Freshman Comp or F= happiness

The assignment from my first day of Freshman Composition was so easy I couldn’t believe it. Ha! This was college? I thought college was supposed to be difficult. The teacher had said to write a paragraph. Paragraphs were my strength. Just write five or six sentences, throw in some big words, and maybe even get fancy with some poetic devices, instant B+. And even more unbelievable she had said we could write about any topic. In high school I had to fight tooth and nail with my teacher for her to allow me to write my research paper on American poets about Jim Morrison. 

I was so excited. College was way better than high school. I went back to my room and quickly dispatched with scrawling out several sentences comparing eighties heavy metal to protest songs from the sixties. I was writing about Rock and Roll and the professor was going to be blown away. Hell, since I would turn it in on time, it would be an easy A! I eagerly delivered it to her mailbox. Everyone had always said I was a good writer. All I had to do now was sit back and wait for the A to be written at the top of my college ruled paper.

As Ms. White handed the papers back to my classmates I smugly sat in my seat as student after student slackened in their seats, bowed their heads, or let out audible groans. And then there she was, towering over me with a surprisingly big frown on her face. She dropped the paper on my desk with an air of disgust. And there at the top of my brilliant, analytical paragraph which clearly demonstrated the powerful messages in the music of Iron Maiden and Ozzy Ozborne was a big, fat F! And it had a circle around it, like she took glee in presenting me with the honor of being flunked on my first college assignment! This woman was wicked. I waited after class to protest as she busily gathered her things. She flatly said, “If you have questions about your grade you will need to make an appointment to see me in my office. There is a sign-up sheet on the door.” 

Then she was gone in a puff of smoke. 

I found the sign-up sheet on her office door and scheduled a conference for the next day. I planned to argue my way up at least to a C. When I arrived for the conference, her office door was open. Ms. White greeted me with a welcoming smile. “Come in”, she said warmly. This caught me off guard. The wicked witch was gone and I had prepared for an all-out war of words. But she was saying nice things to me as I sat down at her desk. She said that she liked my idea of trying to show that deeper meaning could still be found in popular music. However, my paragraph lacked cohesion and did not provide support for my position. She asked me if I really believed what I had written. I gave a weak yes as a reply. Then she said, “Let’s see how we can make this paragraph better.” She spent an entire hour with me gently explaining how I could have structured my thoughts more clearly. She talked to me about appropriate use of descriptive language. She asked me for more examples that supported my thesis. Then she told me to re-write it and she would take another look at it.

Not only did she give me a second chance, she gave me specifics on how to improve. I used her input to re-write the paragraph. The new grade was a B. I was happy with that. Ms. White told the class that when she gives us an assignment that she would always have the schedule on her door and we could sign up for extra help so that we could turn in our best work. She expected us to give our best effort. When she said these things to the class, it came out sounding mean. She was stern in her delivery. But after my experience in her office, I understood that she was sincere in her desire for us to be the best writers we could be. She saw the promise in us, but also that we needed to be pushed. I returned to her office before starting the next assignment. She gave advice and I made my first college A. In fact, it may have been the first time that I had ever made an A. I repeated this pattern for the remainder of the semester. By the time winter break arrived, I was an improved writer. I still had a long way to go, but I at least I had an idea of what I was doing when I sat down to write.

I learned not to judge people too quickly, as I had done with her when she barked at the class and gave me an F. Ms. White taught me how to be a better writer. But she also showed me why it was important to give my best effort. Earning a top grade was hard work. But more importantly I discovered that working hard and asking for help made me happy with the finished product. 

Happiness 

with a big circle around it. 

In Search of Glassy Water or Finding My Place in the Search for Justice

Glassy. That’s the kind of water we wanted to ski on. My friends and I were teenagers and lived on a lake with miles of shoreline. Hundreds of long fingers of water that led to other fingers. We could wait until the weekenders had winched their boats onto trailers and headed back to the city. The choppiness of the water created by the criss-crossing wakes of frenzied part-time boaters would dissipate faster than you might think. The lake was soothing and healing itself just as we would cut a seam straight down its middle.

The best coves were hidden deep into long channels and around a bend, invisible behind thick tree lines that covered the shoreline. The mirror-like surface would come into view. We throttled back, killed the engine, and drifted. I absorbed the quiet. The perfect surface tension resembled solid ice.

On top of the water, the ski made a skittering sound across the white water being churned by the propeller. The wake opened into a V shape on either side. I would lean to the right, cut through the wake, and onto the glassy water. Now this is what I wanted to feel. The outside edge of the ski cut quietly through the H2O molecules that had just managed to regroup themselves after the weekend rush.

I was tethered to a boat, but alone. Everything else seemed to fall away. All that existed in the moment was me and the water. The hum of the engine seemed like distant white noise. I would lose myself in the joy of skating over a lake at 30 miles per hour. It felt like 60 miles per hour. At this speed, the water was as solid as it appeared.  I could trust it to hold me up. And I could push myself and test the limits of the surface tension to hold me as I made deeper and deeper turns back toward the center of the wake.

When I cut back hard, physics ceased to exist. My physical self was lost for a millisecond. I felt weightless.

My full weight returned when I clambered back on the boat with rubber legs. I was exhausted. Beautiful exhaustion. The kind of exhaustion that puts an inerasable smile on your face.

As a grown-up man I find myself in search of glassy waters. The disturbances of adult life are more complex than the weekend boater churning up the smooth surface of the lake.

The choppiness of bigotry, bureaucracy, bias, greed, and entrenched interests do not dissipate at the end of each weekend. These rough waters are stubborn. Even the best Captain would have a difficult time finding perfect water no matter how many coves he explores.

But I am the Captain. I must cut a seam through hate and intolerance. I must make deep cuts in the social order. I must trust in the moral arc of the universe to hold me up so I can make deeper cuts into my own psyche in order to find those moments where my physical self dissolves, leaving only love and glassy water in its wake. I will search for those smooth spaces between injustice and violence until I am smiling and exhausted.