Introduction, or How I Landed This Gig As a Writer

I never set out to be a journalist.

Well, that’s only partly true. In 1988, after getting a degree in journalism from Northwestern, I got married and started working in a shoe store as a shift manager. One of the workers, we’ll call her Nancy (since that was her name), kept complaining about me to upper management. She said I never did any work. That I stood at the counter all day. That I didn’t reorganize the footwear properly. I once had a dream that I grabbed a pair of penny loafers from the rack and threw them at her in a fit of rage.

So, after working there for about 18 months, I was downsized. But hold on – this all sounds grim and hopeless, but it turned out to be a positive thing.

You see, eventually, after some soul-searching (get it?), I started looking for another job. My wife, about three months pregnant at the time, showed me an ad from the local job placement center...