Other

I am a 24-year-old woman from one of the most rural places East of the Mississippi, trying to make my way in one of the most unforgiving professions at one of the most difficult times in recent history. I, who was named Miss Peach by the opposing basketball teams in high school because I always helped their players up, displaying an amount of wisdom appropriate to my years, decided to specialize in business reporting. I now work in one of the most cutthroat fields, at one of the fastest, most competitive news organizations and for one of the most rapid-fire, go-with-your-gut, take-no-prisoners teams.

In short, I’m a fish so far out of water, I’ve evolved.

It is in this atmosphere that I had a small revelation. (A small one, proportionate to the amount of my brain cells that fire on all cylinders. Some have even taken to firing on trapezoids. Or each other.) The revelation came after I read a press release that detailed a CEO’s salary. It was impressive. I glumly remarked to my team, “Man, I should have been a CEO.” Someone responded, “I bet you will be.”

Smoothly sidling past the idea that someone fewer than five years out of college should be lamenting her lost career choices, I was surprised by the confidence shown by my coworker. He thought I had the potential to be in charge of a whole company.

And that’s when I realized that’s exactly what I want to do. (Along with the bakery and humor columns and small-town tour playing ragtime piano, of course.) I want to be in charge of something.

The concept of building a career is fairly new to me and that’s not just because I’ve never done it before. I’ve existed at my current job for exactly one year tomorrow, and done it happily (enough) because I worked on being the best headliner I could. Now that I’ve decided I want to lead… something… I have to make some decisions based on their effect on my future. I don’t think I have the éclat (or the estomago, to make this a three-language sentence) to really play that game, but it’s something to bear in mind.

Roger Altman, former deputy Treasury secretary and chairman of Evercore Partners said, “Hyper-competitiveness is not an unalloyed good.” I agree with him. (And it’s not an un-alkali-ed good either.) My style of management — which orbits around teamness to the utmost — clangs a little against the iron bars of today’s capitalist competition. I vote in favor of loyalty, honesty, fairness, transparency. It hurts my feelings when coworkers have goals like individual success or personal wealth on higher pedestals.

But perhaps these antiquated notions of being a team are just other items to add to my list of ways I’m dissimilar from my peers. And maybe that‘s why I’d make great management.

Every time I go to Bloomingdale’s — which until I moved to New York was never, but now that I work in an adjacent building is often — salespeople ask me where I’m from. I say New York, as they inevitably haven’t heard of Blue-Grass-right-on-the-Virginia-West-Virginia-line. They open their eyes wide, say “Wow!” and tell me I look very European.

I’m flattered, though I am adult enough to know this is not true. I do not look European. I look vaguely Scotch-Irish (freckles) and Jewish-ish (dark hair, prominent nose). I don’t have the spark of Spanish girls or the grandeur of a French femme. I don’t smolder like Brazilians. No, my face reads the same melting pot mishmash of most Americans. Which is why I get angry when salespeople say this to me — because it works. I inevitably giggle, blush, thank them and then listen very closely to what they have to say.

So far I have minimized the damage to my wallet by this flattery. I only spent $52.38 on my trip to the store today. I got the candle I intended to buy and a jar of very expensive hand cream. You know how people bring out the nice silver when company comes? Well, I’m going to bring out this hand cream. It’s the classiest thing I own.

One of the reasons why being told I look European works is that it enables me, even for just a moment, to imagine that I’m not myself. I’m not the girl who once sat directly in a fresh cow pie, I’m someone else. Someone with more money, which is the whole point of the exercise. I doubt Amparo, the lovely woman at the Hanae Mori counter who schnookered me into my purchase today, considered how much her approach affects me.

When I got home from the adventure, I did something practically anyone with internet access does — I googled myself.

But I wasn’t looking for entries about me, I was searching for girls living My Alternate Life. Other Molly Seltzers. What they looked like, what they did, why we were similar and different.

I’ve found two of them. Both have facebook friended me at some point or another over the past few years. One Molly was a student at UPenn, a year or two behind me. We look vaguely alike. She even wrote an article for her student newspaper. She spent a few months traveling in Europe and seems to have some great parties, particularly at Halloween.

The other Molly is more interesting to think about. She graduates from high school this spring and is planning to attend Clemson. She’s from Northern Virginia, the place where suburbia became supra-burbia. Molly also happens to be a blonde-haired, brown-browed Tea Leoni lookalike.

Tea Leoni

She describes herself as liking various things, such as showers, running, broccoli and banana peppers. In the same medium, I profess my affection for: sea monsters, infomercials and the Pittsburgh Pirates. You can see why I enjoy contemplating my alternate life as the fleet-footed, vegetable-consuming teenager who roots for teams that win. And I do get some kind of pleasure from imagining the ways our various Molly lives might be entwined.

The more I think about it, the more I’ve come to realize that I’m not angry when salespeople tell me I look like someone who I’m not. I’m just sad when the visions come to an end.

C-E-Oh no…

Any Other Name