Prelude to Escape

April 19, 2012

It is the night before I resign from my first career.  My future, however, holds bright new things:  great and noble learning opportunities.

Why, then, tonight, am I so frightened?  Why is my body trembling with the thought of saying those words tomorrow?  “It is with a heavy heart that I announce my resignation from this career.”

It is because I face a man who risked a lot to get me here, a man who put his neck out for me because he believed in my skill, and in my determination.  And tomorrow, I will tell him that he was wrong.

I will tell him that I am weak, that I have been scared and hurting, and that the smiling face he saw for eight months has been a lie.

Why, though?  Why am I scared?  Am I scared of his reaction?  Certainly.  Am I scared of the future?  Of course.  I think most of all, that I am scared to admit that I was weaker than his estimate of me.  I am scared to admit that, in this endeavor, I failed.  So many times, I have announced my successes, and boldly proclaimed that I could succeed however I wished.  But here, tonight, I sit naked in my bed with my computer in front of me, trembling.

I glance at the red square numbers on the table next to me.  10:38.  I count down the hours until I say those words:  “It is with a heavy heart…” Probably close to twelve hours.  Maybe less.  Two of those hours I will spend driving, waiting desperately for the sun to rise, my body crouched over the steering wheel, holding on to life as I drive toward this realization, the revelation to the world that I was weak.

I think also of my fiancé, and my friends who look forward to my return.  I think ahead four months and I can visualize the smile on my face as I sit with friends and make merry.  This smile has not crossed my lips in months except for rare exceptions to the status quo: vacation weekends, visits from my distant fiancé.  In a short time, this smile will be the norm, and the trembling and the crying and the anger will be my rare states of being.

I think ahead two weeks.  I am at the office, turning in a progress report on a task that will have to be completed after I’ve left.  I think of the looks I’ll receive from my coworkers.  I think of the rare smiles and congratulations I might greet with relief.  I think of the possibilities that my resignation might spark an exodus.  The council could be left in shambles, and how will I have contributed?  The catastrophe’s catalyst.

But if I think of myself, only myself, I can be free.  I will be free of the pain, and the fear, and the depression, and I will have a wealth of knowledge to bring with me as I travel forward.  I was weak here, but I might be stronger in the next arena.  And the next, and the next, and the next…

Quarantine?

Do you ever wonder if you cut somebody out of your life just a little too soon?  Like maybe they need you now?  Like maybe they wonder where you are?  Maybe they wonder why you left them?

Are they thinking about how you helped them that one time?  Are they wondering why you never call anymore?  Have they noticed that your profile is now set to "private?"

But maybe they burned you one too many times?  Maybe they let one too many phone calls go to voicemail?  Or maybe they left one too many messages unanswered?

Where are they now?  Do they care that you're gone?  Do they dread their quarantine?

Or do they even know they're in it?

West Texas Fire

I feel that it’s important to remember how memories and past experiences shape who we are.  That is the purpose of this exercise.  In that vein, I would like to thrust us all into the present.  Who are you now?  What are you now?  Where are you going?  And why are you here?

I’m exhausted.  I’m sun burnt.  My feet hurt.  But when I wake up in the brisk mountain breeze at 7:00 in the morning, I can’t help but feel refreshed.  In August, I start a job with the Boy Scouts of America in the Big Bend region of west Texas, and until then, I’m working at the camp I’ve been working at the past couple summers.  My job at camp is meant as training for my job in August. 

Even so, I am terrified.

I am terrified of jumping headfirst into a job without being prepared.  I hate “baptism by fire,” being thrust into a duty without the proper training to do it.  My job here at camp is full of duties and responsibilities I’ve never had and haven’t been trained for.  I’m terrified of working here at camp, and that doesn’t even approach the level of terror I am feeling for my career as a District Executive.

My terror is fueled by my fear of failure in my new career.  That, and I have already left my home and my family without knowing when I’ll be back, and Alpine is not a cultural center of diversity and commerce like Houston, and I’ll be apart from Kristen for unknown intervals of time, and I’m facing the onslaught of new added responsibilities like feeding myself and sheltering myself.

Many areas of my life are soon approaching a critical junction.  I have stated that I am scared of a job where I haven’t had training.  I am dreadfully frightened of “baptism by fire.”  But now, I’m realizing, my life is a job where I haven’t had the proper training.  I don’t know how to hold a long-term career, I don’t know how to feed or shelter myself, and I don’t know how to maintain relationships with my family and my girlfriend from thousands of miles away.

Every facet, every crook, every turn of my entire life in two months will be an inferno.  I will be baptized, through fire, into my existence.  I’ll miss rent, I won’t meet quotas, I’ll eat fast food late at night, and my family and loved ones will miss me, as I will miss them.  The failures will come like blisters and scars in the blaze of experience.  But those imperfections will be smoothed out like leather over my skin and I will grow to be stronger through my baptism.  I will repent of my failures, and through them, I will be cleansed to a whiter, purer form of myself.

An older “me” will die, to make way for a newer “me.” Toughened by the fires of the forge of being, hammered and shaped into a sharper and more efficient “me.”

Gifted and Talented

Remember everyone:  "can" has a short 'a' sound, while "can't" has a lifted 'a.'  Now, onward.

Let's return to elementary school.  It has been quite a while, hasn't it?  Let's see.  Currently, I am coming to the end of my sixteenth year of schooling, so elementary school as a whole was between eleven and fifteen years ago.  It sounds gruesome saying it, doesn't it?

In the first grade I took the fateful quiz/test/exam-thing that would determine THE REST OF MY LIFE.  Not really.  It was the test to see if I qualified as a gifted and talented (GT) student.  I remember questions like, "if you were an animal, which would you be?" and lots of analogy questions.  I just remember talking about tigers on my test.  Yes, yes, I was a natural born genius.  Everyone calm down. 

I never felt that different, being a gifted and talented student.  Until, once a week, my afternoon was not spent in the classroom with the other students.  I was, instead, taken with a group of about six other students to a bare, empty classroom where Mrs. Coleman basically let us play games and do puzzles all afternoon.  Math, logic, reading, spelling, all reduced (or elevated, as the teachers would tell you) to puzzles and play instead of tests and homework.  Oh, how I looked forward to 1:30 on Tuesdays, so I could leave the drab and dull lesson of the day to play games and eat candy and watch movies with the other smarties! 

The Gifted and Talented.

In the fifth grade (or fourth, I'm not sure), with the advent of Mrs. Whittington, it got real.  As it turned out, the former years were training for a brutal competition, a clash of the unharnessed power of young minds:  UIL.  The University Interscholastic League.  The arbiters of glory and shame.  The pressure of the UIL weighed down on us all, and the large frame* of Mrs. Whittington served as an ever present reminder of the watchful eyes of the UIL.

The year of training before the competition was grueling.  No longer were we greeted with candy and song.  Assessment after assessment were doled out to us.  Time limits, number two pencils, scratch paper.  The tools of the driver.  When the day of reckoning dawned, the six or seven of us left early in the morning on a full-length school bus to a different elementary school.  I don't even remember what subjects I took the tests for.  I only remember that I didn't win any recognition.  A young, malleable-minded Brittany, on the other hand, cried when she lost her competition.  Our Pegasus group (nice and pretentious, eh?) grudgingly returned to the bus, not a single award among us.  I was happy to have gotten out of school though.  After all, what else matters in the fifth grade?

However, with the pressure of the UIL bearing down, we had been granted several lovely breaks from school, in addition to our weekly adventures.  Because UIL competition was held on the day our elementary school was hosting a vaccination shot hand-out thing, our Pegasus group (it never gets old, does it?) took a half-day field trip to another school to receive our shots.  Basically, we got our shots in about fifteen minutes, then played on their playground toys for the rest of the day.

All of the gifted and talented students from all of the elementary schools were rewarded for their accomplishments (or effort, in our case) in the UIL competition with a trip to The Children's Museum, the holy grail of childhood adventures!  Look at me, while I shop for plastic fruits and vegetables!  Afterwards, we went for a picnic, where I happened to notice The Whittington's downcast look as she talked to her colleagues.

All told, we had four field trips that year that I remember.  Our half-day vaccination field trip, the Gifted and Talented trip to the Children's Museum, UIL competition, and the general fifth grade field trip to Hermann Park to see a live play production of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  A shabby performance, even from the rough uncritical eye of this group of small-town ten-year-olds.  "With this jump rope, we'll create the magic Circle of Imagination!" and "We have to go through the wardrobe, Edward!" (Yes, I know his name is Edmund.)

I kept up my status as a gifted and talented student through middle school in all subjects except math.  That met an abrupt end in the seventh grade at the hand of Mrs. Garcia-Meitin.  I think I was left traumatized by the red ink that covered my assignments throughout that Algebra class.  It looked like blood.  The next year I played it safe in Mrs. "Big Bird" Christley's regular level math class.  Of course, I would get high A's throughout the year.  In my short stint as a regular level math student in the ninth grade, I learned that to stay at this level meant an intimate understanding of the drug and pregnancy scene with the rest of the students in the class.  I decided to reclaim my place with the other former Pegasi that had left me behind.  My low self-esteem in the area of math was reaffirmed in the subarctic climate of Mrs. Thibodaux's Pre-Calculus class my junior year.

After my first couple months at a private Catholic university, I quickly learned that being a gifted and talented Pegasus means nothing here.  I am a small fish, from a small pond, thrust into a savage ocean of philosophers, activists and intellectuals.  Better make friends with the sharks.




*In one of our fifth grade assemblies, we were visited by an artist, who created an entire creature from the outline of an egg, giving it suggested characteristics from the crowd.  It had a mohawk, muscular arms, and eyes like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.  When Kayla was fortuitously called on to name the beast, she named it after our taskmaster, "Mrs. Whittington."

Signs

Have you ever felt that you had a destiny?  Something you knew you just had to do?  Has that calling come and gone with the days, and you wonder where it is now?  Or does it still linger in the back of your mind, knocking on your soul like a door-to-door Bible salesman?

One of the purposes of these writing exercises is to demonstrate the idea that every past experience and every memory has some kind of impact, some kind of effect, on who I am today.  That's why I can't just write an autobiography and be done with it.  My personhood develops and changes every day because of what I do and who I interact with and what I feel.

When I was younger, I wanted to be a priest, and I knew that I would be good at it.

Granted, I went through the phases like any young man.  When I was little, I wanted to marry my mom.  In the third grade, I had a crush on Krystal Plummer (which would last through elementary school).  Middle school was a horror story of failed romances, and in high school, after Becca Janik, everything else went to hell.  It was my junior year when my priorities began to change.  I grew into different leadership positions, focused on school, community service, extracurricular activities, and learning and growing in my Catholic faith.  Maybe it was because of my previous romantic failures that I went through a phase during which I participated in casual dating, but did not actively search or strive for romance or love for myself.

Many friends will tell you, I was quite the romantic guru in my time.  I could offer advice and fix any number of other people's romantic problems (I still can, by the way), but I could never get myself out of my hopeless lackluster rut.

The more involved I got with my church, Boy Scouts, and the high school band, starting my junior year, the more I felt, "You know?  I don't really need a woman to be happy.  I like myself, and I can be happy without a significant other."  Of course, that didn't stop me from dating.  But an inkling kept digging at the back of my throat, like the fuzzy film that grows on your teeth.  An inkling that said, "You know, Travis.  You could be a fantastic priest."  And you know what?  I could.

There were 'signs' everywhere.  More 'signs' than I care to admit.  Many of them I probably put together afterward.  Here are a few examples.  At that time I was the Senior Patrol Leader (SPL) of my Boy Scout troop.  One thing our troop does is, at the beginning of every meeting, the SPL would stand at the front of the room and hold his arms like the referee at a football game for a successful point.  "GOOOOOALLLL!!"  You get the idea.  The gesture served to inform everyone in the group, "It's time to start."  I feel that I did a fairly good job as SPL, seeing as I was voted into that position for three consecutive terms.  I was also the drum major of the band.  As you know, the drum major holds out his arms, forward with palms out, to conduct and keep rhythm.  While both of these arm gestures served functional purposes, I feel that there is an important symbolism that those gestures illustrate.  Both say, "Don't worry.  I am here to lead you to success.  It takes work, but follow me.  Trust me."  The arms come out to encircle and guide the flock to safety and success.

I bet a priest does a 'big arms thing' EVERY DAY.  It is an important symbol.  He does it to pray, to bless, to welcome, to inform, to teach.  He does it ALL THE TIME.  Sign #1:  the 'Big Arms Thing.'

One day, my senior year of high school, I went to a Burger King with my mom, and we talked about all of my 'signs.'  As we left the restaurant, walking towards my mother's car, a pay-phone rang.  Seeking a lucky adventure, I answered the phone.  "Hello?"  No answer.  Oh well.  Not today, I guess.  I took a step towards the car and the yellow pay-phone rang once again.  Lucky me!  "Hello?"  No answer.  Someone out there is laughing at me.  Wouldn't be the first time.  I hang up, and take one more step.  Mom says, "It might be God."  Shit.  Ring, ring, ring.  I answer the channeling device with anxiety.  "Hello?   God?"  No answer, thank God.  Ha, see what I did there?  Mom says it's God, calling me.

My priest at home likes to poke fun at people whose cell phones go off during Mass.  That familiar melody plays, the one that ends in a cymbal crash, and Father Bob says, "That had better be Jesus calling."  I made a little playful bet with myself.  I'm always so good about turning off my phone for Mass.  "If my phone goes off audibly during Mass, I'll be a priest."  A year, a Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) Conference, a break-up, and a Catholic university later, I am altar serving during Mass.  I am kneeling in front of the altar, holding a tall candle as the priest elevates the Body of Christ, the bells ringing indicating the solid, real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and feel a buzzing tickle on my right thigh.  My phone is on vibrate, and it goes off NOW.  Are you kidding me?  After Mass, I check it.  It's my friend Richard.  He wants to play D&D and watch 300.  I think I'm fine.  Sign #2:  Calls.

Time goes on and I meet a girl.  I see a baby.  I want one.  Not now, but eventually.  She loves me.  I love her.  These are important details for later.

I study Communication, English, and Philosophy at the University of St. Thomas.  I know priests.  I see them all the time, but I'm with her, and she floods and eclipses everything else.  In Mass, we stand together, holding hands, and pray "for vocations to the priesthood and religious life to flourish at the University of St. Thomas."

I know that I'd be a good priest, an excellent priest, a phenomenal priest.  It is a lifestyle that I can live with and flourish in, and it is a noble and honorable calling.

But I don't want it.  Bring those previous details back up to bear.  I want a family, and to be a father.  I am scared of not following through with what could be "God's path" for me.  I'm overwhelmed with a crushing doubt that I might not be able to handle the intense divine intimacy that a priest must have with God.  I told a priest that I was terrified of being a priest, and you know what he said to me?  The little devil.

"If you are terrified of becoming a priest, that's a pretty good sign that you shouldn't be a priest."

Words of Wisdom.

Compromise, though.  I can always be a deacon.  Go Catholicism!

By Order of the Author

I have a hard time remembering when exactly I began to enjoy writing.  For the longest time, reading and writing were things that I hated.  The over-analysis that occurs in schools these days really turned me off from the literary arts when I was younger.  I felt that the conclusions being dug from various books were attributed to the work after the fact, and the author's intentions weren't being considered.  (See the foreword to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.)  I still have those sentiments about many of my literature studies up through my high school career.

However, looking back, evidence exists to state that I had quite the propensity towards writing and literature in my early days.

In the third grade, Mrs. Taylor (who became the librarian after teaching our class) gave us the assignment to write a ghost story.  A simple assignment to give during the Halloween season.  The classroom was decorated with pumpkins and witches, purple and orange streamers hanging from the corners of the water-damaged tile ceiling.  I don't remember any length requirement.  At the time, I thought of it as busy work.  My story was about a vampire bat, from the point of view of the bat.  I was inspired by a wonderful episode of The Magic School Bus that I had just watched, featuring bats, where the class suspected Mrs. Frizzle of being a vampire.  Hi-jinks ensued.  According to Mrs. Taylor, this shift to the first person perspective was astounding, and she had me spend the next class transcribing my work onto a large laminated sheet outlined with bats and ghosts to display in our classroom.

A few short months later, we were told to write a book report.  We had a week in class to complete the assignment.  My book was one of the childhood favorite "Boxcar Children" series.  I understood the mystery they faced, but I had the hardest time putting my pencil to paper to summarize the book.  I would stare blankly at my wide-ruled notebook paper, my head in my hands, waiting for my pencil to move itself and form words on the page.  As Mrs. Taylor made her rounds, checking on progress, she approached my desk.  "Travis, how are you doing?"  "I have no idea what I'm doing."  She proceeded to ask me about the characters and the plot and setting and theme, all of which I reported to her.  Not a word was written.  On Friday, when the other students were passing in their folders full of papers and pictures, I passed forward only air.  Mrs. Taylor never spoke a word to me about her "missing" report.

The next year, our fourth grade class was blessed with the fortune of taking the Writing TAAS test.  On this wonderfully inaccurate test, we were required to write a "narrative" about "what we would do if we could go back in time."  Luckily for me, I had recently seen a similar episode of Sister Sister, where one of the girls (Tia or Tamara) had to confront Rosa Parks in a dream and convince her not to move from her seat.  I wrote a narrative where I confronted George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and helped to assure them in their times of stress, and bolstered their courage.  At the end of my narrative, I "woke up" from my "dream" in the middle of my history class, ready to face my own trials with courage.  A wonderful piece, I must admit, although its ideas were completely unoriginal.  I was the only student from my grade to receive a 4 on my Writing TAAS test, the highest grade possible.* (See footnote)

Interestingly, previously that same year, in Mrs. Loftin's language arts class, I received my first "B" ever.  EVER.  The reason for this first failure was the familiar writer's block as in the case of the book report the year prior.  It was during the dreaded "Camp Write-a-Long," a week devoted to writing exercises and grammar worksheets.  Strangely, the assignment was to write a ghost story.  Where have we seen this assignment before?  On this occasion, unlike before, I was formidably stumped.  Not a page was put to print, and this time, I did not have the benevolence of my teacher to save me.  I was hounded by the bulldog woman, and I turned in something that my mind has blocked out.  With its tardiness working against the already poor quality of the work, a low grade was recorded, and it was reflected in my record shattering, report-card staining "B." 

The taint of imperfection would follow me forever, haunting my interaction with Language Arts classes to come.  Logan, Farris, Kordsmeier, Drury, Gaconnet, and Krohn were reapers and sowers of my displeasure and angst.  Only a select few would alleviate the pain:  Adams, Ligon, Forbes, Lowery, Barloon, and an honorable mention to Henry.



*I was told by various teachers that I was the only one to receive a 4 from my grade on the Writing TAAS test.  If anyone else was told the same thing, please inform me.  My ego has grown substantially since the fourth grade, likely because of this bolstering.

Dangerous Race

Tonight's pouring of lights and sounds will be quick and crude.  Allow me to set the stage.

I was a Senior in high school, exempt from all of my final exams, but required to be present at the education facility until noon.  On this wonderful May day of freedom, I made modest plans to see a movie with some friends during the afternoon, when the theatre would not be overrun by eighth graders dressed like twenty-somethings.  For the integrity of this story, I must first describe three very important things.



Firstly, my car.  My car is my trusty steed.  I drive a white '96 Nissan Sentra.  My mom drove him first, then my brother, then me.  His name is Benito Juarez.  Benito earned his name effortlessly.  My brother's name is Ben, so, as an homage to his previous driver, the name "Benito" seemed fitting.  "Little Ben."  Secondly, on my sixteenth birthday, when I got my driver's license, my good friend Andrew gave me a twenty peso mark, on which the face of Benito Juarez, the first president of Mexico, glares disapprovingly.  In a moment, we had come to the conclusion that my car was actually only worth about twenty pesos.  And henceforth, Benito Juarez was born, and his name stuck marvelously.

Most of the car has retained its white coloring.  Signs of aging have stained his pure shell, but he still gleams in the sunlight on a blinding yellow day.  His most distinguishing feature is the scar he retains from a front end wreck many years ago when my mom was the driver.  Even though the white paint was replaced after the bumper was repaired, that replacement paint has, since then, chipped away at a startling rate, leaving Benito with a mostly black bumper with specks of white paint clinging and hoping to be remembered.  My friends and I call it his mustache.  Because Benito is easily recognizable, and because I've had him for so long, and because of his catchy name, he has earned a deep place in my heart, and I find that he has a lot of character for a car, compared to most.* (See footnote.)

The second new character in this play is my friend Michael.  Michael and I have been friends since the second grade.  We were in Boy Scouts together from second grade up through high school, and we earned our Eagle Scout awards side by side.  I find now that if I had to name my longest running friendship, it is my friendship with Michael.  Michael is a large man.  He towers at 6'3" and weighs in at over three-hundred pounds.  With these numbers in mind, I have seen Michael perform feats of strength that would make a normal man pale in fear.  On more than one occasion, I have recognized Michael as a "great bronze god," not for his appearance, but for his bravery in the face of danger (or more likely, stupidity in the face of danger).  Michael is also, without comparison, my geekiest friend.  I say that with unbridled love.  When I truly want to play a good game, when that burning desire overtakes my attention to convenience, Michael is the man I call.  With all of this in mind, I must now inform you, reader, that Michael is a man with long, greasy blonde hair, an unkempt, curly blonde beard, and a perpetual gloss of sweat on his brow.  He drives a red Jeep Liberty.  (This is an important detail.)

The third player is my good friend Derek.  At the time of this memory, we had known each other for only about a year, but now he is one of my best friends.  He would want me to tell you that I am friends with him out of fear, but also for protection.  Derek has the uncanny ability to bend the forces of the world to his divine will.  For this reason, I keep him close.  Someday, he will be my mightiest enemy, but for now, his company is intriguing and entertaining.

Call it coincidence, but Derek is also quite large in stature, only slightly smaller than Michael, and also with amazing strength.  Derek fashions himself after Mufasa, the lion king.  He keeps his mane shiny and silky smooth, and his beard formidable.  He prides his beard like a king should.



And now to the play.  The three of us meet in the parking lot, with the sun shining brightly overhead.  Michael saunters to his Jeep, while Derek and I huddle into Benito.  Michael drives in front of us, calling out, "How about a friendly race?  A gentleman's pride bet."

"Agreed."

We both make it to Hwy 288 in inconsequential time from the high school.  Michael's Jeep takes off, spouting forward like the water from a faucet.  It seems at home on this highway.  Benito trails behind, as I pat him on the dashboard.  "Take your time, friend," I say.  Benito has his kick, and executes it professionally at all times.  It is not long before I overtake Michael's little red floozy on the road.  On the short 15 mile stretch from Angleton to Lake Jackson, it seemed Benito had clenched his victory.  The conclusion seemed more and more certain as we were about to pass an 18-wheeler.  Success in that endeavor would leave Michael trapped behind us, and victory assured.

In a frightening turn of events, Michael and his red machine rushed through the small gap between the tanker and Benito, bringing us all an inch or two closer to meeting our respective makers.  Michael's red Liberty imprisoned Benito behind the tanker.  In a few short seconds, we were both clear of the 18-wheeler.  However, after Michael's show of stupid bravery, I reconciled to let him keep his dignity.  He was clearly willing to risk more to win this "gentleman's pride bet" than I was.

In short, I let the foolish man win.



*Benito's personality was only further enhanced when I received an Autobot magnet from a family member a year ago.  With the addition of the Autobot magnet, Benito's allegiances were confirmed.