I am dying. But I am not dying like all humans who travel to death from the time of their birth. I am caught in a diagnosed terminal illness. My nemesis is a rare cancer of the blood. If it goes sideways and morphs into a virulent form of leukemia, I will have six weeks or so to live. Otherwise, I am left to simply struggle with the challenges of managing the symptoms of the progressive diminishing of my body’s various systems. Each new slight pain, each aggravating disfunction no matter how slight is a constant reminder that my physical body is breaking down. Each reminder whispers the reality of my mortality, not in a cognitive, intellectual sense, but in a flesh and blood, in your face, fact — “You’re dying. This is your reality. You’re leaving Earth.” While this doesn’t happen every day, it does happen weekly at least. An ache in my spleen is more constant than an occasional intermittent occurrence. Death, my real death is on my mind.
How does one cope with facing the pitch black, all encompassing void of the absolute unknowable? Having looked deep into the place where no light exists, I have chosen to turn around, placing my back to the void, and face the path of my life’s journey. To my thinking, it is quite possible that one dies the same way one lived. This is a reality not easily perceived until one truly faces the empty blackness of one’s personal death. When a person is left to encounter, face to face, the true absence of everything knowable (including the absence of light) or face the truth of one’s own life, that individual will face the opposing fear of his or her existence. What do I fear more, facing the reality of the void or facing the reality of the truth of my life? The reader of these pages does not have to take me at my word for this. I do not care. For me, at this place in my life, I am certain all readers of my words will, at some point in their journey, face the truth or untruth of my stated position.
As I am seated upon my death bed, there is no need for lies, no need for defenses. I am leaving. If I am to be judged it will be by an authority that cannot be deceived, hood-winked or distracted. My reputation on Earth is of no consequence to me. I will not be here to endure the outrage, nor will I be able to enjoy any pleasantries bestowed upon me. I am free to speak my mind as I will. Take it or leave it. It is all the same to me.
This nakedness, the raw truth of my life’s activities and the true motivations behind those actions can be covered over by any one of the many organized ‘religious faiths’ that are available throughout the human community. These have various means for forgiving transgressions and for punishments promised for the unrepentant; a whole array of customs and procedures to dampen the unadulterated sting of the accuracy of your soul’s naked true self. This, my friend, is the ultimate face of true judgment, the stripping away of all rationalizations, defenses, self deceptions, avoidances, and all other mannerisms of human attempts to minimize any and all harsh truths manifesting themselves before our trembling, naked selves — authentic, genuine, crystal clear, pristine self judgment. If one believes in the basic goodness of all life and tries to the best of their abilities to nurture that goodness, then one need not fear. Such an individual will survive such a reckoning.
This observation is not meant to take away from any and all beneficial practices that function to nurture the goodness of all life known to humans as pronounced and performed throughout those organized religions. Any and all things that nurture the goodness of all life are commendable, self rewarding and consistent with the evolving Universe. What I am alluding is that membership in any of the professed religious organizations within the human community (this includes atheists and agnostics) does not pardon any individual from the above, final accounting of one’s life upon this planet. It is my belief that each and every individual must come to understand the naked truth of his or her life regardless of any desire (or lack thereof) to know that truth. This is the tough love of a beneficial judgment, not for the sentencing of punitive pain, but for the purpose of enlightening the individual facing the day of reckoning. Whatever pain is experienced is not inflicted by any outside force and is not the focus of the required experience; but, if present, is the natural consequence of the event. That being the case, why should I approach such an experience unpracticed, unprepared and untrained. So it is that I write these words. However, I, being the frail and flawed human that I am, shall begin gradually and see where I end up.
I am now a Type II diabetic. As stated previously, I have been diagnosed with a rare blood disorder that can not be cured. I produce too many red blood cells which “muddies up” my blood making me a good candidate for heart attacks and strokes. Additionally, the red blood cells are not formed properly and do not carry oxygen efficiently — so I’m told. My only treatment is to drain a pint of blood if my blood count is higher than the designated level for treatment. If the blood count is higher, then I bleed a pint. If not, then I have a reprieve until we check the blood count again in four weeks. When I was first diagnosed with this problem I had to bleed a pint of blood every week for sixteen weeks before my blood count finally got below the targeted acceptable blood count. Some individuals might be able to go three months between bleeds. But, if I’m too unfortunate and become a rare individual whose white blood cell count jumps up to plummet me into a vicious form of leukemia, then I would have about six weeks to live, so I’ve been told. The shock on my face and my tear filled eyes caused my doctor to assure me, “But that is a rare occurrence.” My response, “But this is a rare disease so I’m good with rare.”
The shock of this diagnosis was like the shock of diving into a cold pool of clear water on a very, very hot day in summer when the sun is high in a clear windless sky. Such cold truth takes your breath away. It was this shock that placed me under the freshly laundered, cold linens of my death bed on a bitterly cold winter’s night. It was this shock that greeted me the next morning after my body had heated my deathbed into a toasty warm little oven. My cool face and cold nose alerted me to the fact that I had to rise out of bed and confront the cold air of my wintery house to get dressed in the cold and face the winter’s day.
Today, November 2, 2018, I am getting acclimated to the passing of summer and the ending of fall to survive the Maine winter and all of its nuances, pleasantries and challenges (the shoveling of snow, possible power outages, and keeping the house warm).
At the present time, the world abounds with experts. Professional information pushers such as spin doctors, lobbyists, public relations personnel and/or publicists present ‘expert’ after ‘expert’ to explain the “truthfulness” of the presented point of view. Any statement made that does not flow from the mouth of an expert must be suspect, naive, inaccurate and/or grossly oversimplified. The voice of the average citizen attempting to live a life as best as circumstances allow is without value. It is without value because it is perceived as a life without power. It is without power because extremely wealthy individuals, huge national and multinational corporations, and too big to fail banks have the fast sums of money to move society in the direction consistent with their perception of the way it should be. The services of professional information pushers must be purchased with sizable paychecks. The average worker living paycheck to paycheck cannot afford such professional information pushers to present their perspectives. Thus, reality, it appears, is what power dictates. That being the case, I present my credentials upon which I speak.
First of all and of the highest importance is that I am seated upon my death bed. As I have stated, I have no need to lie; I do not seek to persuade or prove anything. I am simply making an accounting of what I believe I have learned correctly or incorrectly. I have no need for defenses. In the end I will be defenseless against my required self judgment based upon the raw truth of my life’s activities and the true motivations behind those actions. I am leaving. My other credentials are as follows:
I have been divorced. I am in my second marriage. The divorce process was extremely painful and I swore that I would never marry again. So much for my sacred oaths, a topic I must take up later. I have twin sons who are now solidly in adulthood. One twin has served in the army and has earned his master’s degree. The other twin has been a special needs individual from birth. He was a slow-to-thrive, soft tonal baby that had great difficulty feeding. The twin who earned his master’s degree was five pounds, thirteen ounces at birth while his brother was four pounds, fourteen ounces. Both were premature. It is clear to me that we are all not born equal. As for my own birth order, I am the youngest of three boys.
My mother was a devout Roman Catholic and steadfastly raised her family to be devout Catholics. The whole family attended Mass every Sunday. Dad was absent when he worked overtime or had to sleep due to working a double shift at the plant. All major religious holidays or events were duly observed with whatever the Church’s dictates prescribed. My mother made certain that my brothers and I attended the local Catholic grammar school. It was her obligation to make sure that all of her sons received a Roman Catholic education. To this end, she sent my eldest brother away to a Catholic high school. I and my other brother were spared such a fate. My mother was a homemaker until I entered the ninth grade. At that time she gained employment at a local men’s clothing store.
My father was a hard working man, but getting a job (a good job) did not happen so easily. He met my mother during the war after he was drafted into the army and stationed abroad. He married her after he was discharged from the armed services. Before he married her, he underwent the procedure to convert to the Roman Catholic Church and be baptized in my mother’s faith. Such was the power of the Church in my mother’s life. A year or so after being discharged, he, his new wife and their first born son returned to the United States. He wanted to be a state policeman and applied, but was rejected because his physical build did not meet the regulations. Being the third born of three sons, I do not remember too much of the early years of my parents’ growing family. I do remember that there were times, during my younger years, that we didn’t always have enough to eat. I remember my dad fixing a bowl of cocoa for me and breaking up a few pieces of white bread to float in the cocoa. He told me that this was a special treat for me for dinner since mom wasn’t home. I was very young and I believed him. As I grew older, I came to understand that there were some rough times for my family. When Mom started working after I finished grammar school, Dad was working diligently to improve his employment and paycheck in his attempt to become an electrician.
My father’s father was a tenant farmer who sired thirteen children. So my father grew up in a large farming family in which everyone had to contribute to the work at hand. This is probably the fertile ground from which my father’s work ethic flourished. After several different job attempts, my father finally gained employment in a factory about an hour’s drive from home. He was employed in that factory until his retirement.
His first job at the plant was that of a regular lineman under the supervision of a foreman. I remember several times while growing up that a kind of fear or at least some kind of deep concern seeped into our household. When I became older, I came to understand this apprehension was stimulated by the plant laying off scores of individuals because the plant did not have enough orders to operate at full or near full capacity. Layoffs were according to seniority. The fate of my father’s employment depended upon my father’s position on the seniority list and how many individuals had to be let go. We never knew how deep each of the layoffs would be, so we just had to wait until the layoffs ended. We watched as the layoff line rose toward Dad’s date of hire.
I am sure that my dad was quite anxious during those times. To improve his job security, Dad jumped at the chance to apply for a trainee position to become an electrician to work on the machines at the plant. Members of the electrician’s shop were never part of the layoff procedure. He had to take a test to see if he had the mathematical and mechanical aptitude required to complete course work at an accredited trade school. He passed the test and carpooled with several other coworkers in our area to attend night school after work. After he became a working member of the electrician’s shop, he not only improved his job security but also had an opportunity to accrue many overtime hours which he rarely turned down. He was able to retire four years early based on his overtime work record.
My mother and father both finished high school but never attended college. Being bound and determined that all three of her sons would graduate from college and being a devout Catholic, my mother scraped enough money together to send all three of her sons to the private school (Catholic of course) that was supported by our local parish. The teaching staff was mostly nuns but there were a few priests and one or two lay employees who took a role in teaching from time to time. My performance during my grammar school years did not hold much promise for becoming a college graduate. My older brothers on the other hand held great promise. Each was granted admission to advanced Latin classes (wishful thinking for developing an early desire to pursue a vocation in the clergy) and advanced mathematics classes during their later years (seventh and eighth grades) while I was relegated to the classes for the less academically inclined students.
Each and every student had to take the annual class in religious instruction to learn how to be a good Roman Catholic. All of the teachings of the Catholic Church, everything about each of the sacraments; a complete and in depth understanding of the Holy Mass; how to correctly complete the Stations of the Cross; the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, and all of the required prayers had to be learned and learned well. Everything about being a devout Roman Catholic had to be completely understood (and practiced, at least at school,) whether or not you were baptized as a Catholic and regardless of your academic prowess. Every Friday each grade would be escorted to the church where all of the Catholic students who had received their First Communion went to confession in preparation for Mass the following Sunday. Non-catholics sat in the pews with the rest of the grade and had to wait patiently until all of that grade’s confessions were heard; then back to school we all went. I though it strange that non-Catholics would send their children to a Catholic school especially with the mandated requirement of learning all about the Roman Catholic religion, but I later learned that this grammar school had an excellent educational reputation.
The math classes I attended were more of the garden variety kind and while everyone took a class in literature, I was enrolled in an additional class in English composition to offset the Latin classes granted to the more substantial students. Additionally, I was slow in learning to read. To this day I read slowly. During my years at this school, I developed the belief that I was a poor student because I was lacking in intelligence and/or work ethic to achieve at my brothers’ level of performance. This was reinforced in my latter years when I was introduced frequently to a newly hired nun as Bernard and Bradley’s little brother. This was an innocent enough introduction except for the knowingly exchanged looks between the nuns. I had established a reputation for myself. The looks indicated that it was not a highly sought after reputation. Upon graduating from grammar school and transitioning into a public high school, some nun of authority held a conference with my mother. I was present and the one part of this conference that I remember to this day was that nun telling my mother, “I think you should enroll him in a vocational training school instead of the college preparation program. I don’t believe that he will even see the shadow of a college much less be admitted into one.”
This was not to my mother’s liking. She ignored the sincerely, nonjudgmental advice offered as an attempt to help all parties to experience a good and fruitful life. As I have said, my mother’s determination to have all of her sons be very well educated (and graduate from college) was extremely unyielding. I was enrolled in and took the college preparatory high school classes. My brothers still out-performed me in all things academic and nonacademic. I was the average student within the collective group of average students, or so I thought.
As it turned out, when I looked at my high school record years later, I was a good student with some scores above average in mathematics and science while my scores in English were average or below. What I have discovered as an adult is that my visual impairment had handicapped me but there were no offsetting educational adaptations presented to me. It wasn’t the way Catholic schools operated back then, nor were public schools so versed in special education issues. The birth defect that impacted my vision rendered my right eye pretty much dysfunctional visually. When my left eye is open, the right eye pretty much shuts down. Visually, my brain prevents the right eye from forming any image (so I have been told) by ever so slightly oscillating back and forth. Preventing the right eye from forming an image prevents me from seeing a double image. Well into my adult years, I researched if anything could be done to help overcome this handicapping situation. I was advised that I could go through an intense visual training process but in the end there would be no guarantee that I would work through the phase of seeing a double image. “You mean I would be stuck in the situation of always seeing a double image?” There was no guarantee that would not happen. I decided to keep what I had. I had survived this far in my life with this handicap. I did not want the challenge of developing new strategies to overcome the handicap of seeing double images all of the time.
Being somewhat of a Cyclops impacts the reading process significantly. In simple terms, my visual field is predominately the visual field of my left eye. Thus when reading I track across the page slowly and, often times, I drop down, skipping the next line on the page (become confused) and must re-track to the proper next line. Thus the slow reading behavior. All of my reading tests were timed tests. I never finished any one reading test and all questions not answered were counted as incorrect answers. Thusly, my reading scores were always low. However, the questions that I did answer were correct to a very high degree.
The well-meaning nun’s prediction before my mother and myself was proven incorrect. I did gain access to a college and earned a B.A. degree in English Studies, after which I earned a Master of Education degree.
After completing my formal education, I embarked upon establishing a career path. There was, however, a significant speed bump (or two or three) across my career path as a professional educator. This (or these) speed bumps were of my own creation. While I obtained my mother’s great desire to become well educated, I may not have achieved good common sense regarding the market place environment.
You may have surmised that gaining my degrees was more difficult for me than the average college student due to my visual handicap especially after my decision to major in English studies which would require a large amount of reading. If this is not what you have surmised, I will be more direct. The reading required for my B.A. in English Studies was very taxing. I spent more time reading than my fellow English majors, not because I was reading more, but because I was reading more slowly. Needless to say, by the time I was almost finished with my master’s degree course work, I ached for a change of venue. I had one course to complete for my master’s and one semester of student teaching to accomplish before I could receive my teaching certificate. I completed the course work, so I would receive my master’s degree, but I balked at the student teaching part.
As an undergraduate student I had a professor who was my favorite and a most difficult faculty member in the English department. I took as many courses from him as I could schedule. He, being a professor of English literature and language, loved to play around with words. He may have wrecked me. The jury is still out on this issue because I have yet to live my full life though I am nearing its final ending point.
During my first class with him, he delivered a lecture that instantly set or defined my compass reading for the trajectory of my educational beam:
“Information, to be informed, is to be changed,” I heard. It instantly made sense to me. To be informed means that one’s form was to be altered. Once informed, that which is taken “in” should affect and/or effect your “form”. Outstanding!
“Enthusiasm, ‘en theos’, in the spirit. You should be enthusiastic about what you learn,” is also what I heard as he wrote on the board. “To be in the spirit of the information at hand and feel its affect and effect; and to be opened to a modification of your form (your life),” he added.
“What you need here, in this place, is a muse.” The function of education, the function of being educated, is to change your form, your life (hopefully for the better).
“This is not a trade school. Your purpose here is not about developing a trade. Education, education here, is about enlightenment; to be in the spirit for the purpose of being altered, changed (hopefully for the better),” may not be what he said. Even if he did not say these words, these are the words I heard.
Native American spirituality has spirits that come in a good way and others that are tricksters and some that are bad spirits. So, when meeting a muse, one must be careful. One must be careful about what information is taken in and watchful about how that information resonates; how it corresponds with previous information encountered; its internal consistencies and inconsistencies, and how it rings true or false. While being opened to being informed, one must be cautious about being misinformed. Knowing the difference is a critical aspect of being educated. Outstanding! I was sold. I was not in college for grades. I was here for the process of becoming informed which would change my form, my way of living.
So, when I finally had to register for my semester of student teaching, I may have over-thought the situation. Perhaps I became seduced by a trickster spirit, or perhaps there was a part of me not yet properly educated and some spirit of the universe needed to inform me of some important aspect of reality. Whatever was the case, this is how I reasoned out my situation back then.
I would have to pay tuition for the semester to student teach. Additionally, I would have to pay a student teaching fee on top of the regular tuition. For this expenditure I would have the privilege of doing all of the work of teaching for my supervising teacher who would actually not do much of any of the planning or teaching of the classes for which he or she would be paid their normal salary. Right? This situation, I surmised, was indentured servitude if not a form of modernized slavery. If I was to do all of the work and would be required to pay for the privilege, then the teacher would be paid to do very little or nothing at all if I was exemplary in my student teaching. This is the point in my thinking where the professor’s lecture about being informed, being enlightened, being in the spirit, and living what you learn descended upon me to challenge me to stay true to what I believed was the reality that I should live. Slavery, indentured servitude, and all forms of exploitation were wrong and should not be reinforced and encouraged, much less supported through one’s participation. I graduated and received my Master of Education degree but I did not student teach. I had, however, completed my required internships at the designated schools before I could apply to student teach.
The bottom line: I had my master’s degree but no certification to teach. Every public school system refused to consider me because I was not certified to teach. However, in Maryland, an individual could apply for a professional five year teaching certificate after teaching successfully for three years. First year teachers can be fired within two years without cause because they have not been tenured. As an uncertified teacher I would have to teach an additional year and, then, perhaps teach an additional three years before I would be tenured. This path would take me six years to be tenured. I thought that would be plenty of time for the educational system to determine if I had demonstrated my ability to do the job. During that time I would be paid my fair wage for doing my fair share of the work. No one listened.
Lesson learned: Reality trumps logic, even sound logic.
I was undeterred. Somehow I needed to teach successfully for three years to get my five year teaching certificate. The solution presented itself in the form of a Roman Catholic archdiocese. I procured a teaching position in an inner city Catholic middle school. I could teach under the archdiocese’s general certificate to run a middle school. I taught there very successfully for three years after which I applied for and received my five year professional teaching certificate. While employed by the archdiocese for seven years, I became a curriculum coordinator and then acquired a position as the principal of a kindergarten to grade eight Roman Catholic school.
Lesson learned: Living Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and the road “less traveled by” skinned my knees, blistered my feet and strengthened my bones, muscle and fortitude. My pay for working in the archdiocese, however, was forty percent lower than the lowest paid county in the state.
Lesson learned: There is an economic price to be paid for enlightenment. True learning, that is true learning of the most important lessons cannot be purchased with money. Such learning, it appears, is had by bartering some skin, blood and personal sacrifice.
So what exactly is my work history? While my overall professional career is that of a professional educator, I started earning my own money at a very young age with a newspaper route when I was about nine or ten years old. The town in which I lived during my early years was very small and a boy with a bike, energy and dependability could make allowance money by delivering the daily newspaper to local houses each afternoon. I did so for a couple of years. At this time the climatic pattern was such that during the winter three or so good snow storms happened during the school year such that schools were closed for a day or two. My middle brother and I would grab our shovels, shovel off the sidewalk in front of our house and then be off to knock on doors and offer the same service to our neighbors for a small fee. We were very quick and very energetic. Sometimes we made about $30 to $40 which we split 50/50. Our parents did not have much money (if any) to spare for an allowance for their three sons so we had to find ways to get what we could on our own. In the summers, this same brother and I would go around the neighborhood looking to cut people’s grass for a bit more money than we charged for shoveling snow off sidewalks. A third source of childhood money for me was the local golf course where I would shine shoes, clean golf clubs, and caddie. The golf pro at this club was very kind to me. He always took me as his caddie in tournaments at local clubs that were in the area and were within a car’s round trip journey. I never went to overnight tournaments. He paid well for the day’s activity.
Somehow, when I was going on fifteen, I stumbled into an opportunity to work for a relatively young man who was building a boardwalk on his property facing the bay side of a local resort town not thirty miles from my home. I had been developing a liking for carpentry and would eventually take three years of what was known then as Industrial Arts classes (better known to students as “shop class”). These classes were offered in the college prep, public school program. There were more concentrated courses offered at the Vocational Training School for students who were not aiming to go on to college but to enter the market place right after high school graduation. The two reliable skills with which I had a degree of proficiency were crosscutting a board and pounding a nail without bending the nail too often.
This individual was an army veteran and lived alone. He was quite confident and seemed to have more confidence in me than I had in myself. His manner, however, put me at ease regarding my insecurities. My first day at work, he showed me how he wanted the boardwalk built. After showing me how to use two nails as spacers between boards to allow for water drainage, he asked if I had any questions. Having voiced none, I was left unsupervised to do the work as he turned and walked off. I did not see him again until around midday when he called the lunch break. We spoke briefly while we ate and then off again to work until quitting time. He paid me every day at the end of the work session. As I did not have a license, my mother had to drive me to and from work each day. This job lasted two and a half weeks or so. I was sorry when it ended.
Shortly after this job and after earning my life guard certificate from the local chapter of the Red Cross, I was hired as a life guard for a local, private swim club. I worked at this swim club every summer until the beginning of my sophomore year in college. As a life guard, I began teaching very little children how to swim. The Red Cross began sponsoring these swimming classes. I enjoyed swimming immensely but all of my early swimming experiences were mostly in the ocean or in the river that flowed through the city park.
In fact my first swimming lessons were taken in that river. My grandfather, his brothers and most of my uncles on my mother’s side earned their living as ocean fishermen. It was very important that all children on my mother’s side knew how to swim early. That being the case, my mother continued the tradition by enrolling all of her sons for Red Cross swimming classes that took place in the city park. A concrete embankment was erected part way on both sides of the river allowing for a partitioned section of the river to be used as an area for public swimming watched over by certified life guards. This is where the swimming lessons took place and this is where I failed my beginner swimmer’s final test. The day of the test, unbeknown to all present, would be the day of my near drowning experience.
Throughout the beginner swim lessons all students learned how to swim across the river from one bank to the other. We practiced frequently to improve our swimming muscles. If I got tired then I could tread water, get a deep breath, hold it and go underwater until my feet hit bottom to push off hard to resurface with arms rested a bit. Off I would go to finish my trip. Before the final test was administered, all swimmers had successfully completed the journey across the river quite a few times. The object was for everyone to pass the test.
Whether it was planned or whether it was mere coincidence, the damn up stream had been opened the night before for whatever reason and the river down stream was muddied and swollen. To my young eyes it just looked muddy but I did notice that it seemed different in some other way. My general nervousness about having to preform well was heightened a bit at the river being visually different. Only one swimmer would swim across at a time. My turn came and I dove in confidently; but, somewhere in the middle of my swim, I decided that I wasn’t going to make it. I needed a bit of a rest. I did my usual procedure to find the bottom to push off somewhat refreshed. To my surprise, as I went under the water, I could not feel the bottom as I had on all previous times. So, instead of resurfacing, I continued to wave my arms underwater to go a little more downward to find the bottom that I was sure was just out of reach. There was no bottom to be found. I was out of air. I wouldn’t be able to push off the bottom to get back to the surface. I began to swim frantically for a gulp of air. I got to the surface but not in a controlled fashion. I grabbed a gulp of air, smacked the water surface and went back down under. Everything went black. The next thing I remember was lying on my back looking up at all the faces looking down at me. The life guard asked me if I was ok. I said “Yes,” and sat up. It wasn’t until much later, probably after I became a Water Safety Instructor, that in recalling the incident, I knew I had nearly drowned. Life guards are very important people.
I learned how to swim well, but my family could not afford any membership to a private pool. My town did not have a public pool. The river was the public swimming area, but my mother loved the ocean. The ocean and the breaking waves were my watery playground. My brothers and I would body surf the waves or swim out to sandbars beyond the breaking waves. Swimming in the ocean made me a very strong swimmer. My favorite stroke was the breast stroke. I could easily see all of the landscape when leisurely swimming the breast stroke. I was the breast stroker for the club’s swim team and then became the Red Cross Water Safety Instructor.
Having earned the required certificate, I was authorized to teach and train Red Cross certified life guards. Eventually, I became the manager of the swim club. I was pretty young to be managing any enterprise and was fired from that position because of a dispute between the owner of the club and myself. The Red Cross certification to become a life guard had mandatory requirements for earning the certificate. One such requirement was time training in the water. Some members of the club’s swim team had conflicts between competing for the team at away meets and life guard training sessions. I took an unyielding position that these team members had to choose between competing or life guard training. I was not going to certify any individual who did not have the required hours of training in the water. My position was that I had the responsibility to make sure that the life guards I trained would not end up in a double drowning situation because they did not meet every requirement mandated by the certificate that would carry my signature as endorsement. Team members and their parents were very unhappy. The owner and I had a heated discussion and I was fired. I did not take this firing well. I do not like to fail, but life goes on and I was young. My career wasn’t over. It hadn’t really begun but the wages that I earned at the swim club were very substantial for summer employment needed by a struggling college student.
Actually, reflecting upon that experience now, I had begun my career as a teacher. I was a teacher of little children who needed to know how to swim so that they would not accidentally drown. The career path that I would eventually chose for myself would be that of a professional educator. The confrontation between myself and the owner of the swim club would not be the last time I challenged the position of the authority residing in positions of power. It would also not be the last time that I had to face the consequences of confronting those in powerful positions.
The summer after my sophomore year, I worked pumping gas at a college buddy’s family-owned gas station that was located just outside of the resort where I built that boardwalk when I was fifteen. Pumping gas earned me a minimum wage and free boarding at the gas station. I was not able to save any money that summer but was able to support a summer at an oceanside resort town for my one time summer vacation. Otherwise, all of my summer employment served the purpose of earning money to help pay for my college expenses.
The summer pumping gas, while not being economically robust, was nonetheless extremely beneficial in a truly educational sense. My boarding accommodation was quite sparse. I had a room in the back of the gas station. My college buddy was married and their accommodations were more robust. Not to worry, we all got along and the summer was more for relaxation at a fine summer resort with a beautiful ocean beach of pure white sand than seeking to establish a display of high social standing above our peer group. Every summer this resort town was populated with many, many fellow college students doing likewise.
Of the many lessons that I learned that summer, one stands out as being more burned into my psyche than any other. Growing up thirty miles or so from this resort town afforded my family many, many trips to the public beaches. When I was older and had my driver’s license, I could, on a warm summer’s night, grab two blankets off of my bed; jump in the family car at my disposal; drive to the beach; throw one blanket on the cool white sand; lie down under the cloudless sky with a full moon; listen to the gentle breaking of the waves on the shore, and fall asleep perfectly safe. Others were doing the same. There were several camp fires along the beach in either direction from where I chose to lay my head. Of all of my experiences growing up, these nights and my camping trips to oceanside parks are the most glorious.
Life situations change especially when opportunities for amassing wealth present themselves to individuals who have the power to exploit. This ocean resort town was not very developed when I was growing up. Vast sections of the beach were sand dunes and no buildings. The oceanside boardwalk went only to 9th street. Most families brought picnic baskets. There was only one arcade parlor on the boardwalk and a small assortment of vendors. Almost all came for the beach and ocean swimming.
This summer of my sophomore year was drastically different. Oceanside hotels and condominiums stretched beyond the original nine streets of the original boardwalk that is now over two and a half miles long and ends at 27th Street. During that summer I was chased off the beach at dusk by beach patrol personnel who informed me that the city had passed an ordinance that banned sleeping on the beach at night. A fleet of huge earth moving machines would be driving along the beach to sift the beautiful white sand and rake up all of the debris that the day’s visitors had left strewn for miles littering the beautiful white sand. At the same time a fleet of bulldozers would be driving out into the ocean past the shore line to push sand back up onto the beach. This resort town was built on a huge sandbar and it is the natural consequence that sandbars are moved by wave action and the flow of the current. I was told that army civil engineers were hired to combat the natural erosion of the beach. I also discovered that hotels and condominiums had been allowed to designate the beach in front of their respective buildings as off limits to nonresidents of their properties.
Lesson learned: The wealthy and powerful inherit the earth (not the meek) and will rent the earth to those who can afford it so that the wealthy and powerful can become more wealthy and powerful.
I have not revisited nor do I ever intend to visit that resort town again.
I finished my undergraduate degree in English Studies and tried to get a job at a newspaper but the newspapers were all folding up, leaving many journalists with experience looking for the remaining jobs. Desperate for some kind of job, I began scanning the want ads for employment prospects. I happened upon some catchy ad and went to see what was what. It would be my first and last experience as a salesman.
How appropriate is it that a college graduate with a B.A. English degree starts his salesmanship career by selling “the worlds best, extensive, unabridged dictionary” door to door? I was fresh out of school; my cushion money was quickly running out, and Baltimore was not cheap. Thus began my excursion into the world of sales.
During the first day of orientation, it was made clear that the job was to sell a product; that salesmanship was not truly dependent upon the product being sold; that a good salesman, a really good salesman, could sell anything, and that this particular product was an excellent, unabridged dictionary with a finely crafted, beautiful binding. But this product (it was reiterated) was not the issue at hand. The issue at hand was the process of how the product would be sold.
“We’ve paid an excellent firm who hired some very fine psychologists to research the best way to sell this dictionary. This process was developed and tested and works very well. What you will be learning is how to sell this product to the targeted consumer group. But before we do that, we want to explain to you what being successful in these sales will do for you.”
It was explained to us that at the beginning while we were learning how to sell we would be earning a moderate base pay and commissions on what we sold. The real money, we were told was in the commissions. Each presenter that day spoke of his first day with the company; how he sat in the same seat as we were sitting in now, and how they advanced up the company to earn the excellent pay they now received and the unlimited prospects that lay before them.
Each of us newcomers would be under a mentor. The mentor was highly motivated for each of us to be successful because he would prosper with each of our successes. When each of us became competent salespersons, each of us would take on a newcomer or two of our own. As we gained a few newcomers and they in turn became successful salespersons who gained newcomers of their own to be mentored into competent salespersons, our wealth would begin an ever increasing momentum upward. This was the structure that promoted the company’s rapid growth and profits. A proportion of my commissions would go to my mentor just as I would receive a proportion of the earned commissions of those whom I mentored. In this fashion every individual gained financially from the economic gains of the company. I was never certain about how much of a percentage of the commissions would be passed up the chain and uncertain about how far up the chain those portions of the commissions were shared. This detail, at this point in my development, was not an issue because I had not sold anything and I had no newcomer to mentor. My first challenge was to sell a dictionary to someone.
Each of us was given a small card printed in such a fashion that we could mark off each sale made. The presenters set a challenge before our group by offering a prize to be obtained by the first individual to make the first sale of the group. The prize was defined as a surprise. A second card was distributed to us that had a pledge written upon it that said that the individual who signed this pledge would not misrepresent himself or herself nor the product being presented. This small card would be the critical Achilles heel of my brief experience with salesmanship. At the end of our training period, two days for which we were paid, each of us signed this pledge.
The target group was the managers of the various shops and vendors housed in the mini malls which dotted the given targeted region. The group of us met on the third day at some designated spot from which we would car pool to the first mini mall of the day. Having arrived at our destination, we were given the following instruction:
“You remember that our research for successfully closing a sale is based on how fast you present your “radiation” (sales slips of other managers in the area who ordered a dictionary). Since we are just starting out today, the first thing you have to do is write up your radiation. Pick any random store and make up some manager’s name to put on the sales slip. Two or three will be enough to get started. You weed these out once you begin making sales.”
We sat down curbside and made up our “fake” radiation. This was not an easy task for me. I was thankful that the situation never arose which deemed it necessary to produce my pledge card. We worked until lunch at which time we debriefed our experiences while we ate. No one made a sale. We were off again that afternoon and still no sale had been closed. We were given a pep talk as we loaded up at our last mini mall and, again, at our original starting point. We left to return the next day at the same spot.
The next day we were two people short. “They quit,” we were informed followed by another pep talk about not being discouraged and that, once we got in the groove, we would each begin to see the orders and money flow into our pockets. “Now let’s see who will win the prize for the first sale.” Off we went to encounter the same results as the day before.
I made my first sale in the afternoon on the third day. It was a Friday. Another fellow salesperson also made a sale. The mentors were ecstatic. Congratulations were heaped upon us and we were the examples of just how easy it would be for the others to do likewise. “We are all going to celebrate tonight. It will be on us [the mentors]. We will meet at [the name of some night club in Baltimore and its address]. Everyone must come. We will pick up the tab.” I went but do not remember the club’s name. It was a very, very nice club. The lights were bright and colorful and the music was great. We didn’t pay for anything. The bill must have be very substantial. These guys must have been doing pretty good to afford this night out celebrating only two sold dictionaries.
On the following Monday I quit. I was pulled aside and asked what was wrong. I said that I just could not do it anymore. I had signed a pledge not to misrepresent myself or my product. The “fake” radiation was a lie, a misrepresentation. I was told, “No problem. Don’t use the radiation until you make a sale.” But that was the significant purpose that was repeated over and over again. “You must get the radiation out faster.” No, I was done. I thanked my mentor and left.
Lesson learned: I believed that they told the truth. To be a successful salesperson, the product is secondary to closing the sale. Salesmanship is about selling. You have to do what is necessary to make the sale. You must be able to do what ever is required to make the sale in order to be successful. I had learned that, at least at that time in my life, I had limits to what I would do.
That done, unemployed again, I returned to the want ads and finally gained employment as the “low man” in the kitchen services department of a nursing home in Baltimore. The “low man” is also known as the “gofer”, the person that goes to get or do what he is told by any other person working in the kitchen. I worked in this capacity for a brief time after which the Director of the home called me into his office and offered me the job of Central Supply Manager. My responsibilities were to keep inventory and order all of the medical supplies and other supplies except for those required by the food service department and to stock every nursing station with their supplies on a daily basis. I took the promotion. Central supply management was not particularly difficult. The previous manager had set up a very clear, easy and highly functional system. That being the case, after a brief time of getting acclimated to the job at hand, I completed all of my managerial chores by 1:00 pm if I skipped my lunch break (which I usually did). I could have paced myself and stretched my tasks to last until the work day ended, but I was not accustomed to working that way. After three months, the work was pure routine without any challenge and without any diversity. I was so bored that by the end of the fourth month, all work being done by 1:00 pm at the latest, I began to fall asleep in my office chair behind my desk at the back of the stock room. I began thinking, ” I’m just out of school. I’ve mastered this job. I’m often falling asleep at work. Is this it? I’m going to be doing this for 35 to 40 years? I have got to go back to school and get a career of some type.” The very next day I went to see the director and told him that I would be enrolling in graduate school for the next semester and would be unable to continue to work when I went back to school. I left that job amicably and relieved.
Graduate school progressed without a hitch except for one professor and his Behavior Modification class. This time my confrontation with the powerful voice of authority was not a solo engagement. It was a team effort. One of my classmates was studying to get his theology degree. He and I had a problem with the assigned project that would be 50% of our grade. The assignment was to use everything that we were studying regarding behavior modification from B.F. Skinner to present day developments of this particular school of psychology to shape the behavior of one of our unsuspecting roommates preferably one not enrolled in this class. We were to design our program to achieve the targeted behavior that we would shape, collect our data, chart our progress, and write a paper. It was simple enough. However, the fly in the ointment in this particular project was a question of ethics. Free will is not a component of a strict behavioristic approach to behavior modification. The basic premise is that our personality, or who we are and how we act, is the consequence of a series of rewards and punishments and that free will does not exist. An individual’s behavior and quite possibly who that individual is or becomes is based on operant conditioning i.e. a system of reinforcements — rewards and punishments dispensed according to several different schedules.
The eradication of free will did not sit well with my theologian classmate especially when we were commanded via a critical assignment to usurp the free will of another by consciously shaping behavior via clandestine activity. I was not so much offended by the argument over the existence or nonexistence of free will, but I was deeply concerned about secretly manipulating the behavior of another human being, especially as an exercise to see if you can do it. There are other, more ethical ways that we could use to demonstrate our complete and deep understanding of behavior modification.
After collaborating during dinner, we decided that we would take issue with the assignment at our next class. We would both raise our hands and whoever was picked would initiate the challenge. It was a brief exchange with my colleague, the professor and myself. It was only four to six exchanges. The professor ended the challenge abruptly with, “If you want to study ethics, then enroll in Dr. Zepp’s ethics class down the hall! Do the assignment or fail.”
That was definitive. A choice had to be made. How my English professor had wrecked me! To be enlightened, to be informed, is to be changed. I do not remember him ever explaining how to survive after being enlightened. Thanks loads!
I concocted a plan. I would do the assignment but, to protest against the powerful authority of a college professor, I would hand write in my best penmanship my final paper in number two pencil. This professor always graded papers with a content over style score that would be averaged together. If I carried this plan out, then I had to work very hard to ace the content because I was absolutely certain that he would fail me on the style aspect of my grade. The overall score for my project was a solid C. In graduate school, the overwhelming opinion is that grad students are to never get below a B. This professor had words with me when he handed my project back to me: “Never ask me for any recommendations for anything.” This was the only real problem I had in graduate school.
Lesson learned: It is difficult to be true to yourself when authority flexes its power to do you harm.
My oldest brother continued his formal education past his master’s degree to earn his doctoral degree. I remember his relating the difficulties that he was having with his doctoral committee. The difficulties appeared to me to be more political and having to do with issues of style rather than genuine exploration and pursuit of academics. It appeared to me, based on what my brother conveyed, that some professors on his committee required agreement with them as opposed to an honest pursuit and alternative inquiry into defensible possibilities.
Lesson learned: The continuation of higher degrees may be absent of true issues regarding free thinking and more about preserving the positions of those in power. Thus ended my formal education
Among the multitudinous and diverse power plays that must be navigated well and that speckle the American educational system, one stands out as being most substantial and potentially devastating to myself and my family. This situation arose from my family’s migration from our home state to another state and seeking employment in that state’s public school system. At the time of transition, I was currently the Director of School Services for a private psychiatric hospital’s adolescent locked unit. Based on my experience, my formal education and my Professional Education Certificate, I eventually gained employment as a special education teacher in a public school resource room. While I had certification to teach hearing impaired students, I did not have the specific special education certificate required by our new home state. During the hiring process the State Department of Education was contacted and arrangements were made for me to teach with a provisional certificate while I took the necessary course work required by the state’s certification process. During this hiring process, the State Department of Education verbally expressed that I needed only twelve credits which amounted to four courses to complete or something akin to that for my state certification and I also had to pass a teacher performance test required by the state. It was simple enough. I would take course work while I worked full time under a provisional certificate until all requirements were fulfilled. Easy.
But it turned out not to be so easy. In the end, when I submitted my application for my special education certificate, a new review of my transcript was initiated. This new review recommended that I needed to take more course work to gain my certificate. I was not pleased. I met with my Superintendent and my Director of Special Education to discuss the matter. Both were aggravated with the State Department of Education.
I called the State Department of Education and conveyed to them that I had been told that I only needed to take the course work that had been completed. The individual with whom I spoke said that he was sorry, but I was told incorrectly. An appointment was arranged for me to meet with Dr. X to discuss why I needed more course work.
The meeting began well enough. Cordial greetings were exchanged with smiles and hand shakes. Pleasant small talk ensued but then I was taken off guard. My file was placed on the desk, opened, quickly scanned and Dr. X raised her head and spoke something along the lines of, “Well, yes you need to take some more courses.”
I reiterated that I had been told by the State Department when I was being hired that I only needed the course work that I had just recently completed.
“Well, if you had not chosen to make a career change, then you would not have this problem,” was Dr. X’s retort.
I was unprepared to hear such a response and l laughed out loud. “Dr. X, you can’t be serious. You have a doctorate! I wasn’t an electrician or an accountant or any thing like that. I was a teacher with a five year Professional Teacher Certification. I didn’t change careers.” I should not have laughed but her response just struck me as so absurd. The meeting ended abruptly. I needed additional course work. That was that.
A couple of days later I received a letter from the State Department of Education with a list of all of the courses I needed to take to obtain my special education certificate. It amounted to being just shy of earning another master’s degree.
I was once again in a serious dilemma. Do I fight the state and risk losing my job which would put my family in serious, serious economic jeopardy or fold up, comply and do what I was told regardless of how I felt about the injustice of the situation. Had I been single, it would have been an easier choice. Only my hide would be on the line, but being responsible for others who are dear to me makes such decisions much, much more difficult. We had just moved into an unknown area without friends or family. It took me an agonizing couple of days, but I decided to fight.
I met with my union representative, spoke with my Director of Special Education and my Principal. A formal meeting before the Hearing Officer was scheduled, a union lawyer was arranged and letters of demonstrated competency regarding my performance as a resource room teacher were written by the Superintendent, two Directors of Special Education, and two Principals under whom I worked.
At the hearing, the winning argument of the day was delivered by the State Department of Education, “We do not determine competency. We do the course count.” Outstanding! The Department of Education is not responsible for assuring competency. Its function is to assure a course count. I left amazed.
Fortunately for me, my Superintendent, Principal and Special Education Director were very supportive. I was offered another position to teach that did not require the State Department to certify for that position. It was a new program under the Title One Chapter level developed at the University of Arizona. It was called Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) which I would teach for many years.
Lesson learned: Take nobody’s word, especially individuals with authoritative power. Get everything in writing and signed.
Lesson learned: For authoritative positions of power, competency is not necessarily an issue.
To summarize my work record, I worked these odd jobs along the way before starting my teaching career: construction laborer, life guard, swimming instructor, Red Cross Water Safety Instructor, manager of a private swim club, and an assembly line worker converting minivans into mini-campers. (I wired the circuit box.) Before I began teaching professionally, I was employed as a Psychiatric Nursing Counselor (PNC) for the adolescents and admissions units of a private psychiatric hospital.
As a professional educator for 25 years, employed in both the private and public sectors, I worked as a regular education classroom teacher; as a special education teacher in a resource room, and as a Title I HOTS teacher. Most of my teaching experience was on the middle school level, but I also worked as a curriculum coordinator. I was recruited and hired as the Director of School Services at the same private psychiatric hospital where I was once a PNC. I was the principal of a kindergarten to grade eight Catholic school. At the end of my teaching career, I designed, implemented and taught an alternative education program for a public middle school. These are the credentials from which I speak further.