Yesterday I embarked on this twisting turning journey and I thought I knew where it was going, but then a woman named Lori from Georgia remarked on something I said and it sent my mind on a new tangent, related, but a tangent nevertheless. It has to do with y'all. Seems I lost my y'all, but I was never able to destroy the Southernness at the core of my being. Tried desperately, but it just didn't happen. It will always be there lurking in the darkness, waiting to emerge when I least expect it, like when my brother calls from Texas and suddenly the accent takes over my being like a demon possessing my mouth.
I was a little tow-headed blue eyed kid and my Mom must have thought I was a looker. She kept putting me on these local kids shows on TV. Nobody from Lassie ever came looking for me to replace Timmy though. Lots of people thought I was smart, myself among them and I developed a healthy ego early on. I kept getting good grades in school and nobody disabused me of the notion that I was smart. Developed a love for using big words early on. Represented my elementary school in the district spelling bee and misspelled the first word they gave me. Now that was an embarassment, and me in my new dress clothes for the occasion.
Got into Junior High and got the nickname Sexy Rexy. Was scared shitless of talking to girls though. Developed a couple of really fierce crushes on girls that I was too scared to follow up on. Got to go to take the National French Honors Test after I took French I. Scored above the national average, but not much.
Got into high school and became Oedipus Rex. Tried playing football and was kind of small for the game. Got hurt a few times. Began to develop some serious quirks. Liked Bob Dylan and electric folk rock. Got into a discussion with a friend's father where I broadcast it all over that I was a liberal. He inquired if that meant I was in favor of giving away welfare to lazy folks who won't work? Don't remember what I replied, but I was passionate. At the graduation after party the black girls in the senior class showed up, but the black guys didn't. Nobody was dancing with the black girls so I did. People stared.
Went off to college. Didn't fit in with the frat crowd. They don't avow liberalness. I had moved more toward radical left. Started hanging out with the marijuana for lunch bunch. Grew my hair really long. Somehow managed to complete two years of Army ROTC. Protested the war and wrote a lot of depressing poetry. Got a draft lottery number of 87 and as soon as I graduated from college I got a letter from the draft board telling me to report for a pre-induction physical. I failed the hearing exam. (I wear a hearing aid these days.) They passed me anyway. Seems they thought I was bullshitting to get out of the army.
Well I wasn't bullshitting about the hearing, but I managed to bullshit well enough to get myself conscientious objector status and after being offered a real job that paid pretty well when I graduated, I ended up working as a stock clerk in the pharmacy of a hospital for two years for $2.31/hour to satisfy the CO Alternate Service requirement. Somewhere in there I married this hippie chick who was a counselor at a Crisis Intervention Center and bought a two bedroom mobile home. Really big mistake. Which, you might ask, the hippie chick counselor or the mobile home. Answer: Both!
Anyway my very own personal crisis popped up and I quit my job and left my wife and moved to Illinois to go to graduate school. Never returned to Arkansas except to visit after that, and after my parents passed away the visits became even rarer. I became a Yankee. Started doing graduate work in political science, got involved with an improvisational theater company and ended up in Minneapolis somehow. Let's see, moved to Carbondale, Illinois, stayed for a while, kept going north, took a left turn at Chicago, and plopped myself down at 10th and Portland in downtown Minneapolis. Got a job in a hospital pharmacy. Knew that CO Alternate Service had to come in handy somehow.
Had a girlfriend in Hoffman Estates, Illinois (Chicago suburb). Went down there and got a job as an assistant manager of a bookstore. That lasted about 4 months before we split up for good and in the middle of the worst winter in 50 years I decided Austin, Texas was better than a return to Minneapolis. Worked in a bookstore for starvation wages, did theater on the side, and hustled pool to make ends meet. Returned to Minneapolis after a year and a quarter.
Met Babs in Minneapolis. We sort of meshed. Met in February. Moved in together in June. Moved to Chicago together in December. Quite a driving in a snowstorm story there, but that's a story for another time. Ensconced ourselves in the Western suburbs of Chicago for about 9 months. Moved into the city proper. Realized suburbia doesn't suit us. Joined the Democratic Socialists of America about this point. Shortly thereafter I realized that serious Socialists are just about as annoying and dumbass as fundamentalist Christians, or fundamentalist anythings for that matter. Became a leftie Democrat.
Got a job in a pharmacy in a children's hospital that came to an end when I realized I was supervising newly minted Pharm D's who were making about 6 times as much money as I was. The hospital paid my tuition to go back to school to get a teaching certificate. Quit doing theater about this time. Teaching takes up way too much time to spend all your evenings rehearsing, performing, and drinking heavily. Did I grow up? Not much really. Just broke with that theater lifestyle.
Now this little odyssey had one more odd turn for me. I took a two year teaching contract on the island of Guam, so Babs and I went off to a tropical island in the Western Pacific for two years. I went to work in shorts, island shirts, and sandals for two years. We went to the beach in January and February. I got addicted to snorkeling. I got addicted to traveling. We went to Thailand and Taiwan and Australia and New Zealand and the islands of Palau and Yap and Saipan. Came back to Chicago after two years and I got a teaching job on the Southside. We continued to travel. Went to Morocco and France and England and Belgium and Iceland and St. Martin and Belize and Toronto and Montreal and the Baja and New York City, again and again.
Babs had her own journey of growth and discovery and at some point was being offered a job as the communications director of a think tank in Manhattan. We went to New York and we looked at real estate and I got certified to teach and administer schools in the State of New York. I had several interviews and was offered a job in Harlem. Babs and I did a lot of soul searching and we came to the conclusion that we would A) make more money in Chicago B) live more cheaply in Chicago and C) experience just as much culture in Chicago.
We returned to Chicago and sold our house in the Andersonville neighborhood. (100 year old houses need lots of upkeep and someone with handyman skills, not intellectuals who hate to get their hands dirty.) Bought a place on the 14th floor of a Mies Van der Rohe building on Lake Shore Drive downtown and got the urban lifestyle we secretly had always wanted. Just had to adjust to having doormen, maintenance guys who fix stuff for you, and garage attendants who park your car for you. Had to get used to being treated with deference. Kind of hard at first, for a guy who grew up poor, the son of a bread truck driver, and who lived large amounts of his adult life poor, as a starving artist sort. I know in my heart that I've worked hard and possess an advanced degree and then some, but somehow the old Talking Heads song keeps running through my head, "How did I get here? How do I work this? Is this my beautiful house? Is this my beautiful wife..." And I pinch myself and it's real.
Now we are contemplating a retirement home in warmer climes. This has set off a whole new round of "Who am I anyway?" That's how I got started on this several post venture. And after much ado and a great deal of navel gazing, the answer I come up with is this, "Life is one long voyage of change and discovery. Every time you think you know who you are, you realize you don't because you've evolved again and you're someone else. A line from a poem I wrote when I was 19 comes to mind. "I've pondered and questioned. It all seems quite clear. Change is the only thing permanent here."
Navel gazing over for the moment. Time to move on to considering other issues. Thanks for bearing with me while I recounted the condensed version of the journey that is my life and my voyage of discovery. Nighty night boys and girls.
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