Sacrificial Lamb

{Prompt: Describe a humbling teenage moment}

Sometime in junior high school, back in the 70s, I was enrolled into a summer baseball league in Raleigh.  I’m told by my mother, and also by my brother, that I wanted to play baseball — that it was my idea. 

I don’t remember it that way, but maybe they’re right.  Maybe I thought it would be fun, like the games of roller-bat that we played sometimes at the neighborhood park — trying to roll the ball back, hit the bat, and switch places with the hitter.*

Regardless of who’s idea it was, the decision to play in a baseball league… for me… was a disaster. 

Tryouts

I should have known from the day of the try-out.  I was driven out to a field in a park, just north of downtown Raleigh, where I had never been before.  I was disoriented from the moment I arrived. 

There must have been a hundred kids, about my age, scattered around the field for various baseball drills. I had never tried out before, and I needed directions. I was assigned to a group and kindly advised to stay with my group as we went from station to station.  We were ‘sent forth’ to demonstrate our skills (or lack thereof), while the various team coaches watched from the sidelines. 

There was a drill for stopping an infield grounder. There was a drill for catching a pop up fly. There were throwing drills and hitting drills. Pretty basic stuff. But I was unprepared — an unskilled newcomer. Roller-bat had not been good for my game.

At the end of the day, as the sun was setting on the horizon, the coaches began to select their teams.  I’m pretty sure I was selected in the last round. Even in kickball or dodgeball, I had never been picked last. The coach who picked me had no illusions that I would be great one day. He was simply willing to take pity on a newbie, and add me to the roster. Now I was playing for the Raleigh Exchange Club little league baseball team.

The Raleigh Exchange Club Little League Team

The season was no better.  In reality, I had virtually no baseball experience.  Unlike my teammates, I had never played little league baseball… or any baseball, really… outside of a game of catch.  I barely knew how to swing a bat, so it’s no surprise that I was riding the bench.  Perhaps my proudest moment was when I actually made contact with a pitch, once, in hitting practice, and I knocked it over the fence.  But that was only in practice.  And only once.  

Most of the time I was learning on the fly.  Learning how to wear the uniform.  Learning how to wear the socks.  Learning that baseball socks have “stirrups” and baseball shoes have “cleats”.  

Learning how to catch the ball and throw it.  Learning where to put your fingers inside the baseball glove.  Learning how to field a ground ball.  Learning not to let it go through your legs, if it should take an unexpected hop. 

Learning to hold the bat high before the swing. Learning to hit the ball in the sweet spot.  Learning how to run the bases, if you actually hit the ball.  Learning to watch the first and third base coaches who would tell you whether to tag up or keep on running.  Learning not to go back to tag first base, if you missed it on the way by.

Learning that baseball has signals.  Learning that signals are half the game.  Learning the signal for a bunt.  Learning how to bunt, when you got the signal from the dugout.  

I think that the bunt was my specialty, in fact.  After I learned how to bunt, I made it my goal to became an expert.  I had good prospects of knocking in a run with a sacrifice bunt, or a sacrifice pop fly. Well… not good, really… but possible.  If I could sacrifice myself for an RBI, that was OK. It was better than whiffing three times and striking out.

At the end of the summer, my baseball career came to an end. I never had any love for watching the game of baseball, and I certainly had no love for playing the game after struggling through the season in a proper baseball league. I only felt humbled and humiliated.

I went on to become proficient in many sports: ping pong… basketball… swimming… soccer… volleyball… even cycling. But I never became great (or even good) at baseball. The main thing I learned about baseball was that it wasn’t for me.

Footnotes

*In “roller-bat” one person hits the ball as far as possible, and then lays the bat down on the ground.  The other person tries to stop the ball as quickly as possible and then roll the baseball back so that it hits the bat on the ground.  If successful, then the players switch places.

The Beauty of the Game

{Prompt: What games or toys did you enjoy most when you were young?}

At first, I thought that this writing prompt (What was your favorite thing to do after school?) would be just about impossible to answer.  I thought that my experience was too broad and my interests too varied to possibly choose a “favorite”.

I certainly enjoyed those afternoon TV shows aimed at impressionable viewers. You might call Spock (of Star Trek) and Hawkeye Pierce (of M*A*S*H) role models for me. (I write about this elsewhere.)

I did enjoy reading fantasies, like The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis, The Tales of Magic by Edward Eager, The Martian Chronicles by Edgar Rice Burroughs; and (notably) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien.

I spent much time with board games like Risk, Scrabble, Clue, and Battleship. I enjoyed toys like Yo-Yos, Frisbees, Hot Wheels, and little green army men.

I dabbled in music, playing “organ” (really an early electronic keyboard), recorder, and flute.  We had a set of bongos (possibly inspired by early ‘70s counterculture) that I enjoyed as a young child, presaging a stint in the percussion section of high school marching band.  (This also led to a photo session with my Mom that I’ve come to regret — a skinny 14-year-old in full marching band costume with cymbals.)

Perhaps I spent the most time in the wild, as a budding naturalist, wandering the extent of the neighborhood creek, from the tunnel that runs under Fairview Street, to the unnaturally, exposed grassy terrain, of the Raleigh Country Club.

Usually we (my brother and I) didn’t go too far — just up a block to the back of Glenwood Shopping Center, and then back home as the sun was setting.  Occasionally, we faced the stern visages of our father if we failed to hear him yelling for us to come in for dinner.  (You can’t expect a 10 year old to worry about civilized matters like dinner, can you?)

But are any of these things my “Favorite Thing”? I realize now that, indeed, no toy, no game, and no musical instrument was my favorite. Nor were the pleasures of exploring the vast outdoors. Not even the mesmerizing tales of a good book, or the intriguing plot of a good TV show. None of these was nearly as fun as the time I spent after school with a basketball.

A basketball?

Really?

Yes, really!  Perhaps you thought, given my current obsession with cycling, that my bicycle was my favorite. You wouldn’t be far off. My bicycle, and later my moped, allowed me to take my adventures much further than the creek and the bounds of my small neighborhood.

But for pure unadulterated joy (and sometimes despair), the basketball was the greatest.

It took practice to become a “player”, but that investment in dribbling, shooting, guarding — that investment in time and effort made the payoff so much the greater.  I hardly remember the difficulties that I must have had dribbling a big ol’ basketball properly — not traveling, not double dribbling, not getting the ball stolen.  

There were so many games within the game — rules to be learned and obeyed, before you even got to shooting and (hopefully) scoring.

I remember such great satisfaction in a behind-the-back dribble, and a through-the-legs dribble.  

I learned to shoot a lay-up, a free throw, a bank shot, a swish! Later I learned to do a finger-roll, a reverse (lay-up), a jump shot, a three-pointer.

Still later I learned to set a screen, to run a pick-and-roll.  In a way, playing basketball was like playing jazz — so much improvisation.  And with practice and fitness, it looked like a thing of beauty.  It was a thing of beauty. It still is a thing of beauty. Something to watch and to emulate.

And then, there were the mind games.  Get this!  I didn’t know this, but in some games — some pick-up games — you can get in the head of your opponent. (Or they can get into your head.)

With a little “smack” talk you can actually change the chances of scoring a point — of winning a game.  And when you get used to playing with some smack talk, you become impervious to the mind games. You can play with the big boys.

Okay. I was never a great player. I was never a star. I never played on a real team. But then, that might have taken the joy out of it.

Most of the time, I was focused on playing defense and on not screwing up. I was focused on not falling on my face, not throwing the ball out of bounds, not throwing up a brick, or worse, an airball.

But sometimes, miraculously, I made a move I could only dream of.  Sometimes, I hit that three-pointer on a full-court transition shot. Sometimes I threw a bounce pass through traffic, for an easy score.

Playing basketball allowed me to connect, just a little, with my brother. It let him and me join in a game with the Vietnamese kids (immigrant refugees), and the other kids that played at our neighborhood court.  

It was a gateway to the college rivalries that were so much a part of life in North Carolina.  It even led to a brief extracurricular season on the “varsity” basketball team at Flinders University of South Australia.

I love soccer, which I played in high school, and learned to play even better after high school. And I love volleyball, which I learned to play in college, for intramurals, and led to a fateful encounter with my volleyball-loving wife.  But my favorite sport — the one that takes me back to my childhood — has got to be basketball.

Practicing my shot, from a wicker chair - circa 1979.

Losing Sleep

{Prompt: What was your hardest test or paper? Did you ever pull an all-nighter?}

Pulling an all-nighter may be the quintessential American experience. We fail to keep up with the homework or the assigned reading, and we try to make up for it with a last-minute all-nighter. We cram as much knowledge into our brains as possible, hoping to regurgitate the facts on a test in the morning.

It’s a terrible plan.

By one or two in the morning, learning and memorization are hard to achieve, and motivation is hard to maintain. By dawn, taking a test of any kind, after little or no sleep, is an exercise in futility. You really will not perform at your best.

I learned that in high school, after two or three attempts, and by the time I got to college, I rarely tried to take exams after pulling an all-nighter.

That’s not to say that I didn’t stay up late. I often felt it best to review the information from the course before a big test, and for some difficult courses one could scarcely review the information without studying the material until well after midnight. But learning from experience, I found that I was much better off if I reviewed the material every few weeks, and polished it off with some last-minute memorization and review the night before.

Nevertheless, this is the story of the first (and the worst) all-nighter that I ever undertook. It’s also the reason I probably scratched the liberal arts off my list of potential college majors.

Daniels Junior High

I’m not sure of the exact month, but I think my first all-nighter was in the ‘78-’79 school year — my 9th grade, back in those formative years, when I was at Josephus Daniels Junior High.

For those of you who don’t know this, Josephus Daniels was the editor for the News & Observer newspaper, from just before the turn of the 20th century, until his death in 1948.

I thought that was pretty cool.

What I didn’t know then, is that Josephus Daniels was an openly active white segregationist. And he used The News & Observer to champion the cause of white supremacy. He helped facilitate “the Wilmington insurrection of 1898, in which white mobs overthrew the legitimately elected biracial government in Wilmington”. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_Daniels]

Look it up. This guy was totally racist.

Josephus Daniels

Today, Daniels Junior High is called Oberlin Magnet Middle School. Now it is named for the historically black community — Oberlin Village — that existed nearby, in the city of Raleigh.

Oberlin Village, by the way, was named for Oberlin College in Ohio, where James H. Harris, one of the prominent black community members in Raleigh, had gone to school. He helped establish the Oberlin Village community in 1866.

James H Harris

I didn’t know any of this when I went to Daniels, way back in the ‘70s.

Shakespeare’s Contemporaries

Among my 9th grade classes, I was taking a Social Studies class, taught by Mrs. Barbara Broadwell. Early in the year, she had us set up our chairs in one big circle as a way to encourage participation and discussion… I think.

We discussed books that we liked to read, and then we discussed books we were assigned to read. Back then, we were reading things like Future Shock, by Alvin Toffler; Animal Farm, by George Orwell; Lord of the Flies, by William Golding; A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle; and Watership Down, by Richard Adams. You know… basically, all of the dystopian classics.

As another part of this class, we were expected to complete an independent project by the end of the semester. It was either a project focused on history or literature. I can’t remember which.

There were checkpoints along the way. We were supposed to self-report the progress we were making on our project, to keep us on a realistic pathway towards completion.

I must have decided on the topic of my project, but any other progress reported was purely fictional. The topic was “Shakespeare’s Contemporaries”, and essentially no progress at all was made on the project during the semester.

Well… maybe there was some “conceptual” progress. My project was about the notable people that lived in the Elizabethan Era. That was a start.

My Title Page.

And I had a couple of lovely quotes related to the role of individuals within society. I was going to bookend my report with quotations by Shakespeare at the beginning, and by John Donne at the end.

The first was from Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” (Act II, Scene 7):

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players,

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.

The second was from John Donne’s “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions”:

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe…

every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine;

if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse,

as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine own were;

any man’s death deminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde;

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

Good stuff, right?

Well, somehow I managed to go the entire second semester of Mrs. Broadwell’s social studies class, not doing a lick of additional work on the topic until the night before the assignment was due.

I was up all night.

Not, just past midnight.

Not, ‘til two or three in the morning.

All. Night.

I was compiling a list of notable achievements by “Rulers, Statesmen, Writers, Playwrights, Poets, Explorers, Navigators, Popes, Painters, Sculptors, Composers, Scientists, Astronomers, and Mathematicians,” as I described them in my subtitle. Even the list of notable figures is exhausting.

Subtitle of my project, in my cursive handwriting.

In reality, I was paraphrasing and flourishing the language of the World Book Encyclopedia, in one long summary of “Shakespeare’s Contemporaries”, broken down by occupation. I was pretty much writing—paraphrasing— from start to finish, with no revision or editing of my stream of consciousness.

The entire report came to a plump 39 pages. Five pages were necessary to create an “Appendix” — an index of every person included in the report — in alphabetical order. Pretty much anyone who lived between 1533 and 1603 — the lifetime of Queen Elizabeth I — was included.

A very early Appendix.

It’s actually pretty good for a twelve hour, uninterrupted, first draft. It’s also a fine example of my single-spaced, cursive, ink penmanship.

But as an academic report, it is sorely lacking.

I was not very happy with the result. As other students were showing off real projects on poster board or in finely bound presentation folders, I was trying to act as if I hadn’t just stayed up the entire night, hastily stapling together my handwritten manuscript, and passing it off as a worthwhile piece of research. I don’t think there was a shred of analytical or critical thought in the whole thing.

Possibly the only original thought in the whole project.

I thought for many years afterwards, that I had gotten a C or a D on the project, but I pulled it out of a box of old papers not long ago, and discovered my grade was a B minus. Not a good result by my standards (but not as awful either, as I imagined). The “minus”, in particular, was a gut punch.

And Mrs. Broadwell even wrote a note — rarely a good sign. She said, “Steve, you have undertaken far too much for one paper. Your topic is too broad.” She underlined “too” four times.

A humbling teacher comment.

Other Notable Papers

I tried to stay away from literary papers and projects, after that day. I’m never happy if the assignment includes a bibliography.

But it was hard to avoid writing papers in college, particularly when I went on a nine-month student exchange and took electives like “Multiculturalism in Australian History.”

And it was hard to avoid writing papers when I went to UNC School of Public Health and studied Maternal and Child Health (instead of Epidemiology). People in Public Health just love to write papers, and they love to work in groups. I think it has something to do with grant applications and making programs operational. Just kidding.

Worst of all, I had to write a master’s thesis to complete my master’s program. Originally, my thesis was a summary of the research that had been, so far, conducted on the vulnerability of children suffering the loss or death of a parent. I went to Tempe, Arizona, to study this topic with an expert in the subject. But, I found myself so at sea in the world of cognitive psychology, that I ended up with another rendition of Shakespeare’s Contemporaries — a compiled summary of the entire ocean of research on the subject. It was unsatisfactory. Definitely not “A” level material.

So I went to my UNC School of Public Health adviser. He suggested that I give it another try, starting from scratch. So I agreed to start over, but first I had to complete my medical school degree. I finished my MD in December 1991, and then I had 6 whole months to finish my MPH master’s paper before residency began. With nothing else to work on, I managed to put together a respectable paper on “The Role of Biometric Data in the Emergency Room,” or some such nonsense.

Standardized Testing - The alternative to a well-constructed thesis.

I was always much better at doing math, and memorizing things.

I excelled at the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). I got 1260 on my first attempt.

I had no trouble in the chemistry, zoology, genetics, and ecology courses at NC State.

I scored double digits in all six portions of the Medical College Aptitude Test (MCAT), — better than even I expected.

It got harder in medical school, but I could still learn pathology, physiology, anatomy, and microbiology with relative ease.

The hardest tests I ever took were the Medical Boards, required after completion of my medical degree at Duke University, and the Family Medicine Boards required by the American Board of Family Practice at the end of residency. (The former are required to practice as a general practitioner (GP) after 4 years of medical school. The latter are required to practice as a “Family Physician” after an additional 3 years of residency.)

Both of those tests were multiple choice, but their multiple choice questions were far from ordinary. They were “complex multiple choice”, and they were sadistic.

Often, there was a paragraph describing the clinical scenario. Then there were four statements, labeled “A”, “B”, “C”, and “D”. Now for the twist. To select the correct answer, you must choose which of the statements are true:

A and C,

B and D,

A, B, and C,

Only D,

or All of the Above

It’s practically impossible to get the answer unless you really know the answer.

And it covered just about all of the material that I had learned from clinical rotations — 12 rotations in medical school, and 18 rotations in residency — five years of accumulated knowledge.

The AAFP medical boards took all day: three and a half hours in the morning, and three and a half hours in the afternoon, broken down into testing sections, each lasting for 40 or 50 minutes at a time.

I didn’t pull an all-nighter trying to prepare. I had set aside a week before the test to review. But the test itself was almost as exhausting as an all-nighter. Thankfully, it was the last one.

Vehicular Misadventures

 {Prompt: Who taught you how to drive? How did it go?}

Who taught me how to drive?  I know how I should answer this question. I think I know the answer.  Obviously, it had to be my mom.  Right?  I mean, my father died when I was 12.  My Mom was the only parent.  It must have been her.

But I’m not so sure.  I have a strong memory of my mom buying a Honda Accord, some time after my father died in ‘77. She must have bought the car with the manual transmission to save on money, which must have been tight.  Only problem… It didn’t seem like she had ever driven a car with a manual transmission before. (Although she claims that she had.)  

Somehow, she drove it off the lot.  Or rather, I would say, she got it off the lot, and back to our home. But it wasn’t pretty.  

I was somewhere in that car, securely buckled, and good thing too, because there was a very unpredictable contest between forward momentum, and sudden deceleration, rivaling any herky-jerky experience I’ve ever had.

And this was not the kind of gravitational swing that you sign up for at a roller coaster ride or a midway ride at the State Fair. This was a bucking bronco of a ride, accompanied by the sound of grinding gears. And the distress you can only imagine — a single mother being forced to learn on the fly, way outside of her comfort zone.  

But, to her credit, she got us home the same day. She learned to drive the manual shift of a new car. And I guess I learned by proxy how to drive a manual shift, as I watched (and probably mocked) her efforts.

Mike, me, and Mom - circa 1979.

In reality, I think I learned mostly how to drive a car — the important skills — in an after school course provided with a certified instructor.   Me and two other teens got into a car with dual sets of controls — one set that we controlled and one set for the instructor. We learned to keep our eyes up the road, following the turn of the road 50 yards ahead (instead of 10 yards ahead, as a bike rider would), keeping a hypervigilant eye out for potential hazards (pedestrians, animals, road workers, suicidal possums, etc.), and learning to switch lanes on the Beltline, while driving below the speed limit (unlike the rest of the speeding traffic). That instructor deserves kudos for his calm demeanor and his patience and advice.

Any additional learning was either done on the fly or from observation of my brother.  Somehow I was allowed to join him in his MG Midget between 1978 and 1980 (before he left for Louisburg College, and I left for the School of Science and Math).

Honda Accord & Plymouth Barracuda, top of the drive ~ 1979.

It must have been a great convenience (for my mother) to have us out of the house; or why else would we have been let go and left to our own devices?  But to be fair, my brother had a much better feel for the clutch than my mother ever did.  He also loved to downshift and rev up the engine coming out of corners. He probably had a dream of being a race car driver.

Still… I don’t recall any tragic or near-death experience while riding shotgun with my brother — nothing worse than running out of gas, once or twice.  (But keep in mind, we only had a gasoline gauge with a dial between E and F, with no red warning zone.)  

He preached, with great conviction, the value of the tachometer, and the sublime nature of finding the right RPMs.  He tried to teach me about torque and horsepower, too but that was a bridge too far.

Best of all, he taught me the indisputable importance of the parking brake.  One day — a really nice early summer or late spring day, when it’s a pleasure to be outside, even in North Carolina — I think we pulled his car to the top of the drive to do a little work, or maybe to wash and clean it.

Mike got out to go to the back of the car, but he must have forgotten to set the parking brake (maybe he was distracted by his pest of a little brother), and it wasn’t but a few seconds before the car started rolling, sort of a slow motion roll at first — the kind of roll that makes you wonder, “Is my car rolling, or is the ground moving?”

But, yes, the car was rolling; and its speed was in direct proportion to the level of concern (dare I say, panic) in my brother’s eyes.  

Well he tried valiantly to slow it’s retreat down our gravel drive.  He planted himself behind the left rear tire, and pushed with all his might, the way you push when you’re trying to get your car out of a rut.  

But even that itty bitty car was too heavy, and I don’t think I had the same life-or-death mentality — the commitment to put myself at the rear of the car.  Maybe I did help in the end, but I think it was too late.  

Well, the car ended up coasting right back into a cable that was attached to a telephone pole, anchoring it in the ground.  I think the bumper was crinkled, and maybe there was some body damage, but no one was hurt.

If I seem obsessed with the parking brake today, it’s because of that experience - learning by mistake.

A 1970 MG Midget, in a much nicer driveway than ours.

I had some accidents of my own.  Don’t think that I was immune.  

At about 6 in the morning, at the end of a morning newspaper route, in the early ’80s, I backed Mr. Pate’s Buick Skylark straight across two lanes of Whitaker Mill and into the side of a morning commuter’s BMW, without so much as a second glance into the rearview mirror.

During medical residency, as I was backing up, I turned straight into a parking garage column, only about 3 inches away from my fender.  Ironically, that time, I was probably turned and looking through the rear window, to back up safely.

There was a bad stretch of time, about 10 years ago, when I had two or three accidents in succession, one when the car ahead of me in the left turn lane slowed unexpectedly to make a U-turn. As I tried to slow down, my bumper dipped below theirs and it crumpled the hood.  

Since then — since the marital rebuff I suffered from the receipt of an escalating car insurance bill, my driving record has been somewhat improved. I’ve been the victim of vehicular misadventure more often than I’ve been the cause.

Perhaps, I’ve finally been adequately taught.

Maybe I know what I’m doing.

Or maybe I’m just lucky.  (fingers crossed)

My brother Mike and I, posing in front of a family car. Mike looks like he would be perfectly comfortable behind the wheel.

An Eternal Optimist

{Prompt: What was the hardest part of your childhood?}

The hardest part of my childhood, and my life, was undoubtedly the death of my father (which I write about in The End of the Innocence.)

It was followed by a period of shock, mourning, anger, and shame that lasted for one or two years. I don’t remember those years much, except for a few moments when my deeper emotions were brought to the surface by song.

I still relive those moments, for example, whenever I hear If you leave me now, by Chicago:

If you leave me now

you take away the biggest part of me

Ooh-ooh-ooh, no, baby, please don’t go

And if you leave me now

You’ll take away the very heart of me

Ooh-ooh-ooh, no, baby, please don’t go

Ooh-ooh-ooh… I just want you to stay….

Or Beth, by Kiss:

You say you feel so empty;

That our house just ain’t a home;

That I’m always somewhere else;

And you’re always there alone…

Although they were released in 1976, those two songs were still getting FM radio play in 1977, when my father died. The melancholy backing tracks, and the sentiment of the lyrics, made me feel, more fully, the pain of the separation that I was going through.

Chicago, on stage.

But there were joyful moments too, and I write about them a little in Waiting for my New Life to Begin.

There was no social media but there was lots of TV to enjoy, which I write about in Somewhere in the Ether.

I enjoyed my days at school (junior high school) where I played in the orchestra and band. I played soccer with a junior varsity team, and I played ultimate frisbee during recess. I had childhood friends to hang out with in the cafeteria and after school.

There were great movies to watch, and small theaters nearby. We lined up for Star Wars, when it first came out in Dolby Stereo. From the moment the massive Star Destroyer entered the screen (after the opening narrative crawl), we were blown away. So, we lined up to see it again and again.

Opening scene from Star Wars.

And we lined up again for Grease, with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, a musical with just enough edginess for a new generation. I even bought the soundtrack vinyl LP and many other records. I started buying 45s… a collection that, including the “Golden Oldies”, spans several decades.

But there was also new technology. There were arcade games and there was cable TV. There were home computers, Sony Walkmans, and boom boxes. We had mopeds and microwaves, for the first time. There was a whole shopping mall culture, before the dawn of the internet.

Of course, not everything was rosy. Out in the real world there were problems just like there are problems today. There was terrorism and war. There were political issues. There were gas shortages and nuclear plant disasters.

As I went to 10th grade, my life was pretty complicated. I was working hard at school, but delivering newspapers in the mornings. I was living like an academic during the day, but working like a blue collar worker at night. I write about this difficult time in These Dreams.

All in all, I consider the time between February 2nd, 1977 (my father’s death) and September 7th, 1980 (my first day at NCSSM), to be the hardest part of my life. There was a tragic death, a complicated period of adjustment, and then the decision to leave home and go to a boarding school.

September 7, 1980 - Opening Day at NCSSM.

No, I never felt like I had to grow up quickly or take care of my family. But I felt like I shouldn’t be a burden on my family either. By 1980, I was performing well academically at home, and I was involved in my community. Nevertheless, I was ready to start over in Durham, where my room and board were paid for — where I would be under the supervision of a dozen members of staff and faculty who had a vested interest in my success. My mother would be able to take care of herself.

I wasn’t completely healed emotionally, but I was coping. I was still immature, but I was growing up. I had been through a difficult period, but I was eager.

And I was optimistic.

The End of the Innocence

{Prompt: Describe your father’s death}

My father died right in front of me, suddenly and unexpectedly, on a cold winter day, in 1977. 

I was twelve years old at the time.

It was February second, a cold and bleak winter day. We lived in a tiny, drafty bungalow in west Raleigh, heated by an oil furnace, but on the coldest days we supplemented its all-too-intermittent output of warm air with an electric radiator, which could be moved from room to room. My father, mother, brother, and I were sitting in the living room, with throw blankets here and there, trying to warm our insides with a hot meal.

I was eating my dinner from a bowl, sitting on a handmade walnut stool, with my family sitting nearby.  My brother was sitting on my left.  My mother was sitting to my right.  My father was sitting in a chair across from me. We were just sitting in a circle, having a homemade dinner on a dark, cold winter evening.

Then my father stopped eating his dinner. He grimaced, and he looked down at the floor. He looked sick. I said, “It’s not that bad, is it?” meaning the food—it was sarcasm.

And then he collapsed.  My mother went to his side, helping him to the floor.  She asked him in a shaky voice, “Gerry, what’s wrong?” He didn’t answer.

She begged him to respond as he lay on the floor. He didn’t move. She pleaded. She prayed for God’s help.

My brother and I looked on in disbelief.  She told us to call 911.  So we ran to the phone in the kitchen, around the corner, a room away. 

And that’s the last time I ever saw my father.  Lying on the floor with my mother cradling his head, wailing in anguish.

My brother and I made the call for emergency services together. I don’t know who did the talking. I don’t like to think about it, because I was scared, and utterly helpless.

We gave them all the information that we could. One of us said, “My father is lying on the floor. Something’s wrong. We need help.”

“…We live at 2807 Wayland Drive.”

“…Gallup. G-A-L-L-U-P.”

“…The number is 919-787-9373.”

“…Please hurry.”

None of us knew CPR. 

None of us knew what to do. 

None of us knew what was happening.  

Someone on the phone told us to go to the bottom of our driveway to flag down EMS when they arrived, so the paramedics could get inside as quickly as possible.

So we ran to the bottom of the driveway, skittering gravel along the way.

We heard the sirens and saw the lights a block away. 

When they arrived, they grabbed their bags, colored with fluorescent orange and yellow reflective tape. They hurried up the driveway and through the screen door. The room filled up with rescue workers in uniform.

There were medical questions and bewildered answers.  “He just collapsed.”  “…He wasn’t feeling good today.  He left work early.”  “…He went to the doctor’s office this afternoon, but they didn’t find anything wrong.”

And before we knew it, he was in the ambulance.  And he was on the way to the hospital.  My mother went with them. My brother and I stayed home, stunned by the whirlwind of chaos and destruction that had just occurred.  

The shock was profound.  The next time the phone rang, I answered, hoping to hear that my dad had survived — hoping to hear that the rescue efforts were a success. 

Instead, it turned out to be an ordinary call — completely unrelated.  It was a call from a customer on my afternoon paper route who was calling to say that they hadn’t seen their paper. 

It wasn’t the call I was hoping for, but at least it gave me a purpose — a reason to leave the house, to try to set aside the anxiety that was roiling inside of me — to think of anything else — to do anything else.

So I grabbed a paper and told my brother, “I missed a house. I have to take them a paper.”

This is what I remember next.  

I remember the bitter cold air of the falling night as I pedaled my bike up Gordon Street and back home again.

I remember walking through the front screen door, and spotting my mother with a man in the hallway, inside our house. The hall was unlit. I walked closer. She was with the pastor and my brother.

My brother, his cheeks wet with tears, blurted out, “He’s DEAD,” like a kid screaming and weeping in rage in a schoolyard fight.

I don’t know what happened next. Nothing else mattered.

I remember lying in my bunk, in my bedroom, while people talked with my mother… in hushed voices… in another room.

I lay in my bed. I stayed in my bed, in a kind of delirium—alternately crying, sleeping, and remembering the things that I wanted to forget… the things that I wanted to be undone.

From time to time, I heard the dial tone as my mother picked up the phone. I heard the spinning and clicking of the rotary dial as she made calls to friends and family.

The following day I heard the BRRRING-BRRRING of the phone as people called back, and people called with their condolences. And the doorbell rang, as people came to the house. People came and went, but I stayed in my room.

The next day — a Friday — I went back to school, trying to be brave. Trying to act normal again. Hoping to feel normal again. But I fell apart… I lost it completely… when a teacher pulled me aside to offer her support.  I started to cry… and I couldn’t stop.

The memorial service took place a day or two later. I remember sitting in the second pew of our church as the sanctuary filled with mourners, and the memorial service went on around me. 

And I remember the bitter cold during the small service on the side of a sloping hill in the memorial gardens, when his remains were buried.  Mike and me, my Mom, and her parents were there.

I remember these things like the end of a book about my childhood, like the page that you reach just before you clap the book closed for good.

(Photo of the surviving family at church - Mike, Steve, and Margaret Gallup;

 and grandparents, Mary & Willard Whitesell)

How Death Changes You

The death of a parent is a source of unspeakable pain… for anyone.  Whenever I tell someone, for the first time, in the course of a story about my past life, that my father died, invariably they say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” 

And truly, they are sorry!  They are sympathetic.  And I’m grateful for their sympathy.  But that doesn’t make me feel any more whole… any less wounded… any “better.”  The death changes you.  It hurts you. It takes away from you.  It never gives back.  

In a thousand ways, you might remember your happy childhood — your loving parent, and each time the bitterness of that absence grinds you down — it wears away the semblance of what you were — a “normal” person — into a depressed, distracted, morbid, and more cynical version of the normal person who no longer exists.

You feel completely changed.  Your mood is out of your control.  People who know you — your friends — don’t really know you the same way anymore.  So, you feel a little like a stranger to your friends.  

And among strangers, you feel like you have a hole in your heart.  You feel like something is missing. Something vital is gone, but it isn’t visible.  It’s an invisible affliction.   No one can tell that you have been mortally wounded — that your (broken) life and their (unbroken) life are fundamentally different.  The stranger can’t necessarily tell that your world view is so completely altered.  You feel like an imposter.

The Aftermath of Death

When someone dies… in a nuclear family… everyone is affected.  They say that children who lose a parent to death, lose not one parent, but two.  Although I lost my father to sudden death, I lost my mother in ways that were just as sudden.

For a week or two, we mourned with our community.  Our family came together with the church for the funeral and the burial.  My mother’s family assisted her in making arrangements and making decisions.  Her church family helped her find resources to deal with the legal requirements and provided emotional and spiritual support. 

My mother was wounded by her husband’s… my father’s… death, just as much as I was.  There were times when she sat in a chair with our pet dog in her lap, and she stared out the window. She just stared, off into space, seemingly forever.

But she didn’t have the luxury of time to process her grief.  She had to sell my father’s business — a hobby shop, settle his affairs, open new bank accounts, and find new sources of income.  

She had to apply for social security benefits to support her two children while looking for part-time work.  That part-time work came in the form of a morning newspaper route, originally run by my brother. (When he later went to college, she took over his route, with me as a helper.)  

Even with Social Security and a part-time job, money was tight.  We did some shopping at thrift shops.  We split wood for a wood burning fireplace in the winter.  We collected Green Stamps that we used to redeem for small rewards after shopping at the grocery store.

My mother had all of the responsibilities, now, that had been so judiciously divided before. She had to relearn how to pay all the bills that my father had been paying until then.  She had to cook the meals and clean the dishes. She had to encourage our good behavior and discourage the bad. She had to maintain the house, both inside and out. She had to make household decisions, all by herself, sometimes with no help at all.

I give her credit for what she accomplished.  I really do.  I’ve been told more than once that I should appreciate all she did for me and my brother.  She did what she could to raise her children, to maintain a normal family, to take on the role of both mother and father.

A happy occasion - possibly the purchase of a new car.

But still, it’s hard not to miss the time before that awful day — the day that my father died. We were a happy family. We watched TV and played games. We did our homework and our personal chores. We celebrated birthdays and holidays. We planted a garden. We went on summer vacations to the “farm”.

I was a happy kid. I loved to read and to learn. I enjoyed exploring the creek and riding my bike with my brother. I did arts and crafts with my Mom. I went camping and I joined the Boy Scouts, with my Dad’s encouragement.

I was twelve… turning thirteen in the May of ’77. My childhood was already coming to an end, but it ended prematurely… on the second of February 1977… on the day he died… on Groundhog’s Day.

Finding a New Normal

Although my grief was deep and wide, it didn’t last forever. I still had friends that I could hang out with at school, and we would go to movies, like the first episode of Star Wars and the wildly popular musical, Grease.

I had friends in the neighborhood, and we would go bowling, or play Avalon Hill board games while songs from Saturday Night Fever were playing over and over on the radio.

I took up soccer and practiced juggling for hours on the street. I did the morning paper route with my mother. And in 1980, I applied for the School of Science and Math.

Gradually I recovered from the grief of my father’s death, but of course it never left me. From time to time, the feelings returned — a sudden surge of emotion — or a vague sense of uneasiness, as if something was missing. The feelings of love and of loss.

Maybe a birthday for Dad (June 20) - with a CB radio.

A Life Trapped in Amber

{Prompt: What was your dad like? What do you remember most vividly about him?}

My father passed away 48 years ago, on February 2, 1977.  

I was 12 years old at the time.  

He left a lasting impression, but after 48 years, my memory of him has faded.

My memory of him is more like a dream.  There is a nugget of truth to the memory, a little bit of what might have been real. But the edges are fuzzy, and the full extent of the real life experience is missing.

I remember bouncing on his knee as a toddler.

I remember that he showed me how to draw calligraphy as a school child.  

I remember driving to the SPCA to pick out a puppy, and picking out the dog’s name from a street sign that we passed on the way back home.  

I remember that he created a painted-flower garden spanning at least four of the aluminum cabinet doors above the kitchen countertop, using little hand cut stamps and Testors model paint.

But none of those memories really capture the essence of the man.

I remember, more vividly perhaps, the unpleasant times — often a punishment for childhood misbehavior.

I recall being sent to the back yard to cut myself a switch, for some transgression that I was beginning to regret.  The switching itself was quite mild I’m sure, seeing as I don’t really remember that part.  I don’t recall ever suffering a bruise or welt from his punishment.

In fact, punishment was always dealt out as justice.  Mom would warn us (my brother and I) that if we didn’t listen, and behave, she would have to tell our Dad how we acted when he got home. And the repercussions (which were implied) were much to be feared. 

Only once can I recall my father losing his temper with me.  

I must have been about five, and I was having a complete meltdown, for reasons I can’t fathom. My mother was at the end of her wits, and sent my father to talk to me (to assess the nature of my grievances, I like to think).  

I completely lost my mind — yelling about my mom and calling her names.  I might have called her a bitch, or something like that. I can’t remember what curse words I had in my arsenal. But that was about the level of my venom, at the time.  

The next thing I knew I was on the ground, realizing that I just got slapped, good and hard — hard enough to knock me off my feet and leave me in a stunned silence.  

I really don’t remember what happened after that, but I certainly felt ashamed of my behavior. I started to realize that my rage had real consequences.

At any rate, the argument — the altercation — was over.  I think my father was a little ashamed himself, too.  Maybe he apologized later… or maybe I did.

Though my father was the disciplinarian, he may have been in need of a little discipline, himself.  He often did things that were impetuous.  I took it for granted then, but I think he really was still young and impulsive.  (I don’t know if this is proof, but he did join the Marine Corps at age 20, leaving his home in New York and moving to South Carolina.)  

He bought a motorcycle once. It kind of showed up out of the blue.  I don’t know if there was any discussion prior to the purchase, but I do remember many a night when our parents argued after we had been sent to bed.

My father opened a hobby shop while he was still working a steady job as a draftsman for an electronic switch-making company, called Stackpole.  

I don’t know if it was meant to be a side hustle or a sort of private getaway, away from home. What it became was a way for him to run a business, hang out with friends and customers, and do the things that he really enjoyed.  He built a “sand table” — something bigger than a pool table, with sand that could be molded into a landscape and modeled to look like a battleground.  At a time when role-playing games were in their infancy, he and his friends were playing out simulated war scenarios in the basement of a small business building in Glenwood South.

I would describe my father as vulnerable, flawed, and human; but always trying… aspiring to be good… aspiring to be a good role model.  

I don’t think I really knew him. I don’t think any child really knows their parents, at least not fully.

It’s painful to be so close to someone — to have loved them and to know that they loved you, and yet not to know them — to know them less than you know a friend or a classmate.

With the benefit of time… and age… and experience, I feel like I understand my father now, as a person, much more than I did 48 years ago… or even 10 years ago.  For example, I know now that my father was a real, invested member of our church — that he didn’t only attend church to make my mother happy, but he was fully committed — teaching Sunday School and making friends in the congregation.  

My mother told me recently that when he died, she thought that the funeral could be held in the church chapel, but the preacher said that the chapel would be too small.  And he was right. When the funeral was held, the church was as full as it ever was at an 11 o’clock service.  

I didn’t understand, really, why it should be so full. I guess I had such a private and personal relationship with my father, and such a limited insight into his interpersonal relationships at work and with friends that I didn’t grasp the extent of his life outside the home.

On the whole, I would describe my father, Gerald Fredric Gallup (Gerry) as a wonderful father, who loved and cherished his children: a strict disciplinarian and dispenser of justice, with the military experience to back it up; an artist and a free spirit, who enjoyed painting, design, creative play, and adventure; a married man, trying to be a supportive and equal partner in the marriage, while carving out time and space for his own enjoyment; a responsible member of the community, at work, and at church, who was…

…who was… I don’t know. I don’t know what were his thoughts… his cares… his ambitions. His worries… his concerns… his fears.

And I will never know.

Ever.

For me his life was trapped in amber — like a hazy dream.

I only knew him as a son knows his father. I can only imagine the rest.

Gerald and Margaret Gallup in the mid-70s.

The Gallup Family in an early 70s photo for Hayes Barton United Methodist Church. (from left to right: Mike, Gerry, Steve, Meg)

Typical 1968 black-and-white photo of Gerald Gallup (age 32), with sons, Steve (age 4), and Mike (age 6).