan loft of yet another (apartment sitting became a side-gig that first summer).  All summer long, my parents would send me box after box of "necessities."  Each and every box stayed under my desk at EF Hutton.  I wasn't actually living anywhere, after all.  It would be presumptuous to move in with more than a gym bag.

Finally, in September, two things became apparent:  1) I was not leaving DC and 2) my co-workers were coming home to roost.  Time to get my own apartment.

House to Share Want ads?  Eh.

Friends recommendations?  Hmmm.

I finally (after days of exhaustive whining) found a studio apartment over an Indian restaurant, walking distance from a Metro stop, three stops from my office.  Small, clean and yet illegal (a point the landlord failed to mention to me or the other three twenty-somethings who coughed up the exhorbitant rent), it seemed perfect.

I walked up the street to the Sears -- the credit card my dad had slipped me burning its digits into my palm.  I made some horrendous decorating decisions and lived happily in my curry-scented room for almost a year.  With a cat named Earl whose incessant clawing forced me to put on my nylons in the stairway.

So, in retrospect, still much more than I needed, after all.