#5 – Vector Girl got swine flu

Vector Girl and Premise Guy have been friends for years and bicker like old hens! After graduating with a degree in AWESOME and showing up to a recent reunion event with a highly contagious disease, we decided to catch up and see where she’s at in life!

Vector Girl: Are we on, Premise Guy?

Premise Guy: Yes! Ok, first question: Tell us about being a confirmed vector for the H1N1 (swine flu) virus.

Vector Girl: hahahaha ok. First of all, I was the CDC’s worst nightmare in that I’d been on three public transportation systems in ten days, attended massive crowded events, and had no idea how I got sick. But I did get sick, and I was feverish and flu-ish and my fever hit 104 and I thought my brain was going to explode. So, my mother forced me to go to the doctor. He tested me for type-a influenza and swiped my nose for the swine flu test. Then I was told since I might have swine flu, I could not travel, had to wear a face mask in public, and to avoid touching my parents (who were put on preventive tamiflu).

Premise Guy: I assume you took this advice to heart?

Vector Girl: I promptly flew halfway across the country to drink my liver into submission and share germs with all attending my college reunion! Turns out the whole “youth think they are invincible” thing is true. Alas, no one died, and I didn’t have to miss reunion, so it was a risk well worth taking. Though friends who came down with the fever/aches were not so sure.

Premise Guy: Oops. How many people did you end up infecting?

Vector Girl: Eh, it’s uncertain. I think people were mostly experiencing hysterical/empathetic proxy symptoms. I haven’t met anyone who BOTH touched me AND tested definitively positive, but I suppose it could’ve been hundreds!

Premise Guy: Sounds like rationalizations from your typical disease vector criminal but ok we believe you!

Vector Girl: I really think I was doing everyone a favor: the November version’s going to wipe humanity out

Premise Guy: Haha, good point. You were really the inoculator.

Vector Girl: Exactly!

Premise Guy: Ok, moving on. You started college as a 2nd generation immigrant, were a member of about 20 student groups and had pretty much straight A’s. You would certainly agree that you’ve changed a lot since then (freshman Vector Girl wouldn’t have been a prime transmitter of a deadly disease)! Talk about your, let’s call it, “transformation.”

Vector Girl: Hmm, this is the kind of question I ask therapists at cocktail parties. They never have a sufficient answer.
Ok, honestly, I think I’m the same person, just with different priorities. And the girl who had single-minded focus and competitive drive to have the best GPA and win shit would now rather improve her tolerance for alcohol to surprising (for my stature) levels.

(so this thing is anonymous right?)

Premise Guy: yes (if you want it to be)

Vector Girl: Maintaining the double life is at least half the fun of the “transformation,” I’d say.

Premise Guy: Well, it’s not as if you’ve lost your hope in all things: tell us about your work for the BIG O in the white house.

Vector Girl: Back when he was a nobody state senator in IL, my mother said I couldn’t go to Iowa to canvass for a man named Howard Dean; so I interned instead for Barack Obama. I got a free copy of his first book (they weren’t really selling back then), his signature on a school magazine article I wrote about him, an interview with Robert Gibbs, and probably my only lifetime brush with fame. Suffice it to say, I failed to maintain our connection and will not be soon finding myself a perch at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I can tell you that he is really tall, great with names, and has a very firm handshake

Premise Guy: What was campaigning like exactly? Was Obama already a “big deal” at this point? Give us some anecdotes about the people around him that are currently in the white house or in office.

Vector Girl: Hmm, nope he was a nobody. Nobody in Chicago had heard of him and he had no money. Basically he was a constitutional law professor with a nerdy image in a state that tends to reward crooks and morons. I honestly didn’t think he was going to win, and actually was congratulating myself for the selfless, ideologically pure move of working for an unelectable progressive. Funny how images change.

As for the people around him that are currently in the white house, I only have my impressions. David Axelrod was always in and out, even then, but I had no idea I was brushing shoulders with history, or else I would’ve paid closer attention. Alas, my political intuition was proven sorely lacking, but at least I can say I wasn’t alone in underestimating him.

Premise Guy: Good point. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that jazz.

Vector Girl: Yep, and sometimes you meet the next president of the United States, and you wouldn’t even know it.

Premise Guy: Are you still interested in politics to the same degree?

Vector Girl: I think I’ll always be a political junkie. How history is shaped by a handful of all-too-flawed men is fascinating. But I realized pretty early on in that first internship that I wasn’t cut out for the nuts and bolts of it.

Premise Guy: Logistics, cold calling, door knocking etc. or the cutthroat “nature” of it?

Vector Girl: Campaign work is a slog, and it’s loading luggage for some unelectable guy with a funny name in Chicago while you keep the impossible hope alive that someday he’ll be somebody and take you with him. And yeah, the cutthroat nature of it isn’t an endorsement either. I guess I ended up being too idealistic, even for Barack Obama.

Premise Guy: “The hope that he’ll take you with him.” Is that the typical motivation? People in politics or campaigns talk about their desire to change things etc. etc. Sounds very different compared to that quote. Do you think there even are people purely motivated by altruistic motives? Did you know anybody on the campaign?

Vector Girl: See that’s the thing: I really do think the people on the campaign believed in Barack, especially the younger campaign aides. But 1) that kind of devotion to a single man is just not my style – I’m more of a cause-issue sort of person it turns out, and 2) I think people in the mud and dirt of electoral politics want to change stuff, sure. But they really want to win and they really, really want THEIR guy to win.

Premise Guy: Sounds like for all your probably correct cynicism there’s still a “this guy is different” attitude.

Vector Girl: He got out of Illinois fast enough that maybe most of the dirt managed not to stick.

Premise Guy: Haha, we can hope. Well, rather GinDrunk can hope. Premise Guy will be laughing in his igloo while Sarah Palin decrees ice fishing a national sport.

Vector Girl: Haha well that’s the hope.

Premise Guy: Alright, from trying to get into elected office, to just trying to get into office: tell us about going to work for the state department.

Vector Girl: I decided I needed a competitive admissions process that would not require me to network, schmooze, or generally be a nice girl. Also I’m done with school – turns out the state department still has an old-fashioned meritocratic test and oral exam process. That should allow me to see the world on Uncle Sam’s dime with terrific job security.

Premise Guy: The process is still pretty grueling though right?

Vector Girl: Yeah ha, I’m being a little silly. Honestly, it’s too much work for me not to genuinely want it so perhaps selling it as the discouraged worker’s loophole is not quite accurate. But the fact that there are few other organizations in America doubling their annual hiring does set the numbers in my favor.

Premise Guy: What is the security clearance like? Did you have to tell them about the time you put gum in another kid’s hair back in 3rd grade?

Vector Girl: Ha pretty much: I will end up listing just about everyone I’ve ever known. I have been warned that all those people might be called or visited by a persistent investigator who will then ask for the names of more mutual friends. He’ll do this until he can diagram my entire work-social-school life with a degree of accuracy that makes me want to hide. But I hear the number one disqualifier is debt default, which is unsurprising, but it also gives tons of cover to those who’ve since reformed from their gum-on-classmates’-hair days. Actually, random fact: the Foreign Service was pretty female unfriendly till the mid 1970’s.

Premise Guy: Really?

Vector Girl: Mostly because of legitimate fear of “vulnerability to sexual blackmail” – apparently that is no longer a concern

Premise Guy: Because everyone and their mother (gross) has a sex tape now?

Vector Girl: I guess so! Males and females both! And neither seem at all embarrassed! Equality at last.

Premise Guy: Might as well just disband WAGS departments worldwide. Okay, final question: You keep a blog of sorts (although only available to former classmates) in which you’ve gone into quite specific details about your personal life. What’s something you’ve NEVER revealed?

Vector Girl: Oh sheesh, this is a hard question, since my nosy friends have found a way into all the recesses of my life.

Premise Guy: (plus the state department it would seem)

Vector Girl: Hahaha yes, my life is pretty much an open book. I will tell you: in fourth grade, I cheated on a social studies test because I couldn’t remember the answer for the extra credit question. Obviously, I got caught. Man, am I glad I’m not that girl anymore!

Premise Guy: BORING. But I guess that will have to do.