"Children Do Not Dream of Photocopying"

After 11 jobs and 11 medications, I quit.

By Charlie Squire

Charlie Squire is a writer and artist currently living in Berlin. They write about culture, art, aesthetics, sexuality, and communication.

I am fifteen years old, getting paid twenty dollars an hour to lie to doctors. It is my first job and I am very good at it. This skill will transfer well into my adult life.

The practice is called being a “standardized patient.” Hospital administrators give you a case file (mine is yellow) with a fake name and a hospital gown (mine is blue) and issue you a generous paycheck to be a fake patient so medical students can focus on the human interaction bit of practicing medicine rather than cold, hard diagnostics (mine is to be spent at the clearance section of the local Urban Outfitters). 

My first case of the day is to sit for general-issue checkups, my second is to pretend to be a closeted bisexual teen looking for a birth control prescription without her mother’s knowledge. Once the med students perform their simulated check-ups on me, they’re invited back into the simulated hospital room for an evaluation of their demeanor, professionalism, and sensitivity. I am a cold but fair critic.

This is seven, almost eight years ago. Since then, I’ve held eleven jobs (in order: summer camp counselor, campus tour guide, music marketing intern, busboy at a five-star hotel restaurant, art museum events programmer, college radio station manager, community builder at a trendy underwear startup, cashier at a fast-casual health food chain restaurant, movie extra, and communications and digital media office worker) and taken eleven prescribed psychiatric medications (in order: Prozac, Zoloft, Lexapro, Hydroxyzine, Klonopin, Effexor, Prisitiq, lithium, Seroquel, Adderall, Vyvanse). 

Two years ago, I quit taking antidepressants and mood stabilizers. Two weeks ago, I quit my job. I don’t know if I’ll ever have a job again.