I spotted the folded card with my name on a table toward the far side of the room. I sat down and gratefully prized off my tight, heeled shoes under the table, using my other toes to loosen them at the heel. The white tablecloths were draped to the floor, so it seemed no one could notice my delightfully liberated feet.
I wiggled my toes and surveyed the room. I was first at this table, but the room was filling with a mix of other besuited people, most of them teenagers like me, but also a mix of older adults. They fanned out around the room, checking place cards and slowly populating the round tables.
I turned my eyes to the table. There was entirely too much cutlery at each place setting. I frowned slightly at the duplicate forks and spoons. The key, I decided, was not to start first. I’d wait to see which fork was the favored one.
The tables looked similar to this
I was here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina for the weekend for the final interviews for a college scholarship. There were about 150 of us, and half would be offered the scholarship at the end of the weekend.
This was far outside my usual world, where I spent weekends in t-shirts playing Capture-the-Flag in the muddy parks around Seattle. At school I usually inhabited a hooded sweatshirt from one of my sports teams and a pair of slightly beat-up running shoes.
It was in this typical uniform that my college counselor found me when he told me I’d gotten the school nomination for the scholarship.
“So the only thing is,” he’d said carefully. “Things are a bit more formal there. You’ll need to get some formal clothes for the interview weekend.”
So the following Saturday found my mom and me in the formalwear section of a succession of department stores. Not much seemed to fit my stick-like frame. Blouses and blazers sagged off my shoulders, and pants and skirts had bubbles of extra fabric at the hip.
At last we’d emerged with a blissfully non-enormous skirt suit.
Now I smoothed the skirt and smiled as a couple of others joined the table.
“How did it go today?” I asked, recognizing a girl I’d spoken to that morning before her interview.
She sighed. “Mostly okay, I think. Good advice going around to drink the water when you need more time to think!”
I laughed, remembering doing the same thing that morning.
An older man joined the table, and we fell silent. He was probably one of the interviewers.
Salad and rolls soon materialized, and I implemented the water glass strategy for a second time. As I sipped my water, I casually glanced in the interviewer’s direction. He picked up the outside fork and turned to his salad. Excellent.
Setting down my water glass, I picked up the outside fork, too.
Little did I know at the time what hinged on that interview. I’d later meet my life partner, Bryan, there in North Carolina. This was one of those seemingly innocuous forks in the road that ends up changing your life. Good thing I picked up the right fork.
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