"Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" is a classic in its own right. Corporate scandal, Clown Hot Dog love, the old lady's death, brother Kenny's drugs.
Despite her dumb blonde bunny, Kelly Bundy stigma, Christina Applegate stars as a 17-year-old business wiz who rises higher in the corporation than her shoulder pads. After volumizing her feathered bangs, the heroine bullets in a Volvo station wagon though the freeway smog to land a job as an executive administrative assistant.
She's off to embezzle her company's petty cash and design a clothes line that saves the manufacturing company from bankruptcy -- all while sacrificing her high school summer to put Captain Crunch on her siblings' table.
Why this synopsis 12 years after the film hit the big screen?
Well, the other night, I bolted straight up out of my REM sleep cycle, because of the subconscious movie-flashback panic that most fourth years have not extracted the deep rooted lesson from this cinematic masterpiece.
You see, "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" facilitates a lesson that -- swallowed correctly -- is an elixir for post-graduate success. It is a serum that will soothe the nerves of all those who are spastically running to nowhere in their hamster wheels at the career services office, or bumping into glass walls. Run amuck no more.
Lesson Objective (taught by Christina Applegate in her finest performance as Sue-Ellen Crandell and expanded upon by myself):
How to seem important, even if your not.
We all know that the job market is not so stellar, and well, the graduating class of 2004 will not be drooled over like prime cut beef. But hey, it doesn't hurt to pretend you are a future employee worth slobbering over. Slobber actually is the only thing we can count on if not a job. After all, remember that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, so watch out for other job applicants throwing low bites to the ankle or, worse, cell phone antennas to the eye.
Quick and Easy step-by-step guide to:
How to Seem Important Even When You're Not (job offers never guaranteed, success rate 0 percent):
Step 1: Expand your vocabulary: As you will note, in the paragraph numero deux I used the lexis: facilitate, elixir, serum and amuck, to connote the idea that my "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" epiphany is the result of my innate astuteness. The succeeding sentence attested to my bilingual adeptness.
Step 2: Importance and vagueness are two words that must hold hands in the park. They picnic. And perhaps that's where you are when you blasé-ly mention that you're off to "meet some people," or appear to frequently return home from "lunches" with unspecified characters ... interview with longtime family friend, the CEO of JP Morgan? Shhh ... mum's the word. A turned off cell phone is another secret tactic that tends to drive others into deep contemplation about your whereabouts, since your not answering your bling bling you must be off SAVING THE WORLD!
Step 3: Step 2 is the precursor for Step 3. Don't skip around here, this is not Candy Land. While you have shut off your cell -- and consequently relinquished the beloved line "I'm blowing up" that epitomizes the art of coolness -- you must forgo one other minor modern convenience in the quest for your supposed importance. Your home. Because of your phony utmost-important role in society, (searching for Osama-been-fogotten perhaps?), you only return to your cozy abode for repose and sleep. Therefore, it is imperative that your room appears to have been ransacked due to leaving your windows open during storm Isabel. A chaotic bedroom doesn't bother the student who is "never there anyway." After all, you were off in your rowboat saving children from the flood waters off the Carolina coast. Make sure to bold that part under volunteer activities in your resume.
Step 4: Question: What is in your tote (or European Carryall for those guys secure with their masculinity)? Answer: Everything. Your bag is a clown car of goods attesting to your academic prowess. Contents: Wall Street Journal -- though a Christmas subscription from dad, make sure to take it out of its plastic mailer and crumple it enough to seem thoroughly enjoyed. (The New Yorker or Harpers came in as runners up.) Next, a colossal hard cover book (I'm not talking Harry Potter here), is a must. "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" gives you a worldly allure. Business cards from your three previous summers of interning, resume, dry cleaning slips, manila folders, kitchen sink etc., etc., etc. ... must continue etc.'s until it takes you so long to find your cars keys under the sea of debris that a line of Land Rovers begin to torch and riot for your parking space on Saturday at Harris Teeter.
Step 5: Take this catch phrase for a test drive: "Oh shoot, I forgot to pick up my dry cleaning." Sure, in actuality it's shrink wrapped by the happy people of Sunshine Cleaners, but the term "dry cleaning" removes the images of your bestial mass of Mad Dog stained laundry due to an initiation ritual that increases a guy's testosterone level (so that he is masculine enough to carry the European carryall). Dry cleaning elevates him to the starched and on a hanger-stuffed shirt he always dreamed to be.
Step 6: The absolute glue, that holds this plan for How to Seem Important When You're Not is to adopt an air of being psychotically frenzied at all time. Hyperactive, wired, you only have time to frantically scarf down nuked food while you are perpetually dashing somewhere, "checking your messages" and spastically waving "hi" to a friend, and you "gotta run" because you're meeting "this person" and oh you are "so tired," because you woke up "so early" and now you have to knock out these "cover letters," and decide, if "Times New Roman" is the perfect font and if "8 pt." is too small, (quickly "check e-mail") or do you like "Courier New" because you have such a plethora of "extra-curricular" that your "resume" weighs like a manuscript, but first you must "work out" before "meeting" with your history professor during his "office hours," to discuss how Charlemagne United the Holy Roman Empire and how you can go about landing the dream job of ultimate importance-- ruling the world.
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