The CIA is hiring people with a BA in foreign languages or linguistics to work as language instructors. From the job announcement:

In addition to base salary of 60,648 – $74,958, language Instructors earn annual “bonus” pay ranging from $4,875 to $9,750, with the amount based on the language and their language proficiency. . .  Furthermore, new employees can qualify for a lump-sum hiring bonus for languages, up to a maximum amount of $35,000.

Not too shabby, eh?

Everything comes at a price, though:

Important Notice: Friends, family, individuals, or organizations may be interested to learn that you are an applicant for or an employee of the CIA. Their interest, however, may not be benign or in your best interest. You cannot control whom they would tell. We therefore ask you to exercise discretion and good judgment in disclosing your interest in a position with the Agency. You will receive further guidance on this topic as you proceed through your CIA employment processing.

Make $80K and become paranoid for life.

When N. was 4, his parents forgot to pick him up from the kindergarten and left him there overnight. This was not an overnight kindergarten, so the kindergarten employees simply left, thinking that his parents must be late and would certainly come and get him eventually. There was a night watchman somewhere on the premises, so they just left the little boy there.

N. sat there alone, in the dark, all night long, crying and wondering why all the other kids did get picked up and what he had done wrong to deserve to be left alone. In the morning, the kindergarten workers came back and found him.

If you are thinking that N.’s parents were teenagers who got overwhelmed with parenthood and had no idea what they were doing, you are wrong. His father was 38 and his mother 31 at that time.

If you are thinking that N.’s parents had many children and the absence of a single kid wasn’t noticed among 7 or 8 other children, you are wrong. N. was their only child at that time.

If you are thinking that N.’s parents were drug addicts, alcoholics or anti-social individuals who lived on the margins of society, you are wrong. They both had university education and the father had an advanced degree in engineering. They had a car and a small dacha, so this was definitely not a poverty-stricken family.

I’m publishing this because N. wants to know what people think about this true story. It is very difficult to form a judgment or to see things clearly when you have been brought up in a certain environment and have no idea how normal (or not) it looks to others. So please express your reactions to this.

Even people who were initially resistant to the psychoanalytical readings of the issue are beginning to catch up:

 

Here is another post on the subject.

Sometimes the evidence just gets too overwhelming.

Man #1: I heard you left your wife of 30 years and married a 20-year-old girl. What possessed you to do that?

Man #2: Well, the thing is, my ex-wife is 60. Whenever we go to bed, she wants sex, she wants to snuggle, she wants to talk, she wants to watch TV together. I’m exhausted! The 20-year-old wife, though, leaves in the evening and comes back in the morning. And I can sleep all I want!