I’m sitting in my office at Fuller & Smith & Ross on the 36th floor of a forty story Fifth Avenue Manhattan skyscraper known as the Top of the Sixes. It’s the summer of 1967, shortly before our advertising agency’s media acumen is chosen to put Richard Nixon in the White House. I’ve been working here since 1965 when I was hired as a lowly media clerk for several months before skyrocketing up the ladder to become the Manager of Purchasing, Interiors,  & In-House Printing.

I’m listed as a corporate executive because this is FSR’s corporate headquarters, with branch offices in Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. That sounds like I should be sophisticated, but I’m not, not by any stretch of my imagination no matter how well I dress. Instead, I am 21 going on 33 professionally, but privately naive.

I’ve met every person on the two floors occupied by FSR because they’ve all been in need of office necessities in the course of doing their jobs and I’ve made a protocol of personal delivery. That is, except for Mr. Mahoney, the Senior Vice-President Creative Director whom I’ve only seen in passing (once) as he exited an elevator, leaving a waft of Christian Dior’s Eau Sauvage in his wake. We’ve not yet met because he’s never requested anything.

Until  this morning. He has summoned me to bring him a Dixon Ticonderoga #2 pencil.

I suspect it’s a ploy to get me behind closed doors.

My wonder is, why?

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…and more

———– TO CONTINUE READING ————
THE ABOVE ESSAY REPRESENTS AN EXCERPT FROM:
Seriously, Mom, you didn’t Know?
by Marguerite Quantaine © Copyright © 2019
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Marguerite Quantaine is an essayist and novelist.
Copyright © August 21, 2017
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