Author's Chapter Notes:
A little different format...
I don’t really know who I am, and I like it that way. It leaves me room to keep growing and adapting. If you want to know a bit about my history, I can tell you that. My name is Jim Halpert, and I am a paper salesman in a failing paper business. I was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and I’ve lived there my whole life. My history really starts before my birth, though, with the history of my parents. My mom, an elementary school teacher, and my dad, the typical blue-collar worker, shared a love that few people ever find. It was the kind of love that books and movies are based on. Their love resulted in the creation of three children: my two older brothers and me. Growing up in our house was great, when my brothers weren’t tormenting me. I was the baby, though, and my mom went through great lengths to protect me from their taunting. After a relatively boring high school career, I decided to skip the whole college thing and start working. It wasn’t really hard finding a job because there were a lot of places I could go without a college degree. I spent about four or five years working various jobs that all offered me different aspects I liked. I could never find a job I was totally satisfied with, though, so I kept searching.
On one fateful day, I read an ad in the paper that said they were hiring salesmen at the place that sold paper a few blocks from my house. (And yes, at the time I still lived with my parents. Sad, I know.) I decided to interview for the job because it had good pay, and I knew that I was good at working with people. When I got it, I was excited. The boss and some of the people that worked there seemed strange, but I was ready for something new and exciting. Not to mention, I had instantly developed a crush on the cute receptionist who had been kind to me the second I walked in the door. I didn’t really plan on making a career out of selling paper, but who really knows what’s going to happen in life? I had developed such a comfortable routine in a short time, that I was afraid to change it by quitting. That wasn’t the only thing holding me back, though. It was her, but she appears in my present too. She is the only thing that has been constant in my life throughout the years. Though she was never mine, I often imagined she was, and it was enough to keep me going each day. I grow more impatient each day, though, and I can’t continue to be a bystander. I’ve decided to live my life.
