Titular Trouble

"Good news. I've been promoted. Yay me!"

"That's terrific." Geez, I have no idea what her old title was. "So you're now the..."

"I'm the junior art associate magazine job of some sort Swedish Chef."

"Wait, the what?"

"Junior editing glossy magazine pages assistant art."

"O, wow, that's awesome." That's it. That's as clear as it gets for me.

I've never been able to remember people's job titles, and have an even harder time understanding what they do. I used to frown on my friends who didn't know what their own twin sister was doing in Japan, and get real exasperated with my parents when they didn't understand what it is I do. I mean, Digital Editor should be fairly straightforward, even though I don't actually edit anything. Then I realized that I couldn't describe other people's jobs or remember they're proper job title, or even the name of their company.

I used to think this was because many of my friends worked in fields not akin to mine, and who cares what kind of dorky computer title someone had. As far as I'm concerned, you're either building robots (the helpful kind, that can impersonate you when you don't want to go to school/work/church/see "Little Man" at the movie theatre and can also whip up a mean mac and cheese, baked of course) or you're in IT. So I don't think twice when I explained my three friends, all of whom have degrees in different fields of computer engineering, were working as "computer dorks", with wide ranging job duties including databasing-something-or-other and making computadors work.

I assumed I'd better understand and easily know the titles and the functions of people who were in my field, who were in the arts in any sort of way. That fantasy changed quickly, when I referred to Dee's job as "internet writing for Baby Making, or Baby Having magazine, whatever. Geez!" Then there was Dara, who'd been working at Elle Decor, which I had assumed was a made-up magazine. Did you know there are magazines besides Maxim, Playboy, Sports Illustrated and Good Housekeeping? Oops, almost forgot Swank too!

Dara told me her job title, and I forgot it. On a train ride back from the Clerks 2 screener, she told me again. I forgot before we went one stop. Now maybe I was all preoccupied with why I liked every other Kevin Smith film that included Jay and Silent Bob better. I mean, I'm all proud of her and everything; she even gets her name on the page in the magazine that has people's names who do things to make the magazine. That being said, instead of becoming "Art Production Assistant," why couldn't they have given her a normal and easy title to remember? Like, Magazine Woman.