Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Peggy, C'est Moi

It’s been a long time since I’ve identified with a character in a movie or TV show, but since I started watching Mad Men, I’m rooting for Peggy because she is so much like me when I was 20 and earnestly working in my first job.

When she discovered her boss’s affair, I remembered finding out that one of the lawyers in the firm where I worked was having an affair with another lawyer’s (outside the firm) wife, I was shocked and not at all impressed. Nonetheless, if he had been my boss I know I would’ve been trying to cover up for him. I was like that. Loyal.

I was the plain girl that none of the men noticed. I kept my mouth shut and never revealed a thing about myself to anybody, except one friend, the only other 20-something secretary in the place. She was hot, and some of the lawyers made passes at her. She mocked them endlessly when we had lunch together.

One Xmas party, I had two (two!) glasses of wine and said a few things that were out of character for the office, and one of the lawyers (in his 50s, I thought he was ancient and creepy at the time) said: Hey, you’re pretty sharp. And I thought: Buddy, you have no idea.

Then I could go home and listen to The Clash and The Jam. They had no idea.

3 comments:

cityofmushrooms said...

you sound like that great literary heroine - harriet the spy (which I am currently trying to interest mushrooms jr in)

Nanuk of the North, older but no wiser said...

Shame on me. I've never read her. Yes, for shame.

cityofmushrooms said...

get thee to a bookstore!