The Handbook / Chapter 20

Turn Signal | Brock

NOTE: Turning for home here. What you’ve been reading is the first draft of this book, completed in November of last year. I then received some extensive notes from a trio of great readers, and completed a second draft in March. I set about writing a 40 page proposal which was completed and sent to 3 agents, 2 of whom have responded favorably. I am presently making the changes requested by one.

I have a medical procedure tomorrow starting at 7a so I’ll post this now. Thanks for reading. My story begins here—

~

Have you ever wondered how different your life might have turned out if you changed just one thing in your past? My story has one of those and it had the most dramatic and lasting effect.

Photo by Aleks Marinkovic on Unsplash

I grew up in the little upstate NY town of Wappingers Falls. My early life was wonderfully uneventful except for the inebriated, I think, surgeon who performed my Tonsillectomy and removed my uvula along with the inflamed bits. Since I would go on to be a successful jingle singer and recording artist, I couldn’t reasonably sue for malpractice.

My childhood friends were a dozen or so boys, teammates in baseball, football, and basketball. When baseball season ended, we’d turn in our caps and uniforms and line up for our helmets and pads. Year after year, the same names appeared on the rosters. The sport would change with the season and we’d be an inch or two taller but that’s it.

We all attended the same school. After a summer of little league, we covered our textbooks with brown paper grocery bags, hopped on the school bus, and headed back to Raymond Avenue Elementary. It was at the foot of those basement stairs I learned that President Kennedy had been assassinated.

In 5th grade, I fancied myself a budding Entomologist, interested in all things bugs but with a special fascination for Praying Mantis. In a gallon glass jar, I built a display that held two specimens. I created a luxurious habitat, lining the bottom with leaves and stems surrounding an orange clay water saucer. I presented it to the class proudly, my contribution to the science curriculum. The day before spring break, concerned for their long-term respiratory health, I unscrewed the green metal lid that confined the happy couple. Upon our return two weeks later, Mrs. Vroman unlocked the classroom door to discover that the fertile, and apparently amorous, pair had reproduced, as had their progeny, many times over. We peered inside and gasped as thousands of insects dined on now decimated window shades and paper products. For the next week we had a substitute teacher in an alternate room.

It was recommended I see the school psychologist.

The night before my evaluation, my late brother, seven years my senior, privately coached me on what to say when asked for my interpretations of the Rorschach inkblots. The doctor found my responses troubling and suspected a serious behavioral disorder. Upon learning that their son had seen decapitated humans spouting tall fountains of blood in each of the numerous images, my parents were understandably concerned whereupon brother Michael, in a mixture of pride and shame, admitted having masterminded the whole thing.

Apologies were made all around and instead of the new wonder drug, Ritalin, which was recommended, my parents gave me a lecture and a second chance.

We were excited, my classmates and I, at the prospect of going to

junior high the following fall, where we could join a school sports team for the first time. That meant nicer uniforms, better fields, and spectators.

Meet me.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS | BROCK

IMPULSIVE

CREATIVE

RESTLESS

SOCIABLE

CAN BE PROFOUNDLY LAZY

SENSITIVE

GIVEN TO BOUTS OF FANCIFUL THOUGHT

KNOWN TO BREAK INTO SONG

FAMILY & DOG ORIENTED

MUST BE KEPT BUSY OR BECOMES ABSOLUTELY INSUFFERABLE

PERSONAL STATEMENT #1 | BROCK

Don’t go out for football.

The advice filtered back to Raymond Elementary from our 7th grade, now junior high, friends. The coach was a sadist, they said. His workouts were of the run-until-you-wretch variety and his manner straight out of a concentration camp. He enjoyed inflicting pain on kids.

My 6th grade pals and I talked it over. Not playing football was a huge sacrifice. We'd be passing up real uniforms and equipment. Forgoing cheerleaders seemed too much to bear. Then we heard that a new sport was being offered the following year. It was called soccer.

We agreed to take a vote, everyone abiding by the outcome. Pinky swears all around. It was decided by a narrow margin to give this new sport a go.

Tryouts took place on our school's playing field on the last day of 6th grade. The twelve of us walked en masse toward the two waiting coaches. The football coach was first up, looking at us menacingly as we approached. When we didn’t slow down, continuing on toward the biology teacher (who was only there for the meager stipend), the sadist ordered us back. He knew us all and fully expected us to be his star prisoners.

Keep walking, I said. Don’t turn around.

He kept hollering, his voice a mangled roar. He called me out by name. We ignored him. That night he complained to our parents. My father, then a school board member, instructed him that no one was going to tell his kid what he could and couldn’t try out for and to refrain from ever calling again.

Not only were we all given spots on the soccer team, we instantly became the entire program. Our coach had no knowledge of tactics or skills., leaving us to figure it out on our own. His one instruction was to somehow get the ball into the goal while denying the opposition the same pleasure. Oh, and not to use our hands.

Not one of us had ever seen a soccer game played. With no one to show us the prescribed methods of trapping and dribbling, we devised our own. We plundered skills and tactics from each opposing side. Lacking any sense of strategy, we invented one— gain possession of the ball by any means necessary and rumble as one toward the opposing goal. The sight of our wild eyes and sound of our thundering hooves would often cause an indifferent defender to step aside entirely until the threat had passed. When as a result of our offensive assault we left ourselves defensively vulnerable, we’d turn and collectively stampede to the void, hollering instructions and throwing our bodies before the onslaught until the danger was gone. There were complaints that we played too aggressively. Our sheepish, soft-spoken coach could not conceal a grin when he answered such grievances, explaining that playing with gusto, his word, was not against the rules.

By the time we reached 12th grade, we had improved considerably and mellowed some. But we were the same wild bunch. We represented our high school in the New York State Championship game, losing to a far superior Ossining HS. Their program was decades old and it showed.

The news of Arlington’s meteoric rise made the papers. Being the team’s captain, I was selected for the High School All-America team which made the papers again. I bought multiple copies and sent the story off to all seven Ivy League admissions offices. This was complicated by the fact that it was by then mid-March. Colleges were just weeks away from announcing admissions decisions and I hadn’t officially applied to any of them. The deadline had passed.

It didn’t matter. Harvard called and requested I pay them a visit in person. I evidently had something they were looking for.

If I hadn’t played soccer none of that would have happened.

When is a sadist not a sadist? When he’s a turn signal.

End.

That was fun. Granted, I can take a few more liberties than you. Plus the essay speaks to a different age, namely 1964, when kids had plenty of unsupervised opportunities to discover for themselves how to untangle life’s knots.

Harvard called my house after receiving my newspaper clipping. Two days before, I had borrowed the family VW bug and driven to Providence, Rhode Island to visit my high school girlfriend, a freshman at Brown. When I called home on Sunday morning to let my parents know I would be heading home, I was told to navigate north instead of west— that two admissions officers were expecting me in Cambridge at noon. Ok, interesting.

I arrived in Harvard Square two hours later, guitar in hand. You don’t visit your college girlfriend without one if you can help it. I found a phone booth and called the designated number. Despite it being a Sunday, someone answered. He’d be right down, he said. Minutes later, two gentlemen clad in khakis, oxford shirts and tweed jackets appeared. We introduced ourselves and shook hands.

I was escorted upstairs in Holyoke Center where I learned that one of my interviewers was the assistant soccer coach as well as an admissions officer. They were both quite friendly. After a brief conversation about soccer and music— seemingly to determine whether I was capable of constructing coherent sentences— they asked me about my GPA and SAT score. Give it to us straight, we’ll need you to send us the official papers, the second gentleman advised. They seemed satisfied with my responses and repeated the importance of supplying them with an official transcript and test scores with all due haste. If I did so, they informed me, Harvard would three weeks hence offer me a spot in their freshman class.

Did I hear that right ?

PERSONAL STATEMENT #2 | BROCK

I had issues with authority.

It went with the teenage territory, almost like a job description. All through high school I mostly ignored rules that seemed arbitrary and unnecessary. If I was called out, I’d use it as an opportunity to champion free speech or freedom of movement. I wasn’t a wildly disruptive kid, more of an annoyance, a cocky pain in the administration’s backside.

My relationship with the assistant principal was one of benign antagonism when we were one-on-one, polite and chilly in the company of others. I saved my most vocal disagreements for our private discussions when he was less inclined to inflict punishment. Disrespecting him in front of other students or faculty would almost certainly result in an hour of detention.

Senior year I was elected student body president and we enjoyed an uneasy truce. He knew I mocked him in private for his pathetic combover and his pigheaded adherence to the code of conduct. But I was careful not to provide him with an easy target. The success of our soccer team and my All-America recognition had brought the school positive attention and bought me some slack in the process. I intended to dine out on it all the way to graduation.

College counseling was abysmal at my high school. Students were largely on their own, both in selecting colleges and the application process itself. With my not-straight-A grades and rebellious nature, I had been steered away from top tier schools. Unaware I’d been in communication with Harvard, the assistant principal would no doubt find my visit curious. I knocked and was invited into his tiny office.

Mr. L@(%, I need you to send my transcript to Harvard.

He looked like he was stifling laughter. He was half right. This was going to end with a laugh, just not his.

But you didn’t apply to Harvard, did you?

I need you to send it anyway.

Brock, you’ll be happy at SUNY or wherever you get in.

If the look I gave him conveyed anything I was thinking it would have stopped his heart.

I’m sure you’re right, sir, but would you please send it anyway? They specifically asked for it.

This information registered like he’d been served a divorce summons.

March crept by as seniors sweated out decisions still two weeks away. I felt like I was floating one minute and falling the next. I’d told no one about my unscheduled trip to Cambridge. It seemed both unreal and unfair. You’re going to Harvard and you didn’t even apply? What’s with that?

I did call them the following week to confirm they’d received scores and grades. They had and, as I hung up, I wondered if I’d dreamt the whole thing.

We skipped school on a Friday in late March. Twenty seniors drank beer and listened to records at Glenn’s house and laughed about the grilling we’d get from the assistant principal come Monday. No one was remotely concerned about the consequences. What was on everyone’s mind were the decision letters we were about to receive the following week.

The one I got from Harvard confirmed their offer. I was going to Cambridge in the fall.

I’m not proud of it but I went back to get my pound of flesh from The Combover. I entered school and walked straight into his office.

I heard from Harvard.

That’s okay, you can’t expect to . . .

I got in.

I dropped the acceptance letter on his desk. Any pleasure he might have taken from seeing his first AHS student admitted to the school was not visible on his face. He turned a deep shade of red, purple almost. His breathing seemed labored.

Looking back, I can see that I nurtured an unhealthy relationship. I would soon learn the benefits of avoiding, rather than engaging with, arrogant and mediocre bureaucrats.

Live and learn.

End.

Harvard was a gift. It gave me a view of the world I’d never experienced. I played soccer with talented players from all over the globe. It placed me among a remarkable assortment of brilliant oddballs who would become my lifelong friends. It introduced me to teaching that was often inspiring, from professors who had spent their lives leading their respective fields. It showed patience with my modest writing skills and tolerated my frequently listless effort. It nurtured my early songwriting endeavors.

But perhaps the greatest lesson it imparted was reorienting me to the horizon. It turned out to be considerably higher than I thought, and it changed my aim. It didn’t spare me my share of failure, but it greatly expanded the challenges I would undertake. And that alone makes a world of difference.