The Confusion 'Principal' - Autobiographical

From the first day that I was in Mrs. Hibbett's English class, she mispronounced my name.  She insisted that I should be called 'L-Jon' instead of 'L-Gun', the way my family pronounced my name.  I took it as an insult but even still if she insisted on calling me 'L-Jon', I could tolerate it for a while.  I guess that I thought that maybe eventually she would get it right.  Who was I to correct an English teacher on how to pronounce something?  Except it irked me.  It was my name and as far as I could tell she handled everyone else's name just as they pronounced it.  Why was she singling me out as the only student who was mispronouncing a first name?

She had ignored the first couple of times when I had attempted to correct her; she persisted calling me L-Jon.  The more I tolerated it the longer it would linger as a continuing irritation.

To that point in life I was a rather quiet, generally shy person.  I was a listener more so than a talker and a watcher more so than a doer.  I tried to never make trouble for myself or anyone else.  Then, one day all of that changed.

I don't know why it happened as it did or even what happened to trigger it.  Maybe it was that my voice had begun to deepen and hair had begun to replace the fuzz of youth in my private places. I might have even got up on the proverbial wrong side of the bed.  Sin of all sins, I ignored Mrs. Hibbett calling someone named 'L-Jon' to the front of the class to do board work. It was a silent protest and despite her repeating the request, I was sitting there staring into space. I  completely ignored her while trying not to notice that every eye in the classroom was suddenly trained upon me.

She got up from her desk, and walked over to my side of the room. We were seated alphabetically, of course. So I was pretty-much at the back of the room and furthest from the door as my last name started with a 'W'.  All the other tail-enders of the arbitrary alphabetical segregation were seated in the same ghetto of surnames around me. Mrs. Hibbett walked right up to my desk. She angrily planted her high heels into  the resilient tile floor and reiterated that she wanted someone named 'L-Jon' to do board work.

"Excuse me but are you talking to me?"

"Who else would I be talking to, 'L-Jon'?"

"Oh, that's the problem.  My name is pronounced 'L-Gun' not 'L-Jon'."

"It should be pronounced 'L-Jon'," she insisted.

"That is how you choose to pronounce it.  It is my name and I can pronounce it any way I damned-well want to!"

Of course, she sent me to the office.  I was sitting in the outer office awaiting a conference with either Mr. Smith the assistant principal or Mr. Irvine as the latter walked by and said, "Bill, what brings you down here?"

"Mrs. Hibbett sent me to see you."

"Come in, then."

I got up and followed him into his office, closing the door behind me.

"Have a seat," Mr. Irvine said as he offered me a jawbreaker from a jar that he kept on his desk.  "Okay tell me the story."

"Mrs. Hibbett has been mispronouncing my name ever since the first day I reported to her class."

"How do ya mispronounce Bill?"

"Well, that's just it.  My name is Elgon."

"It is?"

"Yes sir.  I think you got Bill from my last name being first on my transcript from military school."

"Oh, oh yeah, that must be how that happened.  Well, be that as it may, it is your name.  I suppose you could pronounce it 'Mike' if you wanted to."

"Well, that is sort of what I told her."

"That is silly.  Why would she send you down here over something like that?"

"It was probably the way I expressed it."

"What exactly did you say?"

"I told her I could pronounce my name any way I damned-well wanted to."

"Oh, well, yes that would matter," he said.  "That is over the top.  It is not good to swear at a teacher, especially in front of the entire class.  You disrespected her and undermined her authority."

"I know that.  I usually don't swear.  I didn't intend to undermine her authority it is just that she belligerently counters everything I say to her in class, always quick with a sarcastic come back.  I have been taking it all along.  It just made me very mad that she refuses to say my name the way I want it to be pronounced."

"Well, she is a very good teacher.  It is just that sometimes her style does not agree with certain people.  Are you learning from her?"

"Yes, I am learning.  It is just the sarcasm that bothers me and her refusal to pronounce my name the way that I prefer."

"Well, I want you to go back to class and apologize to her in front of everyone for swearing and being disrespectful.  As for the name thing, well, I have to agree with you on that one.  I'll have a talk with her about it."

He hurriedly wrote out a hall pass and told me to return to class and refrain from using harsh language in the future.

When I returned to Mrs. Hibbett's classroom, every eye was again trained upon me.

"Well?" she asked.

"Mr. Irvine said that I am to apologize to you for the language I used and for being disrespectful and undermining your authority."

"And..."

"I'm sorry for that and it won't happen again."

"That's good."

"But he agrees with me that it is my name and I can expect it to be pronounced any way I want it to."

I could see her face redden. Whether it was from embarrassment or rage I was not sure.

"Well from now on I will call you Mr. Williams.  That is how you pronounce your last name, isn't it?"

"Yes ma'am."

I was grateful that at that moment the bell rang.  Unfortunately, she wanted me to stay after class for a bit.

When everyone left the room, she closed the door.

"What is your problem with me?  Really?"

"It is just that you refuse to pronounce my name the way I was used to and when I corrected you on it you continually ignored me.  Other than that I don't like being put down all the time."

"Put down?"

"Your sarcasm bothers me.  If I said to you what you say to me in class I would live in the office."

"I see.  Well, I was unaware that you had a problem with any of that..."

"Look, if you don't mean anything by it, I guess that's okay.  I was not in the mood for any of it today, that's all.  I am really very sorry that I swore at you.  I won't do it again."

"Go on to your next class."

Gracious Gifts

Writing hungry, living humble,

poetic messages serves to feed

the masses who starve

for the Divine truth.

The purpose

beyond us,

positive

attitude,

distortion

filtering lies

shadows soft spoken.

In the beautiful background,

knowing the truth is still there.

Falling from grace did end Eden.

Veiled beneath illusion's curtain,

The world's forward front's fabric,

before eyes, masking perfection

with layers of soul's deceptions,

our souls despair what was lost.

Paradise arrives in mind's state,

Thru prayer's positive powers,

match God's gracious gifts. 

Productive Procrastination

A while ago, as a result of a gross error, my family was forced to move on nothing more than a month's notice. I had never gone through an eviction before. It was not because of late rent payments or anything so comprehensible. It was something very silly.

A broken sprinkler head shot up, piercing the metal soffit outside of the master bedroom. At night, when the sprinklers were on, water streamed up through the hole and into the attic. From there it ran down the wall and out through the baseboards and under the master bedroom carpet. Literally, it soaked the floor as well as ruining the ceiling and walls. The damage was excessive but hardly our fault. Who in their right mind would place a sprinkler head on a riser, in a flowerbed directly under a soffit? Then again who would categorically blame me for 'willfully' running a garden hose up through 'said' hole in the soffit and damaging the house in such a bizarre way?

Landlords!

At any rate, on Super Bowl Sunday, the very night of the infamous Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake halftime 'wardrobe malfunction', we were served with our eviction notice. We had a month to pack up and move out. Reasoning with the landlord proved impossible. Even demonstrating how the damage happened couldn't change his mind. So, we found another rental house, one that was actually much nicer and closer to the kids' schools. Before the end of the month, we moved.

For the most part, the movers consisted of my son, Rob, and me. Rob was a senior in high school. He took a couple of days off to help me. I had to hurriedly take a vacation. When my daughters, Amanda and Sarah, were finished with school for the day, they helped their mother with moving the lighter things. Somehow, we made it through the ordeal. Families have to do those sorts of things.

As you might imagine, Rob and I did the majority of the heavy moving of the appliances, the spinet piano and the larger pieces of furniture. Regardless how big and strong my son and I were, we were at least two people short of the proper number necessary for negotiating that damned piano down the ramp from the moving truck, across the front threshold and into the sunken living room of our new place. The experience was both backbreaking and life-threatening.

Afterwards, my son and I were so physically spent that we wanted nothing more than to soak in a tub of hot water and take a long, well-deserved rest. Yet the truck still contained several more items, some of them fairly large, and others, like the refrigerator, were very heavy as well. My son recovered far more quickly than I did. Kids are resilient like that. Old people notice those things and envy youth.

When I walked up the ramp and into the back of the truck, Rob was anticipating grabbing hold of one of the larger objects and together carrying it into the house. He stood in utter amazement, if not disbelief, as I picked up one and only one rather light box. I turned and, taking my time, I carried it into the house. When I returned up the ramp and back into the truck, I gathered up some more of the lighter, loose things.

"Dad, what are you doing?" Rob asked me.

"This is called 'productive procrastination'," I said. "It is the appearance of being busy or doing necessary things of lesser importance while, in fact, doing little or nothing to minimize the expenditure of energy due to the gross lack of inspiration, motivation, or strength."

Rob shook his head, but at least I made him smile on a day that had been less than fun.

The Way

Faith, not
Belief, is 
What we need. 
It's the way we 
Receive a
Fuller life. 

A Reverence For Rain

It rained here yesterday. It has been doing that quite a bit lately. Despite the intensity the volume rain here can sometimes achieve, the climate is considered semi-arid. Florida is almost like a desert at times, especially during extended summertime droughts. I guess that's a reason for The Sunshine State moniker. There have been entire months without a drop to quench the soil's parched palate.

Living here for so much of my life has been with strange acquiescence to the prevalent weather conditions. Missing the more regular rains of living up north, when it does rain I always take pleasure in the resurrected memories of my past.

Association of the rain with peace and rest comes from being a farm boy. When it rained I didn't have to work in the fields or do much of anything else. I'd sit with my dad and watch the rain. The crops were happy in their fields. My dad was happy his investment in the grain he'd sewn in the fields would be returned with a profit during the fall harvest. The world around me felt right.

Enjoying the rain is a part of the farm life within that has never departed me. Regardless of the intervening years, I revere rain in a way that probably seems strange to most of the city dwellers that are my neighbors.

When I settled down, I married a farm girl from the other side of the planet world. It rained for one of the days we went to her family home to visit her parents and siblings. They knew nothing about me, really. There was a huge language barrier between us. The Asian language I spoke was not the one they understood. Still, like me they regarded the rain with joy as we sat quietly under the protection of their roof. Content to sit with them, they felt as I did. There is much less distance between people who share love for the land and growing things.

We had a front porch on our Victorian style home in Connecticut where my wife and I spent many years raising our three kids. Whenever it rained and both of us were home, we'd sit on the porch swing together, savoring the cool air and the soothing sounds of the raindrops on the roof over our heads. Those moments have become many of the best memories I have of married life. There was peace in the world and ease in my life unlike anything I have known since. The rain was a bond to our childhoods that my wife and I shared.

What Are The Odds? - A True Story

Living and learning in California, and being paid for it - what could be better?

When I was assigned to study at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey. On weekends, my friends went to the beach in Carmel or I drove up to San Francisco to spend a day sight seeking. On longer holiday weekends, we drove Los Angeles.

We didn't have to drive far to find stunning scenery. The Lone Cypress is on the picturesque coastline south of the Monterey and Carmel area. Big Sur has some of the most spectacular views in the world. I spent a fortune in film for my Minolta taking many pictures.

One weekend in the latter part of the summer, my Chinese Mandarin class, most of whom were also a part of the Air Force Training Squadron stationed at DLI, attended a picnic at the Big Sur State Park. Due to the nature of the intense training we were receiving, any time away from the Institute was a welcome diversion. It was a great way to loosen up and, in the process, get to know the other people in the class without all the formalities of military discipline.

For the most part, it was a traditional cookout, replete with hamburgers, hot dogs and all the fixings. On the side there were baked beans, coleslaw, corn on the cob and watermelon. The class invited all of our Chinese language instructors. Each of them contributed to the meal, providing a sampling of the best Chinese cuisine.

As the afternoon wound down, we grew weary of playing volleyball and horseshoes. We cleaned up, packed up and loaded up our cars for our return north.

My roommate, Chris, had a car. I rode down to the picnic with him. Each of us had a few beers over the course of the afternoon. In lieu of being able to drive afterwards, Chris consumed much less than I did. Still, as we drove back up the coast, we both found the pressures on our bladders growing intense. The urgency to find relief consumed our thoughts and dominated our conversation.

If you have never driven on the Pacific Coast Highway, let me explain. Between Big Sur State Park and Carmel, there were exactly no filling stations, no roadside rest areas or anywhere else to stop to use the facilities. I suggested to Chris that we find a nice long lane that wound up from the highway into the coastal hills. It seemed like the perfect solution and so the next time we saw an entrance to a lane, Chris slowed down and we turned off the road. There was a fence to either side of the lane as we ascended the hill. When we reached a locked gate, we stopped. It seemed far enough off the road that no one would observe us as we relieved ourselves on the grass.

Where I grew up, on a farm in Ohio, it was natural. Whenever I was out in a field or a cow pasture and needed to take a leak, I did. The place we picked kind-of reminded me of a cow pasture back home, except for the rather steep incline of the lane's ascent from the highway to the gate.

As Chris was on the upside of his car and I was on the downside, each of us purging our bladders, another car came up the lane and startled us. It underscored the random bad luck of our choice.

Inside the car was a California Highway Patrol officer. As we learned rather quickly, the lane and the surrounding land was his. "I don't appreciate you boys peeing on my front yard."

What are the odds?

"I'm very sorry, officer," Chris said. "We didn't intend any offense. It's just there is nowhere around here to, well..."

"You boys are in the military, I take it."

"Yessir," Chris said.

"Fort Ord?'

"Nosir," I said. "We're in the Air Force. We're stationed at DLI."

"The language school."

"Yessir," Chris said.

"I was in the Air Force myself," the officer said, "Security Police. Spent my entire tour of duty in one of the coldest places on the face of the Earth."

"Minot, North Dakota?" I ventured a guess.

"How did you guess?" the officer said, then chuckled. "You've been there?"

"I've heard stories. It's one of the places they send people like us if we washout of language school. Because of our security clearances, they train us to be SP's."

"What's in Minot?" Chris asked.

"A whole lot of holes in the ground," the officer said.

"ICBM's in silos," I explained to Chris.

"Oh, those kind of holes"

"Yeah," I said.

"You know what, I'm off-duty right now. I really don't want to deal with any more paperwork today. And seeing as how you boys are in the Air Force and all, I'll accept your apologies. But, in the future, please don't pee in other peoples' front yards, okay?"

"Yessir," Chris and I said in unison.

"Drive carefully. I'll back up my car a bit so you can get around me."

"Yessir," Chris said, and then smiled. "Thank you, officer."

When we were back inside the car and backing down the lane, Chris glanced my way. "Great idea you had there, dude!"

"Hey, I couldn't hold it any longer. Could you?'

"No."

"There you go, then."

"What are the odds? I mean seriously, what are the friggin' odds?"

Skyrocket To Obscurity

The anticipated private rebellion came on schedule. It was borne of the not-so-strange but uniquely teen combination of a near mature body, almost mature mind, wide mood swings and erratic hormone levels. I don't think my dad and mom understood me. I know that it is the mantra of all teen angst, but my parents REALLY did not understand me.

I saved some money from my allowance and from helping my dad on the farm. I borrowed some from my sister and a few bucks from Mom. There was a bass guitar and amplifier offered for sale in the want ads of the Springfield Sun. Mom drove me there.

The guy who was selling the equipment lived a few blocks from a Baptist church my family used to attend. We learned from talking to the man that the Fender Precision Bass guitar and Univox amplifier and speaker cabinets were only a few months old. He'd been the bassist for a Gospel band that played at the church we used to attend but the band broke up and he could no longer afford to make the payments ont he equipment. So he was selling them for what he still owed. It was perfect.

First, I learned whatever I could from musicians, kids I knew who played in the high school orchestra. Mike, a friend I made the first day I transferred to the high school, played bass in the school's string ensemble. He also knew piano and a couple of other instruments. I had some experience playing alto saxophone when I was in junior high. I already knew the principal difference of a bass guitar was that it had frets on the neck, which would make it easier to make notes.

As a member of my school's a'capella choir, I was accustomed to reading sheel music. During one of my study hall periods, my instructor, Miss Grimes was teaching me how to compose music,  something I really wanted to do. In addition to this sort of instant immersion method of learning music, I suffered through several bass guitar lessons in a music store at the Upper Valley Mall in Springfield.

In time, word got out that I was a bass guitarist. A small garage band that two brothers formed asked me if I would audition for them. Borrowing my dad's pick-up, I loaded my equipment and went over to their house. Along with Chris, the band's rhythm guitarist and personal friend of both brothers, we jammed as a quartet. We played some songs that each of us knew. In the course of the audition, they learned that not only could I play bass well enough to be in the band, but also I could sing while playing. When you are playing from the bass clef, singing lead vocals from the treble clef is a bit of a challenge.

Afterwards, every weekend we would practiced, whether it was at Dave and Rick's house, Chris' garage or the vacant house that we were restoring on my dad's farm. As I was the only one in the bad with a driver's licence and a car, I was often the transportation between houses. Whenever the guys came over to my place, I had to borrow my dad's pick-up to haul all of our equipment. The guys brought changes and clothes and sleeping bags and spent the weekend. If we weren't rehearsing, we did a lot of things farm kids do that boys from the suburbs know little or nothing about, like skinny-dipping in a deep pool of the creek that ran through my dad's farm. Sometimes we'd climb up into the haymow and use a rope to swing down from stacks of hay, pretending to be Tarzan. Other times, we took turns riding my horse. When the need arose, we peed on trees and bushes. Over the course of a Spring and Summer, we bonded as a band and as friends.  

Anytime we practicing at Chris' place, it was a drag. After a while, the neighbors would complain and we would have to move all of our equipment down to the basement. What was nice about play in the garage was all the neighborhood's girls that were our ages or a little younger were dancing in the driveway as we attempted to play some of their favorite songs.

Mainly, we practiced at Dave and Rick's house. It was where Rick had his drum kit set up nearly all the time. Rick hated tearing the kit down just to take it somewhere to practice for an afternoon, but it couldn't always be avoided. Dave and Rick's mom didn't mind if we practiced at the house as long as she wasn't home. Chris' mom was even less tolerant. That was one of the reasons we used the vacant house on my dad's farm.

Dave and Rick shared that room with all the amplifiers and the drums. After the first time auditioning there, I never again hauled my bass amplifier and cabinet to Dave and Rick's for a practice. There was no room. I plugged my bass into Dave's amp. Even though it was less than ideal, it worked well enough for practice. The only time we ever played with my amp was in the house on my dad's farm, or on the rare occasion that we performed some live venue.

Early in the fall of my junior year, my sister, who was the president of her sorority, hired us to play for a party. We got paid, which technically made us professional musicians. We set up outside in a garage next to the chapter house. With garage door open wide, played for about three hours. We played everything we knew, even some things I had written but we had never really practiced all that much. We played several requested songs, most of them numbers The Beatles or the Rolling Stones recorded. We continued practicing and performing whenever we could arrange for a gig. All the while we were not only improving as individual musicians, but also in tightness of our synchroniation. Sometimes we would pool our resources and purchase something to improve the band's public address system. Other times we'd upgrade out ownindividual equipment.  

Our performance schedule schedule the summer before my senior year was busy. My sister got us into an arts festival at Wittenberg University, where she attended college. We performed two songs, our best, before an audience of perhaps a hundred, no one out ages. They didn't seem to be there to hear our musical 'combo' - as they called us.

Later we performed at the Clark County Fair. It was free, outdoor concert. Still, it gave us a lot of necessary exposure. It was also the very first time I wore a white satin suit my mother had made for me. My parents, friends, one of my sisters and my nephew were there to witness the performance. I personally felt that we sucked horribly, but everyone in the audience was polite. We couldn't have been that bad. A few people asked for our contact numbers and we got a few gigs playing at parties.

There is a monumental difference for a live band performing outdoors as opposed to performing indoors. If you think about it, the acoustics are completely different. The ambiance is strange. Even though we were technically outside whenever we were performing in a garage, the building behind us lent some support to the sound. Any musician who has ever performed outdoors can tell you it just sounds weird. The feedback of the echoes is missing. Everything about the music feels flat and dead.

During my senior year, Chris' mother got us a gig at the Clark County Children's Home. I considered my sister paying us for the gig at her sorority as charity, the Children's Home was really our first paying gig. It was a very big deal for the band.

We played two hours and every one of us performed a solo piece. Mine was a bluesy riff I was working on for a rock opera called One Thane. I was composing it for my Senior English class. Why Senior English? The composition was based on the epic poem, Beowulf. A portion of the finished rock opera was to be sung in the original Old English, as I had set the lyric to music.

When we played out our scheduled time and exhausted most of the songs we knew, the children cheered for us to return to play something else. We gave them two more songs. Then the home's administrators took charge. It was getting late and, anyway, we needed to be on our way.

It was a strange evening for us as a band, in a good sort of way. We really clicked, perhaps for the first time. We sounded damned good. It was almost as if we awakened in a future time when we were seasoned veterans of the road.

The children were incredibly appreciative of our music. They were dancing, singing along, cheering - some of them were even hovering close to the stage watching our every move, as if we were stars. I have to admit, at first that felt creepy, but when I realized the kids were into us, it felt great. That sensation could become addicting enough for someone to leave home, friends and family for months at a time to continue feeding the need. Before that concert, I didn't understand the motivation of stars to perform live.

For the first time ever, some of the audience asked us for autographs! We signed a couple dozen. Maybe they were just an overly appreciative audience. Regardless, it was a night of many firsts for the band.

From that point on, I believed we were destined for greatness. We began rehearsing the songs I had written for One Thane. It was hard at first. The arrangements were strange for Dave and Rick. The beat was clearly not typical of Rock and Roll. It was more like Jazz with a smattering of Blues.

I was doing the project with my friend, Brice. He wrote the percussion portions of the pieces. I did the lyrics, the bass lines and the lead guitar. The rhythm guitar played off the lead lines for the most part, with some room for the rythm to become a counter to the lead guitar work at times. There was a place that could have used keyboards, but we didn't have a piano though we probably could have persuaded a friend to play the piano pieces separately and overdubbed it later.

Throughout the winter, the rehearsals continued, every Saturday afternoon and sometimes Sunday as well. A few times we huddled in a room in a very large and nearly restored farmhouse on my dad's property to play it with every instrument cranked up to be louder than everything else. The resulting cacophony was nearly ear splitting. But it was fun to see how loud we could be with every potentiometer on our amplifiers and public address turned to 'ten''

Then, in the last throes of winter, on the second weekend of March, we holed-up in the house where we had often practiced. The purpose was to record at least a portion of One Thane.

From a few friends and some fellow musicians I met over the previous couple of years, I borrowed some state of the art equipment. We had a mixer board and a four- channel, multi-sync reel to reel that was capable of recording overdubs, effectively making it like a sixteen-track recorder. We already owned some very sensitive microphones, most of them picked up in a cardioid pattern. We borrowed one with a very narrow directional pattern and two others that were were bi-directional. We experimented with the use and placement of the microphones in recording different takes of the songs.

Brice was supposed to perform a couple of the songs on Rick's drum kit. One of the lessons I learned in producing One Thane was it not wise to ask a drummer to let another drummer play his kit. Rick was not happy with the arrangement. We discussed it in private for several minutes. Despite his personal feelings, it was a senior English project and Brice needed to be a part of it. After some initial sniping at one another, Rick and Brice actually started working together and eventually became friends out of some level of mutual respect. Rick was more seasoned at playing in a band and maintaining the beat while interspersing rolls and such. Brice seemed to best Rick at counter rhythm. What Brice could do drew immediate attention to the percussive element in the music.

After a good deal of discussion, Brice and I agreed that he should bring his drum kit from home to the house and we record his parts that way. What resulted were really two drummers trying to one up one another at times. It was interesting, perhaps, but much of it was eventually removed in edits to the master recording.

When we had finished the recording most of the raw material for the project, we all listened to the tracks. Each one of us thought we could do better. After some rest, we decided to play the entire work through live from start to finish. What emerged was a reference track that Brice's friend, also named Rick but we all called him Flea Head, would use to make the best possible recording of each song, then record the final mix to a cassette tape.

In early April, the culmination of hours of practice and work was ready to be presented to my senior English class. Brice and I set up the tape deck, speakers and amplifier for the performance. We used a little ZZ Top track at the intro to get the sound balance right for everything. Then the rock opera began.

It was an amateur production from the outset, but we had used some pretty good equipment to capture the recording. In the process of post-production, Flea Head mastered a fine sample of what we intended to do. It was far from perfect. Perhaps if we were working with people more professional than us, more experienced than high school students, we could have pulled that miracle off as well. Still, everyone was impressed. It wasn't that Brice and I had created a rock opera. We performed it and it was actually something that you could listen to and find things in it that you liked.

Does that tape still exist? My mother had a copy of it somewhere in her things. If it still exists, it was so long ago that I doubt it is even playable. Flea Head kept the master, and Mrs. Hiles, my Senior English teacher received a copy of the tape as well. So who knows?

As hard as Brice and I worked on that project, I'd like to think that there is still some evidence.