Mrs Pembrose’s Talent
Originally published at PeterCHayward.com/blog. You can comment here or there.
Originally written July 2012, rediscovered just a few minutes ago.
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“Oh dear,” she tutted, shaking her head from side to side. “Oh dear oh dear oh dear.”
Everyone has a Talent. Some are more obvious than others, some find years to find, and presumably some die without ever having discovered their Talent at all. Mrs Pembrose had been 45 and a half before she’d discovered hers - she thought she’d never discover it. She’d lived her life quite happily beforehand, getting married, having two children (quite young, as was the trend these days) - a son and a daughter - and seeing them off to college and a family of their own respectively.
But then, one day when she was at home, she had dropped her address book, tutted, and said “Oh dear.”
It was crystal clear, the second the words escaped her mouth. It was odd, really, that she’d never uttered that simple phrase, those two words in conjunction before, but as soon as she did, she knew:
She’d found her Talent.
Her husband had found her in that same position when he returned home several hours later. She was just sitting there, and it appeared at first glance that she was muttering to herself. Her husband briefly wondered if she had gone insane, especially when she looked up, with that gleam of excitement in her eyes.
But then she had simply said “Oh dear”, and he understood. She’d found her Talent.
Mr Pembrose had discovered his talent quite young. It wasn’t one of the Talents that everyone hoped for - acting, dancing, stockbroking - but it was solid, and he enjoyed it. He had a Talent for middle-management, and armed with this knowledge, he’d soon found himself a lovely middle-management position, where he cheerfully worked, no ambition for advancement, no fear of demotion. His bosses appreciated his skills, his employees were glad to be working under someone who was perfectly suited for their positions, and he didn’t have to worry about playing the brown-nosing game, he just had to go to work each day, and be one of the best middle-managers in the country.
The usefulness of Mrs Pembrose’s Talent was less obvious. In those first few days, she was so excited about having found it that she simply sat at home and repeated “Oh dear” to herself over and over again. She called her family, her friends, her children, they all shared in her joy, celebrated with her. She organised a Talent party, as custom encouraged, and everyone brought her small presents. Mrs Pembrose’s father, known for his sense of humour, bought her a small figurine of a deer. Her children bought her a set of business cards with her name, number, and catch-phrase on it.
And at the end of that first week, after the initial excitement was over, Mrs Pembrose set out to see if there was any way she could use her Talent to make a living. She’d worked most of her life as a secretary - work that she enjoyed, but had never completely fulfilled her. She knew that there was a career that she was so perfectly suited towards out there, waiting for her, and so her stint as a secretary felt like a time-killer until her Talent came along.
But now, now she knew what she was capable of, what she could do best. But how to implement it?
Mrs Pembrose tried finding voiceover or acting work - anything that required the line “Oh dear” delivered, she excelled at. She could say it happily, sadly, disapprovingly, orgasmically - name the adjective, and she could say “Oh dear” perfectly. But “Oh dear” situations are few and far between - knowing what she was capable of, interested in making use of such a unique Talent, a few advertising agencies specifically wrote campaigns to utilise it, but after a month or two work dried up. “Oh dear” ads were done with, and the cyclical nature of advertisements meant that they wouldn’t become fresh again for another decade or two.
She managed to get a few interviews - the news was always interested in unusual and individual Talents, with most channels dedicating a brief segment at the end of their news slots at the less popular times to showcasing weird Talents, but once she had worked through the networks, she was again without anything to do.
And then it occurred to her - there was no job out there waiting to take advantage of her strange Talent, because it wasn’t a skill that people were expected to had. Jobs grew out of not only necessities, but also talents - if someone could do something well, they would typically try to work out how to use their talent to better society, and more importantly, earn them money.
And so it was that Mrs Pembrose got a job as a professional Disapprover.
Corporations would call her in to disapprove of ideas. They’d present her as a neutral observer, or an expert in a particular field, and once an idea was explained to her, she’d pause, tilt her head to the side, and say those two words:
“Oh dear.”
Mrs Pembrose never got sick of seeing how people reacted. Some of them were indignant, some of them were disappointed, some of them seemed to be expecting it, sighed, and packed up their presentation without another word. A few, when she was just starting out, were skeptical, but after a few weeks on the job she worked out the exact tone of “Oh dear” to give out, the tone that conveyed a lack of interest in the idea, no room for argument, a hint of disappointment, and an unwavering sense of authority.
She was a huge hit - companies were hiring her to disapprove of anything and everything, from plans for expansion to new stationery suggestions to annual performance reviews. Individuals starting hiring her, for jobs as varied as fortune-teller to divorce lawyer.
One job consisted of setting her up as a fashion guru, approving of one company’s designs but not the other. She was surprised, six months later, to see some of the garments she’d nodded at (or, on a few occasions, given an enthusiastic-and-impressed “Oh dear” to) selling for many hundreds of dollars at her local clothing store.
The work started sporadically, but became more and more consistent as word spread. Of course, as word spread, she had to be careful not to be recognised - she had awkwardly turned up as a “bee-keeping expert” to one job, only to discover that the target of her “we’re-interested-but-you’ll-have-to-lower-the-price Oh dear” was a previous client. At one job shortly afterwards, she’d felt suspicion coming from her target, but she had (rather impressively, she thought to herself at the time) quelled it with an “Oh dear” of “Your suspicion is absurd”.
It didn’t always work, of course - the best-delivered “Oh dear” can’t always change someone’s mind, but delivered in the right way to someone who already has some doubt, especially when the messenger is imbued with implied status, knowledge and power…well, an “Oh dear” can go a hell of a long way.
After a year, Mrs Pembrose was making a reliable, if not exhorbidant income. She enjoyed her job - there was something about knowing your Talent, knowing that you were one of the best at what you did (and with her extremely specific Talent, probably THE best that ever was and ever would be) and having other people appreciate it. She understood now why Talented people were always the happiest ones at Talent parties, the ones celebrating the newly-Talented the most.
As part of her job, she’d had to start putting on disguises, voices; she’d even attended one or two sessions pretending to be a rather heavily-bearded man. It added a bit of variety to what otherwise risked being an overly negative job - disapproving of things all day every day ran the risk of getting her down, but the costuming element ensured that she was never bored.