TNow that I have lost my job

I have plenty of time to think. And yes, I had a real job besides writing

this column for the newspaper.

I rarely mention it here, but

for the last seven years I have been the sole salesman in the U.S. for

Gretsch Guitars. My job took me all over the country selling the most

expensive guitars in the world. That's all history, finito. My company

sold out to a large conglomerate, so, yes, I got the 6-string axe.

I have officially joined the

ranks of the largest growing subculture in the country today, the unemployed.

Suddenly, attaining coffee beans processed through the bowels of a kopi

luwak is no longer my prime goal in life. On the eve of my 45th birthday,

yet again, the real world came calling.

With no prospects on the horizon,

I really don't know where to start. I don't know whether to begin with

the want ads, Monster.com or the unemployment office. Or, do I just cut

out the middle man and head straight for the couch, Cheeto sandwiches

and depression?

Since my graduation from high

school I have never gone a day without a job. I picked up my diploma on

a Sunday night and got a job the next day. I was paying my parents rent

I paid my way through. There, I was delighted to find you could work in

the cafeteria and earn money towards college. My first year, I worked

every single meal, three times a day, seven days a week. That's a heck

of a lot of mystery meat and creamed corn.

In the real world though, you

can't rest on your laurels. Nothing I have done before matters when next

month's rent comes due. And I don't think anyone is going to pay me 70

grand to scrape plates and scour pots. Mel Brooks said, "Comedy is

just tragedy with a punch line." But I think he also said, "Sorry,

we're not hiring."

Trying to get a job is like

trying to fall asleep. The more you think about it, concentrate on it,

and make it happen, the harder it becomes. It becomes one's dire preoccupation.

Which, I guess is at least some kind of occupation.

I guess I can spend my time

now trying to hatch lamebrain schemes between watching episodes of Jerry

Springer. I had the million-dollar idea to teach my kids how to curse

and film a TV show about it, but I was told that MTV already did it with

"The Osbournes." I thought about one of those get-rich-quick

schemes to sue some fast food empire for pain and suffering like that

old lady from Arizona. It was just hard getting the judge to let me litigate

Dairy Queen because of the frostbite I received from holding a blizzard

in my lap.

None of that really matters

now back in the real world. I'll just have to be humbled with the title,

"employment-challenged." Any former success, whether real or

imagined, is just a memory, so now like Blanche DuBois in "A Streetcar

Named Desire," I can only "... count on the kindness of strangers,"

all just in time for Thanksgiving.

It's OK, I'll just have to

trade in my eponymous "World's Luckiest Guy" for "World's

Luckiest Guy without a Job."

[Visit Billy Murphy on the

Internet at www.ebilly.net.]