Roster

We finally got to the time when we could pick and choose. Not at home, mind you. Moms still bought goofy sweaters for us that had elk and reindeer on them and lousy ties that they should have worn to the bridge club and socks like our grandfathers wore. If we went to the movies with the family we suffered through mom's choice: Esther Williams nautical musicals or other mush. Moms didn't like Tarzan or Cowboys or Humphrey Bogart.

At school there was only so much that could be learned in the single classroom built on readin', writin' and <@145>rithmetic. "Wadda y' wanna do when you grow up?"

We were moving to higher education and there was encouragement toward vocations. On the way the teachers hosted parents' nights and things we did in school were displayed. The teachers talked to those parents who showed up and some were receptive. Others imitated fire-plugs or driftwood. "Hello! Hello?"

I asked a kid recently what he wanted to be when he got out of college. "A sports psychologist," and I asked "What is that?" When he told me I thought "gee, I used to do that when I coached soccer." I asked him why and he said "I want to make a ton of money." I should send out bills. Funny, I think I only failed once, and badly, in my coach to player rapport and that was with a kid I thought a lot of and today he's a psychologist. If I treated him somewhat better, he'd be something else today, maybe even something productive.

Parents' night was supposed to get people excited about their kids' potential. Once we set course parents' nights ceased. If things went sour there might be parents' day. Sure as there's hell, parents' day wasn't a party.

Our teacher gave us a menu. Check tantalizing things: engineer, bookkeeper, teacher, bricklayer, chef, doctor, lawyer, indian-chief. Once we found acceptable areas of study, classes would be assigned. Some were required. Everyone had to major in English, History and some sort of Math or other, but no one told us why. With a little P.R., the level of interest in these often-flunked subjects would have gone ballistic. Good God, think of it. English, spoken by not a few people, is a passport to all understanding. Look at raconteurs, storytellers, civilized people. Don't look at lawyers. History is the air we breathe. And Math is absolute logic. "Wadda I need Math for?" Those guys can't put two and two together.

We looked over the menu and other courses were added to strengthen our sense of direction. I took Latin. I took chemistry. I took business economics to fill a void. I took a handful of minors because everyone had to take a handful of minors. Everyone took Phys-Ed and health to be aware of what "fit" was. In later life many flunked-out when they developed sofa-spud syndrome.

It's easier to look back than ahead. It's disgusting too at times.

Latin in 1947 was heard by more people than any other tongue in the world. It was spoken though by a select few. With some encouragement by zealous missionaries I could have become a Jesuit priest and gone into the world just in time when the Roman Catholic church abandoned the Latin Mass.

If I hadn't blown up our kitchen and a bit of our laboratory at school I might have gone on to a career in higher chemistry and maybe blown off an arm or a head. It wasn't the mistakes with chemicals that detoured me from a career but the battles with my algebra teacher who turned me against interest in formulae. If you can't do it with numbers you can't do it with letters. I was a victim of self-imposed blocs.

I loved history and geography. I had too much conscience to become active in political things. If I had a mentor I might have become a cartographer or better yet an explorer and gone to New Guinea with Rockefeller the explorer and met the world's last headhunters.

Look at the possibilities. Perhaps teachers give-up too soon. If, on parent's night, our woodshop class displayed their craftmenship mine would have been a pile of shavings.

"What's that?" My father was puzzled (assuming he was there).

"Ronnie's broom rack."

"And that"

Ronnie's footstool.

Wrong! Ronnie's piles of wood-shavings. It was a bad start and there was only so much white-pine to go around. Take woodshop off the roster.

They move to the lab.

"What's that?" There's a crack in the sink where I dropped the potassium.

"Ronnie's accident"

"And that?" The purple blotch on the floor was from iodine horse play.

"And that?" Above the purple circle on the floor was a black one on the ceiling.

Magnesium powder via the Bunson Burner.

Enough, already.

They don't put some careers on rosters: gravediggers, garbagemen, window-washers, scrub-women, brain surgeons, President, hookers. The classes would be interesting. Now garbage men make more money than CPA's. The least attractive job in the lot is President. About 10% of them were murdered, others were wounded and a lot of them died while they held the position. We need gravediggers and scrub-women and a lot of other jobs that high-school doesn't include. These people get little respect from "their betters" who would be helpless without them and the same people who are rude to them are likely to hold their peers in contempt as well.

A course in good manners never appeared on rosters in any school. If it ever does most people would flunk. All things considered, what was offered was pretty good but at the time when we had to pick and choose we really didn't have a clue.

For my part, all of it was wasted because I didn't follow through. I didn't become a Jesuit. I didn't become qualified to go to New Guinea. I didn't run for President. I didn't mix the right chemicals.

But I wrote this. I studied English and the things I was taught and the influences of teachers, living and dead, along with admiration of writers I have known, living and dead, gave me the courage...and the tools...with which to work.

Thanks!