Contessa a Guest Speaker????

The PTA at Cat's middle school has asked the Contessa to be a speaker at their career day. They want me to talk about my career and how my education helped me get to where I am today.

I began preparing for my career as a Contessa quite early, learning to sniff corks in elementary school. By the time I hit high school, I was up to licking the last drops out of wine glasses left over from my parent's dinner parties. During college, I made sure to sample a mix of reds and whites every night and spent extra hours on weekend fieldtrips to local taverns.

There was a lot of physical training involved, too. Early on, I practiced lounging on the sofa in front of The Brady Bunch, then moved on to All My Children. Let me tell you, that was not as easy as it sounds. To get to the sofa, I had to dodge piles of laundry my mother had left for me to fold AND pass a sink full of dirty dishes.

As the years went on, the coursework grew more demanding. I nearly caved under mental duress. How could anyone expect a Contessa to learn what all those dials on the stove stood for? And which way to turn - right or left? You'd think I was studying to be an engineer. Thankfully, I discovered take-out and with that, I turned the corner. In fact, I excelled in my post-graduate work. My professors had never seen anyone handle a corksrew with such finesse.

Oh, what an inspiration I can be! They can't all be doctors or lawyers, you know. Why fill their heads with such futile goals when with a little determination they can all be Contessas?