Tag: education

A story with no in or end, in n-to-the-n parts

Tonight, whilst riding my motorcycle, enjoying the new heel-toe shifter, I watched the sunset.

Lines, thick yet thin, of water vapour — clouds — reflected reds and yellows, some green, some blue, then fading to gray-blue, then gray and finally toward a black sky as the Moon, almost fully illuminated, guided me from its rising position in the east.

I rode.

I rode and I thought.

I thought and I rode.

The Ol’ Wandering Wonderer (or is it the Wondering Wanderer? I’m never sure who) rose in my thoughts as I rode.

I don’t want to be myself, the messenger carrying a message millions of years old.

Who, me?

Who am I?

I do not change, not in the sense of an entity, a set of states of energy, that morphs from one character to another, telling and retelling itself the story that must be told, in the right format at the right place and time.

When?

Where?

How?

The reporter/journalist in me steps in to work up a good lead paragraph in opposition to the writer who wants to hint, leading the writer on many goose chases, down dark alleys, into and out of dead ends, hinting, pulling, dragging, suggesting, selling, cajoling, begging, if need be, to take the reader on a journey where one forgets one’s self, oneself, one, self, further in, farther away from real life, if such exists.

Of course, nothing is real.

Thus, all is imaginary.

Long ago, I quit questioning my role as messenger.

I accepted the inevitability of the possibility that me and my message are messing with someone, something, outside of my imagination.

I cannot know what I do not know.

I can only traverse the boundaries of what I do know, building a library, a repertoire, a list of limits that define what is there but I cannot see or comprehend.

I build upon the works of those who existed before me, of those in my time, with an eye toward those who will exist after.

I do not want to be the messenger simply because I want to believe I am a random set of states of energy that will disperse and be quickly forgotten.

Neither is my choice.

As I rode from suburb to countryside and back, I passed through times, eras, hopes, dreams, despair, disrepair and discoveries. I also passed by a housing estate where the strong smell of marijuana smoke emanated from behind a backyard fence.

I rode past an assisted living facility built beside an elementary school. How many children sitting in their first year class will end up 70 to 90 years later needing someone to change their adult diapers next door? How many already have?

Dozens of insects died on my helmet visor.

Whilst riding, I pondered how I wanted to retire from carrying all the selves with me, either in my thoughts or here on this electronic page.

When I gave up every social media creative outlet but blogging, I decided to cut back entertaining myself and others with the characters I conjure out of the miasmic effervescence which permeates my being, outer shell upon outer shell of shills, shellack, shells and smells which I used to hold up to protect my self from the cruelly arbitrary universe.

It took me long enough but I finally learned there is no one and nothing to protect myself from.

Nothing and no one stops me from being me.

To be sure, there is the general social order which governs our shared space, including language and mannerisms with which we communicate our needs/wants to others.

However, I’m past the point in my rebellion against arbitrary authority that used to fuel my contrariness to speak sarcastically, sardonically, cynically and slyly.

I no longer seek to change the social order.

I have found my peace, where, if I don’t like a driver in front of me waiting to turn at an intersection, I’ll honk my horn, knowing the echoing imitative effect will resonate amongst drivers until, mere minutes later, another driver behind me will incessantly lay on the horn when I hesitate a microsecond to pull out of the way.

I am still the carnival hall of mirrors that comically reflects the behaviour of those around me.

Last night I finished reading a set of practical philosophical ideas by Matthew S. Crawford about shop class as soulcraft first published as an essay, which later became the book I purchased for $4 from a used book seller called McKay’s, “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work“.

In the first “half” of my life, up to about age 47, I lived primarily as a white collar office worker. I’ve chosen to live the second “half” of my life, as long as I’m able, as a blue collar worker.

I never took shop class in high school. I was bred to attend college preparatory classes and did.

I always fought against the college prep life, beginning as best as I can remember around age 16.

Having been bred and nurtured for the college/white collar life but then realizing that I was mentally wired for something else led me in the wrong direction for a long time.

Now, having accomplished all the white collar attainments put before me by the society of my youth, I turn to the life of the tradesman.

So far I’ve stocked the shelves of pet stores and pharmacies, building cardboard displays to help companies sell prepaid “credit” cards, seasonal children’s toys and pet insecticidal pills; cleaned and restocked refrigerators/freezers at a big box store; packed and delivered blood products; stored and packed medical supplies. I’ve built a treehouse. Mowed the lawn again. Learned to ride and maintain a motorcycle. Picked up the hobby of fishing and kayaking. Learned ballroom, East/West Coast swing, zydeco dancing. Dug, planted and harvested a vegetable garden. Built and grew a raised bed herb/flower garden. Constructed a greenhouse. Repaired a barbed wire fence.

What’s next?

Where and to whom do I pass on the message intertwined amongst my sets of states of energy in motion?

How much louder will the tinnitus get?

Regardless, I relax.

No more worries.

No more entertaining others with my cast of characters.

Be me, simply so.

I am comfortable in my skin, no longer pretending to be a person I never really was or will be.

Sunday evening mediation: Life after father

Fading into the background of life, as I decided to do upon retirement in 2007 at age 45, has taught me to appreciate the silence that lack of conversation with other humans has given me.

With silence, then appreciation, comes reflection.

As either Buzz Aldrin or Neil Armstrong (who described himself as a “white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer”) said after they’d traveled to the Moon and back, going on a world tour, fielding questions about what they thought when they were on the Moon, paraphrasing, “The reporters wanted us to answer them like poets or philosophers but if we were either one of those we wouldn’t have been the ones who’d gone to the Moon.”

“I wanted to say something profound, something meaningful,” Buzz Aldrin wrote in his 2009 autobiography, Magnificent Desolation, named for the words he uttered after stepping onto the moon’s surface 40 years earlier. “But I was an engineer, not a poet; as much as I grappled with the quintessential questions of life, questions of origin, purpose, and meaning… I found no adequate words to express what I had experienced. Yet I recognized that people wanted me to provide them with some cosmic interpretation gleaned from the lunar landing.”

In Magnificent Desolation, Aldrin describes telling two different psychiatrists about “always being known as the second man to walk on the moon, and continually being reminded of that fact.” To some extent, it clearly grates on him still. He recently told the National Geographic that being forever introduced as the second man on the moon gets “a little frustrating.”

Portrait of American astronauts, from left, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins, and Neil Armstrong, the crew of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission to the moon, as they pose on a model of the moon, 1969.Ralph Morse/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images/Getty Images

= = = = =

I have been a poet-philosopher my whole life, more apt to write than act.

In the past few weeks I’ve asked myself why I ride a motorcycle. I’ve watched a lot of motorcycle-related films such as “Silver Dream Racer” and “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.”

What do I get out of increasing the tinnitus noise in my head? What do I get from increasing my chances of dying on the road? Why do I put up with stop-and-go city traffic on steep inclines trying to keep my motorcycle from rolling backward whilst changing gears? How can I compare myself to the tattooed/smoking Harley riders or kids on Ninja bikes?

I even drove to the local motorcycle dealerships looking for the next perfect ride, including a barely-used 2015 Honda NC700X:

It’s not about the “what,” “why,” or “how.”

Riding is like climbing a mountain, because it’s there.

Yesterday, I watched a film called “Marjorie Prime” about a mid-21st century future where we have a digital assistant who/which is a projection of someone familiar in our lives, a projection that learns about us as well as about itself so that it can interact with us in an approximation of the loved one it represents.

For those of us who remember, the “Marjorie Prime” digital assistant is like a 3D version of the ELIZA software program from the 1960s.

But for me, the film reminded how much I missed my father. Dad has been dead for over seven years now which has given me time to forgive myself for holding negative thoughts about my father which were over-exaggerated in my thoughts compared to the real person Dad was.

Dad was the only person I cared enough about to share my enjoyment of mechanical things like cars, motorcycles, airplanes, lawnmowers and heat pumps.

After Dad died, sharing the things I’ve learned, like changing the water pump on a 1962 Dodge Lancer, or changing the oil on my 2007 Honda Shadow Spirit…well, there’s just no one like Dad to share them with.

I’ve tried. I really have.

But the people I talk to have lives or body piercings/tattoos/haircuts I don’t understand that get in the way of the mechanical stuff.

As my social life dwindles down to just my wife and me, containing a little social interaction with my boss and a few coworkers (but where I mostly work by myself all day, sometimes taking short phone calls for medical supply orders in between filling orders alone in a stockroom/loading dock area), I realize what I’m missing by not willing to understand others who are different than/from me.

But I am old beyond my years.

When 80- or 90-year old men think I’m close to their age while the calendar says I just recently turned 57, then I know the wisdom of my years shows itself in the thoughts of others.

I wish I had more to give.

Today, I watched a film called “The Flying Dutchmen” about a young man who took his older mentor on 3000-mile motorcycle trip to the Pacific Ocean.

The film reinforced feeling lost without my father’s guidance.

Dad and I didn’t share enough road trips together although we enjoyed several, including an Indycar race weekend in Long Beach, California, a vintage racecar weekend at the Mid-Ohio racecourse, NASCAR races in Bristol, TN, and Charlotte, NC.

He and I also traced the paths of our ancestors on a trip to Norfolk, VA and down the Atlantic Coast to Cape Hatteras, NC.

So, you see, my father was the person with whom I shared road trips about mechanical objects that move fast.

I love my wife dearly and miss her much (thank goodness she’ll be back tomorrow). She and I share everything with each other.

Well, almost everything.

I don’t fully share her love of handmade cards although I appreciate it when she makes one for me.

She doesn’t share my love of tinkering around in the garage on my motorcycle or building structures like treehouses or wooden bridges in the backyard.

Yet we love each other for our differences.

I would like to take a cross-country motorcycle trip with someone I love but my wife won’t ride on a motorbike and my father is dead.

Also, I can’t see taking a Dad version of the “Marjorie Prime” digital assistant on the road with me would have quite the same effect.

I still dream of traveling somewhere, around the world or to the Moon, on a motorcycle or flying machine.

However, already I drove my parents’ station wagon from Knoxville, TN, to Seattle, WA, to Los Angeles, CA and back by myself in Sept/Oct 1984.

I wonder if reliving that 1984 trip on a motorcycle in the next year or two would make that dream of mine a reality? With whom/what would I ride to give me closure?

Would this blog be enough? After all, I’ve written to myself for just about as long as I could write, always with an eye toward readership by more than one person, always freely, never for money.

If I wanted more readership I would stick to posting photos of the sights around me, whether here in our yard or on the road, leaving out personal philosophical commentary, adding notes to enhance the image rather than give insight into the writer. I understand that only a small number of readers are interested in what I have to say about my personal life unless there is something to increase the reader’s personal understanding of self. I used to struggle with the imaginary connection between writer and reader but then realised I needed/wanted to be myself, not a well-crafted writer, so I’ve let go of the image of the Perfect Reader in my thoughts, the Other, the Not-I/Not-Me, the Yin to my Yang, that sort of thing.

No compromise.

I also used to think I had to keep growing, keep improving myself, feed the work ethic, perfect my craft.

But I get bored in pursuit of perfection. I just want to have fun which takes me in many directions, rarely any one direction for very long.

I have read/heard that perseverance in pursuit of perfection pays off proportionally to our sense of purpose. The ol’ 99% sweat, 1% talent saying.

My wife and I are already self-invested millionaires who’ve lived beneath our means whilst working at jobs with modest incomes. Do I really need any more financial/social reward for having fun?

In other words, I’m telling myself it’s okay to say, “Dad, I sure miss you. I always felt like I could have done more to make you proud of me but that was in my own thoughts. Except for your comment that you’d wished I’d gotten a PhD or some other professional degree, you often told me you were proud of me just the way I was, a creative writer who was able to achieve success in many different (and at different levels of) industries without going completely mad by what we both saw, in our shared snobbishness, as the general idiocy of the average self-important human manager.”

I thank those who’ve taken the time to post comments on my blog entries, or clicked that they liked what I’ve posted. In my deepest depressive moments, I’ve found comfort in believing that some future blog post will make someone feel generous enough to like what I’ve written/posted.

I’m an old man now, bordering on becoming a curmudgeon, in part because I see I don’t have as many days ahead of me as I do behind me, shortening my patience, decreasing my tolerance/kindness and increasing my insensitivity.

Even so, I will do my best to heed the advice of Thumper’s mom to listen to what my father might have said, “If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.”

Industrial, cyclical

During my life I have worked in the following industries:

  • Lawncare
  • Lifeguard
  • Restaurant
  • Piano refinishing
  • Department store
  • Door-to-door sales
  • Military
  • Space
  • Sewer
  • Newspaper
  • Personal/business computing
  • Book publishing
  • Merchandising
  • Higher education
  • Census taking
  • Medical

There comes a time whilst working in one industry when I feel I’m ready to explore possibilities in another industry I know nothing about in order to expand my knowledge of our species.

Is now such a time?

200 years later…

Two hundred years after my ancestor explored the hills, rivers and valleys of East Tennessee, including a spot where Big Creek meets the Holston River not far from where my wife grew up, and on Long Island in Kingsport not far from where I grew up, I worked at my first job, a cashier/short order cook for McLendy’s, a fast food restaurant in downtown Kingsport in a building now home to a CPA and travel agency…

My childhood was rather sheltered culturally.

The vast majority of people I knew and met on a daily basis were WASPs. One exception — my first and second grade school years where my best friend, Kevin, was African-American and fell in love with my sister.

From 3rd grade (age 8) until 10th grade (age 16), I only knew a few Jewish friends and two Hispanic friends who were not WASPs.

In 10th grade, I turned 16 and, with my father’s help, purchased my first car, a gold Dodge Dart. To help pay for the car, I started working at a “real” job because my lawn mowing business didn’t bring in enough income for car expenses — monthly car payment, gas/oil and insurance (the last of which my father paid).

I question whether a fast food entry-level position is real work but for a suburbanite living in the Tennessee foothills it counted because I had official training, wore a uniform and had to punch a time clock to record my work hours.

McLendy’s exposed me to the “big city” life, or so I thought, basically because I was surrounded with people who were not my high school mates.

One workmate was an older guy (probably 30 years old) who had spent 10 years in the U.S. Army as a bazooka specialist who could not find a civilian job that took advantage of his unique skills handling a shoulder-fired weapon. He constantly complained about the lack of civilian support for a person like him which the U.S. Government had invested thousands of dollars training for war. He advised me to be careful if I decided on a military career and get an assignment (MOS) which had useful civilian skills like office clerk or driver.

Another workmate was about my age — Greg Watterson.

Have I told you about him? He was the first African-American person I got to know as an adult.

Yeah, my life was pretty sheltered culturally.

Greg was surprised I held no bias against him and I didn’t know why.

I didn’t know about ethnic cliques or subcultural biases except remotely through the evening news.

Greg was shocked I knew nothing about him because he knew a little bit about me.

By the time I started at McLendy’s I had shown an interest in acting, having participated in my high school’s performance of the musical “Bye Bye Birdie.”

Other of my fellow actors/high school mates had made friends with actors in our rival high school in Kingsport, Dobyns-Bennett.

One such actor was Justin Faire whose nickname was Justin Fairy.

At age 16 I understood there were boys/men who showed effeminate traits but I didn’t understand that effeminate boys/men are usually homosexuals.

Justin was (and from I’ve seen on Facebook still is) very effeminate.

So was Greg.

Greg was shocked that not only did I show no animosity toward him as an African-American but also no animosity toward him as an effeminate man.

At first he thought it was probably because I knew his father was important, a local business owner on the city council.

Surely, Greg asked, I had seen his father’s business, a famous liquor store in town?

Nope, my parents weren’t big drinkers.

Sure, Greg asked, I had heard about his father’s comments in city council meetings?

Nope, my father was opposed to us watching TV news and because I didn’t live in the city of Kingsport I didn’t pay attention to Kingsport-related news articles in the Kingsport newspaper.

So, Greg concluded, I didn’t show respect for Greg because of his father.

Nope, Greg had my respect for him because he was a person, not because of someone or something else.

Greg told me he was close friends with several of my classmate, including Justin Faire and Jeff Fleischer, if I knew what Greg meant.

Greg laughed when it was obvious I didn’t get what he was talking about.

At that point in my life, I had not yet kissed a girl, I mean really kiss a girl (not counting the boy/girl party in 5th grade when, at age 10, I had to go in a basement closet with a girl, Renee Wells (who later was pregnant at age 14) to kiss her after a “spin the bottle” game put us two together); or the time I pressed my lips to a friend, Patricia, when we were nine years old to see what kissing was all about.

Therefore, I certainly didn’t know or understand why two guys would want to kiss each other or anything else that has to do with homosexual activity — it just wasn’t a part of my upbringing — something that Greg had shared with his friends Justin and Jeff.

Greg said that he knew about me already even though I didn’t know about him.

I couldn’t see how.

Greg said that I had been a really nice friend to his friends Justin and Jeff and they had mentioned my name to Greg.

Ummm…what?

Greg laughed. He was playing with me in a way that I had seen Justin and Jeff play games with me verbally. I didn’t understand it was how homosexual men flirted.

Greg said that I was as clueless about his verbal wordplay with him as I had been with Justin and Jeff.

Times like those reminded me that my set of thoughts are often fogged and closed in by a type of social disconnection similar to but not the same as Asberger’s syndrome, a type of mild autism, a mental condition I have dealt with my whole life whereby I see myself in conversation with others, completely comprehend what they are saying but another part of me keeps me separate from them as a natural protection against their ability to make fun of my disconnection.

Girls/women in high school also joked that I was clueless about their flirtatious advances toward me when, in fact, I was fully aware of their intentions and kept my distance.

Today, I drove my mother around downtown Kingsport on the way to see some pre-owned/used motorcycles…

As I drove her around, I remembered my youth and my adulthood all the way up to the present day.

I don’t understand what is supposed to be my species.

I don’t understand why I, a set of states of energy in motion here in this particular place and time for no other reason than happenchance interconnectedness, has a recorded history that makes no sense. We live in this vast universe of which Earth’s history, and the history of only one species’ previous progenitors, is of little meaning, is it not?

Why are our ancestors and what they did of any importance to us when we haven’t yet begun to explore the cosmos, living and dying over and over again on this habitable rock?

Whilst rehashing my father’s side of the family in my thoughts and on this blog, I found a history of my mother’s side of the family I’d recorded in another blog entry years ago. Despite rereading the entry, I still don’t understand why it has any significance — aren’t all of just the same despite outer appearances to the contrary?:

=========

From “The history of Blount County, Tennessee and its people, 1795-1995,” pg. 352, article 1023 “Pioneer family from DEFFITAHL to TEFFETELLER”   In 1748, a young man named Johannes DEFFITHAL left southern Germany. He traveled to Rotterdam, Holland where he boarded a ship to America. The ship was the “Hampshire” and it docked in Philadelphia, PA. Due to “Americanization”, the immigrant’s name was translated into ”John DEVENDALL”. John later moved to MD and his name was changed again, this time to TIEFENTELLER. He died in 1775. That same year, his son Michael was married.

==========

Subject:               Origins of the Diffendall’s/Deffendall’s

Post Date:           January 30, 2005 at 12:03:39

Message URL:   http://genforum.genealogy.com/diffendall/messages/7.html

Forum: Diffendall Family Genealogy Forum

Forum URL:        http://genforum.genealogy.com/diffendall/

I recently ran across a Rotterdam, Netherlands record, unfortunately I was unable to copy it, that mentioned a Johann Tiefenthaler leaving for the U.S. at the same time and same ship and arriving in the same location as Johannes Divendall (other different spellings have been used for this last name.)

I believe these two to be the same person. I then checked for a Tiefenthaler in the southern part of Germany, particularly close to or on the Rhein River. Sure enough, I found one Johann Tieffenthaler, christened 25 Aug. 1718 in Bickensohl, Freiburg, Baden, Germany, father: Christoph Tiefenthaler who married Susanna Rieffler/Riessler on 9 Aug. 1707 in Bickensohl. This Johann has an older sister named Anna Barbara Tieffenthaler, christened 9 Dec. 1711 in Bickensohl. There are more Tieffenthaler’s in this region. Next, I checked for a Barbara Weise in Freiburg, Baden, Germany region. I found Barbara Wiss, christened 19 Feb. 1725 in Katholisch, Elzach, Baden, Germany. Her father is Joseph Wiss and mother is Agatha Maier b. 5 Feb. 1706 in Elzach. This I believe to be a very strong lead to our common ancestor, while I have found nothing on Hans Jorg Dievedal except that he was deported back to the Netherlands from England as a reject for American colonization in 1709 due to belonging to the wrong religion.

If anyone can help with this it would be greatly appreciated, you too Eric.

Karen Deffendall Vogt

What is love?

Although my wife has lived in my thoughts for 79% of my life, other women have lived in my thoughts.

In my sophomore year in high school, I saw a flyer/poster on the school hallway walls announcing tryouts/auditions for a high school musical.

I can sing in groups but never performed well in karaoke, unable to sing by myself; however, I can mimic the voices of others who sing in my voice range.

Despite my lack of singing or dancing skills, I called my parents from the school pay phone and told them I’d be late coming home because I was going to audition for a play.

I didn’t know how to audition.

I knew nothing about a director looking not only for talented performers but also for people who generally fit the description of actors.

Dozens of us showed up for auditions and were immediately separated into boys and girls.

Then the director had groups of us, by gender, walk onto the stage and were arranged by height and body build, reassigned seating in the auditorium according to our fit into a character’s looks.

Finally, the director focused on the interaction of a few characters, pairing up boys and/or girls to recite lines from a script for speaking parts, or to sing lines from a songbook for lead characters.

I did not know I had a unique on-stage presence that attracted the attention of the director, Paula.

Paula wished that I could sing but I could not and did not pretend I could. Instead, being generally nervous in front of others, I “acted out,” as my parents liked to say, to detract attention away from my nervousness.

Did I mention that I fall in love easily? Again, a reaction to my nervousness with others. Fall in love with them — fawning attention on others in deference to their personality traits that no one else has noticed — and they won’t see the real me (or so I hope).

Paula became not only the director of the musical I joined, she also became my homeroom teacher and classroom teacher.

In the classroom, Paula assigned us to keep a personal journal, a journal that we also knew Paula would read for writing style tips.

Being nervous about my personal thoughts, I saw Paula as the audience for whom I was writing the journal, fawning my attention on her and backhandedly giving her the loving compliments she was not receiving from others, the compliments disguised in coded writing in an effort to detract her attention from me personally and focus instead on the quality of my writing.

Little did I know that my writing, by no means perfect, worked perfectly well as an extended love letter to Paula I did not mean to write.

Unfortunately, I threw that journal away (or can’t find it easily). I remember writing profusely about breaking up with my first serious girlfriend, which coincided with the creation of the journal. Paula wrote me personal notes in the margins about temporary love, which fed my later journal entries, including sci-fi short stories I wrote to entertain Paula, including terrible endings which killed off the main character because I was too tired to write a proper ending.

At some point in time, Paula fell in love with me.

I thought when we sat together on the edge of the front of the stage and talked for hours that all the stuff she said to me was the same stuff that she as a teacher would say to any other student.

I assumed our conversations were both personal in nature but words we didn’t care if they were published in the school newspaper.

I never realised that the words she shared with me were for my ears only.

She was a Teacher, and I was a Student.

It never crossed my thoughts to read innuendo into what she was telling me, or trying to tell me.

Any private relationship problems she had with her husband I shared with fellow cast members in hopes we could find a way to cheer up Paula, bring her out of the doldrums and chase away the blues.

Little did I know that the fellow cast members thought I was coming on to them, seeing how close my relationship with Paula was.

I was, and am, an introverted nerd at heart.

Perhaps I told you about Paula inviting me to her house for private practice of my speaking lines on a night when her husband was out of town? I’m sure I have so I won’t repeat what happened.

Suffice it to say that my being a nervous introverted nerd, an Eagle Boy Scout and a person trained to respect the roles we play, such as Teacher/Student, gave me the tools I needed to prevent Paula from jeopardizing her place in society.

Too easily I feign falling in love with someone in order to keep my distance and protect my inner core from getting hurt.

Paula knew that about me from my writing yet my actions still seemed to get her to fall in love with me and want to stay close to me until my senior year in high school when she fell in love with another student who got her pregnant, married her and went on to be a well-paid news anchor.

Paula probably thought more about me in my sophomore and junior years in high school than I thought about her.

In my senior year, when yearbooks were given out, I walked around school getting autographs. I was standing in the school theatre talking with former cast members when Paula snuck up to me and casually asked to see my yearbook.

I let her take it and didn’t notice when she returned the yearbook to my side.

Surely I read what she wrote back then. If I did, I don’t remember.

A few days ago, whilst clearing up memorabilia, looking for any photographs or yearbooks that mentioned my time in our high school production of “Hello Dolly,” I found what Paula had written me.

I read it as if I had read it for the first time and was shocked by the emotions in the words she’d written me.

We never know when the person who falls in love with us could have changed our lives so dramatically, especially when the love we’re displaying back to them is a front to protect us ourselves from love.

Paula, I’m glad you were able to give and share your love with someone else who loved you back the way you needed it.

Here are the words she wrote me, if you can read them…

When the robin calls

People, perhaps expert, or opinionated, have said that the transition into adulthood includes a public ceremony.

Birth of a child…

Graduating from college…

Completing boot camp…

After I left Georgia Tech, I rebooted my college career, taking classes at the local university, ETSU, where my [future] in-laws had graduated in the 1930s when the school was called East Tennessee State Teachers College.

I delivered telephone books, worked at Montgomery Ward and later at a local pizza joint (spinoff of authentic Chicago pizza place) to make spending money while using a bank loan co-signed by my father to pay for school.

Every one I worked for said I was too smart and too serious to be working for them.

I saw myself having an extended childhood.

Even now, after decades of jobs ranging from stocking Walmart freezers to negotiating contracts as a senior manager at a $2B corporation, I’m not sure I ever grew up or found a job I loved doing for long.

As my mother recently noted, my interests change on a whim because I get bored easily.

Sometimes I keep doing the same thing because I’m too lazy/unmotivated to change out of the repetitious activity in front of me.

Regardless of where I’ve worked, what I’ve done or who I was, I’ve always looked for something new or challenging.

Learning how to…

  • Cast lures to catch fish.
  • Skydive.
  • Build a treehouse.
  • Maintain a late model Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce.
  • Compete in a West Coast Swing dance contest.
  • Ride a Honda Shadow motorcycle.
  • Grow a vegetable garden.
  • Revamp a spreadsheet as head of high-level technical support for a multinational firm.

Overall, a person who seeks individualistic goals.

I can be a team player when needed but I don’t seek out team activities.

Looking back at my life, that seems to best describe me.

I was oft a solitary child, reading or writing by myself.

Now, in my retirement years I support a large corporation by working at a subsidiary whilst packing medical supplies, alone in my thoughts most of the day.

What’s next in my life?

Where is a challenge worth pursuing?

I’m ready for something new — affordable, not involving too many people, able to nurture and keep my internal life intact.

In other words, growing vegetables is easier than I thought.

Factoid

A former coworker and current fellow churchgoer, Margaret Matthees Wilkie, was runner-up in the 42nd National Spelling Bee:

The winner was 14-year-old Susan Yoachum of Texas, an 8th grade student at Hill Junior High School in Dallas, with the winning word “interlocutory”. Yoachum later became a well-regarded journalist, rising to the post of political editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. She died of breast cancer at age 43 in June 1998.

Second place went to 14-year-old Margaret Matthees of Huntsville, Alabama, who fell on “egalitarian”. David Groisser, age 12, of Brooklyn, finished third, misspelling “quoits” as “quytes”.

First prize was $1000, second was $500, and third was $250.

Time flies!