In May 2018, my wife and I found out we were expecting. This was
a planned pregnancy, but even planned pregnancies aren’t always easy. We needed
health insurance, and my job working as a museum docent at “Cracker Country” on
the Florida State Fairgrounds (where it’s always 1898) couldn’t get us the
insurance we needed, nor the money we were going to need either. So sadly, I
had to leave this lovely job and enter the corporate world, landing a full-time
job at a call center for Macy’s furniture department, which gave us both health
insurance. After getting through training, and then “nesting” (where floor
walkers help us on calls), I quickly began to suspect that the whole reason
there’s no universal healthcare in the United States is because if there were,
then no one would have reason to be stuck doing horrible jobs like working in a
call center. Yes, being constantly insulted, berated and screamed at by
entitled old snobs under the threat of losing your income and health insurance
if you’re not taking enough calls per hour or are having a particularly
overactive bladder has a way of pushing one to the political left. Forty hours
a week of this sent me spiraling into near-suicidal depression. There was a
time I tore my stress ball into itty bitty little pieces while being chewed out
over the phone. There were times I pulled my hair, clawed at my arms, banged my
head on the desk. But I pressed on. It might also be worth
mentioning that I used my new health insurance to seek out a therapist, who diagnosed
me with dysthymia, something I’ve probably had to varying degrees since at
least age 13.
I was desperate for any kind of escape. They allowed us to
decorate our cubicles, so I brought in pictures of Armenia cut from old
calendars. I had been in Armenia for half of 2015. I’d seen Mt. Ararat, I’d
seen famous Armenian landmarks such as Garni Temple, Tatev, Haghpat. I’d been
to the Republic of Artsakh, an unrecognized country which broke away from
Azerbaijan at the fall of the Soviet Union. I’d been to Shvanidzor, the small
village where my grandfather was born (and as an aside note, provides the
background image to this blog). I had been to so many fantastical places,
places which before existed only in my imagination. And now, where was I?
Trapped in a tiny cubicle, in my own little hell. I would stare at those
pictures and wish so deeply that I could be back there. Anywhere but where I
was.
Not every moment on the job was pure torture, I have to admit.
When the calls were coming in slow, or if we were going to be on a long hold,
we were allowed to write in notebooks, draw, or browse the limited internet we
could access. This eventually led me to Gutenberg.org. There’s no better escape
from reality than reading. Here was my chance to finally read books I’d always
wanted to read but never had the time to before. I started on the works of Mark
Twain, moved onto the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, reread
both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the
Looking Glass, and next on the list was The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz by L. Frank Baum. I’d read it a few times before, going back to my
childhood. I even owned the nicely illustrated edition by Greg Hildebrandt,
purchased used at a library book sale some years prior. After that I was going
to reread Frankenstein and The Time Machine.
I never did get around to those last two.
You see, when searching for the book on Gutenberg, I came
across Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz. Thinking this to be some
alternate title, I started reading it. And it turned out to be a sequel! Now in
the back of my mind I was vaguely aware that there had been sequels to The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz. At some point during my childhood I had
seen Return to Oz after all. But it had never occurred to me
to track down and read the sequels. So I researched a little to find out what
order they were in, and was startled to find that there were forty Oz books in
total. Forty! And over half of these are public domain, freely available to
read. I read The Marvelous Land of Oz, and found it to be clever,
funny and exciting. Baum had such a way with writing lovable characters. I
moved on through Ozma of Oz, which was much as I’d remembered
the movie Return to Oz. The more books I read, the more I became
hooked. In a strange way it made me at least partly look forward to going to
work so I could read the next chapter.
Perhaps it was something about the story of Dorothy. She lived
and grew up in a drab, colorless environment; made it to a fantastical land of
beauty and adventure, only to return to her mundane home. I could relate to
that. I too had once been to a beautiful land, very different from the United
States, very different from Florida, only to return. Eventually by the sixth
book, facing the threat of having her home foreclosed on and living in poverty she
decides to live in Oz permanently with her aunt and uncle; just as I harbored
desires to leave this job and flee the country with my wife back to Armenia; if
I only had the money. In my mind, Oz was Armenia. But in some ways it was even
more than that. A land without death, a land without money. Where no one has to
work more than half the time, and never in a job they hate. And unlike Narnia
or Neverland, you don’t have to be a child to go there. The Wizard was the
first to make it to Oz from America, and he was fairly old. Then there was the
vagabond in the fifth book, the Shaggy Man. Oz is a place for dreamers and
misfits, much less exclusive than other Fairylands. Oz is the American
Fairyland. It does not necessarily evoke American nationalism or patriotism to
say this. But it is the fairyland, the fantasy world, accessible to the
American mind; that is, the minds of those who find themselves living in this
harsh country ruled by greed and plagued with inequality. It’s something an
American can yearn for. Oz is the equal and opposite reaction to the idea of
America. Everything America is not. It gave me the escape I needed just when I
needed it most.
I got through all of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, moved along to
Ruth Plumly Thompson’s Oz books (which have a very different feel to them that
took some getting used to, but I ended up liking most of her books), then Jack
Snow’s two Oz books. Everyone observes Oz through a different lens. Baum saw it
his way, Thompson saw it her way, Snow his own way. Oz changes. It exists as it
is observed. Each as true as another. After I ran out of public domain Oz
books, I moved onto modern adaptations I could find online. These vary in
quality, but at least I got my Oz fix. At this point my son had been born, and
not long afterwards I fell ill and overused my attendance credits, resulting in
my termination from the job, mercifully. With my son born, we could all qualify
for Medicaid, so I didn't need to be there anymore. I did go work at another
call center for the next few months, but it was a bit better, and part-time,
which certainly helped my mental health.
The lasting legacy of being stuck in that awful job, however,
was my love of Oz. It really couldn’t have happened any other way. I needed to
be stuck somewhere with nothing else to do for me to read the Oz books. I
decided to enter a short fiction contest run by the International Wizard of Oz
Club, writing my own Oz short story, which ended up winning second place. It
was the first time in a long while that my writing had gotten me anywhere. I
felt encouraged. And now I’m expanding the short story into a novel. A novel
which, not so coincidentally, deals with issues of depression and mental
health, as the main character is a Flutterbudget. Flutterbudgets are known for
exaggerated hypochondria, anxiety and paranoia. They’re one of many gimmick
communities in Oz, but the one I found that I strangely related to the most.
It’s interesting to think I owe it all to that call center.
I sure hope I'm done with those types of jobs.
