Lori Curley: Today I met with a friend. Meeting friends is highly recommended when you are out of work. First of all, it gives you a reason to brush your hair and get out of the T-shirt you have been wearing to bed and the following day for a week. Secondly, it gives you a deadline, which keeps your timing skills sharp. And lastly, because friends usually make you laugh. Laughing is extremely underrated.

I read a study the other day that kids laugh 10 times a day when they are under age 11, more in high school and college, and then almost not at all after they graduate. How sad is that?

It makes me want to cry. I cannot cry. It is not helpful. Crying will not get me a job. I laugh instead. Ha, ha, ha, I laugh like old King Lear. I am a crazy old English teacher howling at the wind. And no one knows what I am talking about because no one read the freaking play. No one read the play, everyone passed the exam. Everyone is working and making money -- even the sweaty principal who sent me a rejection letter: "We received many applications; thus, it was a difficult decision to make. However, we feel we have chosen a candidate that best fits our needs."

Does the use of "that" instead of "who" bother anyone? It bothers me. So does this idea that it was such a "difficult decision" that we based it on a feeling. They also addressed me as "Dr." because I suppose they do not know what M.Ed. stands for. When I told my reasonable children that I was working on a scathing letter to these idiots, they counseled me. Emma said, "Mom, why don't you wait until you have a job, then send them the nasty letter? Otherwise they may tell other people that you are a terrible person. "

This was good advice. I sent it anyway, and signed it "Applicant."

Lori Curley, champion mother of two middle-school teenagers, resides in South Orange, N.J. She holds a Masters in Education and has been teaching writing at the college level for seven years. But can she find a job as a high school English teacher? Or will she pull her hair out first?