Hard Lesson

20

I hadn't been told why, but the nighttime computer teacher at the Business College was gone by the end of the Spring Quarter, Nineteen Eighty-Five. An early champion of mine, he had gotten me my one day per week computer room monitoring & tutoring job. His initial attempt was to have the existing weekend monitor let go a year earlier which, as it was the daytime computer teacher's protege, didn't go over well and I was instead deemed as first runner-up if the protege should leave at some point in the future. Four months later, he transferred to the accredited big brother College to our little Business College and after a few weeks of attending class at that campus while coming to the old campus for his one day, he decided to find something else to do during his Saturdays and I inherited my first regular job since moving to Colorado.

Still, as there was that rivalry between the nighttime and daytime computer teachers, I was viewed with a touch of suspicion by the daytime teacher who also lead the computer department. While I did all of my Saturday tasks well, such as performing the weekly backups of the system onto various removable harddisk platters, helping computer students with their projects, and guiding accounting students through their one quarter of 'Computerized Accounting', when the daytime computer teacher had a problem, it wasn't me he called. Due to some mistake on his side, the daytime teacher had to restore the system disk from backups and, as he wasn't as familiar with the process, he called his protege for instructions on how to do it. After three failed attempts following what his protege had told him, he was becoming desperate and called me...

He had corrupted the system disk and for some reason the protege had told him that the TI-990's software was backwards for restoring from backup and the daytime teacher needed to specify the destination system drive as the 'source' and the backup harddisk platters as the 'destination'. Following these instructions, the daytime teacher had gone through all three official backups of the system disk and none of them had restored the damaged data on the actual system disk. When I came in and he told me this, a retired military man who normally had a sharp confidence, he was shaken as he had gone through and 'somehow' ruined all the backups. He was thinking I'd have to go to the Pueblo, Colorado, branch and get a fresh system backup from a sister school there.

I gave him a pleasant surprise that there was yet another backup copy in the room; as his protege had NOT taught me how to backup the system on his final day working for the school, I had to figure it out for myself. To be extra safe, at that time, I used a spare set of disk platters from a cabinet for practice before using any of the official three backup disks. I checked the cabinet and this test backup was still where I had left it and I recommended we first try to restore from it before sorting out an emergency drive to Pueblo. He agreed but then when I went to specify the destination as the 'destination' and the practice backup disk as the 'source' he pointed out that I didn't know what I was doing and had to do it backwards like his protege had told him. While it was obvious to me that was how the three official backups had been ruined, I instead sold it as ''trying something different'' and ''let's see what happens.''

The daytime computer teacher left the room in a huff as the disk copying began, officially ''to get coffee'' he actually called the Pueblo branch to let them know I'd be on my way. When he returned, the copying process was done and system disk was now running fine. The daytime teacher was stunned as his old protege had assured him the source & destination prompts had been backwards. He concluded that his protege had intentionally mislead him, but as he no longer worked at the school, there was nothing that could be done about it. As the protege had not spent his last day bringing me up to speed on maintaining the system like he had been supposed to nine months earlier, I wouldn't be surprised if he had back stabbed the daytime teacher. But given the daytime teacher's ego, it also seemed to me that he could have been told something like restoring the system was the same as backing it up and to just 'reverse the process' and the daytime teacher over-thought it to mean the 'source' and 'destination' prompts on the computer were reversed. Either way, I had now proven myself in the eyes of the daytime teacher and he no longer saw me as the former nighttime teachers 'plant'.

A few weeks later, when the print-head of the TI-990 died, the daytime teacher found the school could get a replacement, rebuilt print-head from a company in Denver and I was tasked to make the trip. As the school didn't have any formal relationship with the company, it was a 'cashiers check only' transaction and the head master & secretary nervously gave me the check in an envelope and had me sign paperwork officially accepting ''the money'' and acknowledging what it was supposed to be used for. I successfully kept a straight face and they gave me the driving directions to Denver and told me I could file for 'mileage' compensation along with my hours at the end of the week. This was my first time driving to Denver alone and the place was actually at the west side of the city so it was unfamiliar territory to boot. Still, I succeeded in getting there, handing over the cashier's check, receiving the print-head & receipt and driving back. On the return trip, I had a sudden fear that perhaps the reason the business had wanted a cashier's check instead of billing for it was because the 'rebuilt' print-head wasn't in working condition and when the school found out: Who would they blame? But my fears were for naught as I plugged in the replacement print-head at the school and it worked just fine.

It was at this time that the daytime teacher told me he was leaving for a new job at the end of the summer quarter and, having seniority, I would now be ''the head of the computer department'' as they had never hired a replacement nighttime computer teacher. I took this as a bit of humor until the start of the fall quarter and, sure enough, the new daytime computer teacher was coming to me to coordinate his hours and lesson plans...!

Being in charge of myself at the Business College would be a huge help by the end of the year.

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Health Concerns

19

After a few months working at the big supermarket, my knees & knuckles started to hurt and my fingers would become cold and never want to warm up. As I worked in the dairy and frozen food departments, it was easy to explain away these problems as my fingers were often being exposed to the cold food packages and my knees perhaps needing to get used to pulling carts full of boxes, again. The only problem with this, though, was that unlike my original years working at the family owned grocery store where I did all these things without pain or cold finger problems, this new grocery store had powered jacks to move boxes of food around and store-paid-for gloves. If anything this job should have had less of an impact on me, physically.

As I had insurance this year through my mother's job at the local hospital, I decided to go ahead and use it... The question is how? Pick a name out of a phone book? Talking to my mother about this, she recommended I start with her primary care doctor and with little other guidance it seemed like a good enough choice. Calling his office, I made an appointment with my mother's primary doctor and soon saw him about it. A younger man with a well trimmed beard and glasses, he was nice, polite, and examined my hands briefly then recommended I see a joint specialist and gave me a name. I was soon off to see the joint doctor. Being more in demand, I had to wait a month before I could get in.

Mother decided to join me on this trip and stayed in the waiting room. I'm unsure why she chose to come, at the time I didn't see any harm to it. Filling out the initial paperwork was a chore given its many pages of handwritten forms and my problems with writing by hand. I had come in the half hour early, as requested, but realized in the future I needed to make sure I had more time than that. Fortunately the specialist was running behind, giving me more time to complete the paperwork before I was taken to an examination room. Unlike the primary doctor who had quickly looked at my hands, the joint doctor's first step was to have me dress into a gown so he could examine all my limbs. This made me nervous given my A.C.E. bandaged area, but as I was told he was going to look over my limbs, I decided just to put on the gown and make sure the opening flaps overlapped so none of the bandage around my chest would show.

A somewhat shorter, but more energetic man, he swooped in, introduced himself, briefly asked me of the history of my symptoms and then examined my hands, arms, knees and legs. I had full motion of them all, just the pain residing in my knuckles and knees. Then I was caught off guard when he noticed circular red rashes on my legs. Once he pointed them out, they were obvious and that seemed to be the final clue for him and he left saying I could get dressed. Once dressed, I was ushered into the waiting room where I touched base with my mother about the doctor, and then we were called to his office. He explained to me that I had Lyme Disease, I had gotten it when driving through Connecticut on my way to Colorado from New England. I felt the need to point out that I hadn't driven through Connecticut on my way here, and he very firmly assured me I had. The circular rashes on my legs were from the recent Deer Tick bites I had gotten going through Connecticut and a blood test would prove his diagnosis and he gave me a prescription for my ''first course of antibiotics'' that would start to cure the disease. As I had driven to Colorado nearly two years earlier, it was hard for me to imagine how any Deer Tick bites I might have gotten during the trip could have been labeled ''recent''. But he was very sure of himself & convincing and since there'd be a blood test to prove it objectively, I didn't see any reason to argue.

Mother and I left his office with her beaming about how great the doctors were in town and we went straight to the hospital to get the blood drawn before I could start the antibiotics. The only previous blood draws that I could remember were in childhood when the doctor would prick my finger with a lance, then take that drop of blood and put it on a slide. This was the first time when they found the vein in my arm and took a whole vial full, or two. Off to the drug store to get the prescription, it wouldn't be ready until the next day.

Sure enough, one week into the two week ''initial'' course of antibiotics, the joint pains went away and I was now sold on the doctor having known what he had been talking about. When I went to see him the following week for a follow-up and get the script for my next course of antibiotics, he was angry. The blood tests had not confirmed his diagnosis and he 'knew' I had started the antibiotics before I had the blood test and didn't I remember him telling me I couldn't start the antibiotics before I got the blood drawn?!? I assured him I had, he called me a liar. Stunned for a moment by this accusation, I realized I had the prescription bottle in my pocket and pulled it out for him, showing the date on the bottle. He took it from me and compared it to the date on the blood test paperwork, then smacked it down on the edge of his desk as his way of handing it back to me. I caught it as it rolled off toward me.

He told me he couldn't have gotten the diagnosis wrong given I'd driven through Connecticut on my way to Colorado. I again mentioned that I hadn't, but instead gone west through New York state, then south. Why hadn't I mentioned that before? he demanded. I fought to retain my cool and not reflect his mood as I responded in an even tone, ''I had.'' He paced his office and I decided I'd try to make him feel better by mentioning that the antibiotics had actually helped and I'd like to continue with them. He told me there was no reason for me to take them and he'd have to think about my case some more. I could leave.

A couple weeks off of the antibiotics, the joint pains returned.

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Car Detailing

18

The big grocery store continued to be a huge success into the new year. My worries about money were now behind me and I even took the opportunity to buy myself a new car. Sorry, I always confused people by saying that at the time, I meant a used car that was new to me.

My old import station wagon had not fared well since I had driven it to Colorado. I had no idea about the routine maintenance a car needed, and dealership car manuals at the time didn't seem to point it out either, so I learned about the car radiator needing to be checked when it overheated. I learned about the oil needing to be changed once the existing oil had become a thick sludge. I discovered that batteries needed to be checked once my own died in the first deep cold of a Colorado winter. By the Spring of Nineteen Eighty-Five my fourteen month out of state license plates had long given up the ghost as well. So I went car shopping.

Since I knew I couldn't afford a new car, I went straight for the various used car lots I had come to see while driving through various parts of town over the years, I hadn't realized that the dealerships sold used cars as well. I don't know if that was a blessing or an oversight at the time. Reaching one place, I looked over their cars and while they pointed me to various American brands, I went for the imports given their better reputations at the time and my own positive experience. While I would have preferred another wagon, they had a light blue sedan with a white vinyl top. I got in and took a test drive and it drove pretty well except for the steering wheel being off by a quarter turn and the previous owner's girl friend's picture looking up at me from a special gear shift knob. The payments were in the right range and I told them I'd take it if they fixed the steering wheel and addressed a couple other minor things. They grudgingly agreed and I picked up the car the next day. As part of my financing deal, I was to get insurance, which I agreed to and then drove the car to my mother's mobile home and asked her how much I owed her for the insurance...

She had no clue what I was talking about, so I mentioned how I had gotten my insurance for the import wagon from dad and so with this new car it seemed obvious I'd get the insurance from her. She asked me to explain and I mentioned how, once I got my drivers license in New England, I knew I had to get insurance. I went to the one insurance place in my rural New England town and asked them if they held the policy on my father's car. They told me they did and I asked how much more it would cost to include me as part of my father's insurance. It was just shy of three hundred dollars and so I went to the money machine down the far end of the same shopping center and withdrew the money and returned to the agent's office. They accepted the money and told me I would now be included on my father's insurance policy.

Later that day, the insurance agent tracked me down at the grocery store where I worked and handed the money back to me, saying that when they called my father to let him know I had been added to his policy, he told them to return the money to me and I was to hand the cash to dad and he would take care of it. Whatever, it was my first time getting insurance so I didn't know how these things worked. So when I got home from work that night, I handed the cash to my father who accepted it and told me I was insured for as long as I drove the car.

My mother asked how often dad had me give him that amount of money and I said just the once. She asked to see my insurance card dad must have given me. Insurance card? She burst out laughing and concluded that dad had just pocketed the money and I had never been insured these past three years. Feeling like a fool, I asked her how I would, then, get real car insurance. She decided to take me to her own car insurance agent and he signed me up for my own, personal, car insurance policy. When he asked me if I had been continuously insured since I had gotten my license, my mother spoke up and told him I had been.

New (used) car in hand with my first ever insurance card, I found a company that would come and look at my old car and offer me money to tow it away and scrap it. I had tried to trade it in but with the extensive rust damage and being shy of ten years old, they wouldn't take it. The scrap company showed up by the end of the day and offered me fifty dollars for it. As I really didn't feel like I could shop around I accepted the deal, then asked them to wait a moment. I unscrewed the gear shift knob featuring the girl's picture from my new car and found I could screw it on the gear shift of the wagon, with the wagon knob fitting my new car as well.

The burnt orange import wagon that I had known since Nineteen Seventy-Six was towed off into the sunset... No, really, it was. And I parked the blue import sedan in its place.

To make sure I took better care of my new car, I asked Jeff for his advice on maintenance issues. He told me to change the oil once in a while and check the brakes from time to time. And so I did have the oil checked, once in a while, and the brakes checked, when they made noises... And I continued to learn about the other maintenance items I should be aware of the hard way: Poor little blue import sedan. It wasn't until my third car that I had learned I could buy a third party maintenance manual to read through and follow to assure that car lasted for as long as it could...

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In My Face

17

Entering Nineteen Eighty-Five mother realized that, as I was a student, she could add me to her medical coverage at her hospital job without having to pay extra for only one additional family member. After my health scare last year, she added me likely to ensure she wouldn't have to be stuck with the full bill in case something happened, but also to take credit for doing something for me while not putting herself out. Either way, it was nice to have health coverage. About a month after she told me this, she discovered her plan covered Speech Therapy for those who stuttered and she thought this was a great idea and I was astonished as well as I had thought that was only something I could have gotten during my school years, not as an adult. An appointment was made and I'd soon have my first meeting.

With business college classes, my Saturday computer room monitor job, and my thirty hour a week grocery store job, it had been a challenge to find a spot for the visits, but once found it was locked-in as a weekly appointment. The speech therapist was in the hospital building itself down a few twists and turns in the old wing. As chance would have it, I would come to know this building well over the next few years and visit it again from time to time during the rest of my life, seeing it change, seeing it grow. As I finally found the therapist's office, she confirmed it was me and we settled in her room which included a number of props, for want of a better word.

After the routine paperwork questions, her first question about my stuttering was if I stuttered when talking to pets or young children? It turned out there were typically two types of stutterers, nervous and habitual. Nervous stutters didn't stammer when talking to their pets and children because there was no reason to feel threatened by them. As I did stutter when talking to them, that likely made me a habitual stutter, where I stuttered as a result of the back of my mind thinking I should stutter and thus the subconscious made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. And as it did, that stammering experience reinforced that subconscious expectation of stuttering.

She explained that we all made mistakes when talking as children and often what happens with stutters is that someone makes fun of them or criticizes them for it. For those criticized, they get nervous and the stuttering becomes associated with times when one feels nervous. For those made fun of, the stuttering becomes something for the mind to watch-out for and thus the seed is planted. Was there someone in my life who made fun of my stuttering, a family member or friend?

POW! Moments from my life flashed before me and I knew who but I realized I couldn't give the answer. I just shook my head. Perhaps she believed my response, or perhaps she realized that I had thought of someone as she further added that one's stuttering would often be at its worst when around this person and it was often best if the relationship with this person was addressed as well. I just shrugged my shoulders.

She decided to just move on and ask me if I realized what I did when I stuttered? So I thought to explain to her the repetitive starting of some words, or hesitating on others. But that wasn't what she was asking for, ''What else do you do?'' I was stumped and this was when she had me sit in front of the mirror and look at myself as I spoke, rather than facing her. Did I see what she meant? No I hadn't and so she pointed out the foot stomps and fist clenching. Once she pointed those out, I knew exactly what she was talking about. ''And your face?'' I was once again clueless and she explained that was because I was closing my eyes at the times I'd stutter and thus didn't see that in the mirror, nor my other facial contortions as I spoke.

She explained that these weren't actually part of stuttering itself but a coping technique gone wrong. Did I remember a time when I was stuttering and I found stamping my foot seemed to help get the word out that one time? Once when I was trying to say something, did I close my eyes to concentrate on getting it out and it worked? What would often happened to stutterers, she explained, was that these one time 'helpers' became a lifetime of engrained ticks that occurred during the stammering and as it seemed to help once, the mind repeated these along with the stuttering in an attempt to ward off future problems. But instead these became additional problems as they, ultimately, didn't make the stuttering go away.

Our time was up for our first appointment and I left for my car in the parking garage and ended up just sitting there for a while as, after two decades of stuttering, I felt this past hour had given me a lifetime's worth of insight and information to dwell on and consider. And I reflected on the past.

My mother often told me the story of how she met my father. She was a phone operator back in the days when all calls were made by talking to the operator and she, thus, connecting the wires to get you to the person you wanted. There was this one guy who'd call her desk and had the hardest time saying who it was he wanted to connect with and she would patiently tease it out of him and soon he'd make sure to place his calls, when he could, when she was at the switch board. This lead to him discovering her hours and eventually resulted in a date... Then two. Eventually they married. My mother patted herself on the back for having cured my father of his stuttering and his subsequent advancement into the management role at the ski area.

I remembered the times when I'd arrive on the plane to Colorado after having spent the school year with my father. I'd get off the plane and stuttered-up a storm for the next few days. My mother demanded to know what my father had done to me during my school year to have made my stuttering so much worse. But in reality I had stuttered less while with him and had only gotten worse when I had gotten off the plane. I remembered the couple of kids during High School that would make fun of my stuttering, but they would often do so by fake stuttering on my first name. As I never stuttered on it myself, I always found their mocking of me a sad reflection on them as they couldn't even notice what words I actually stuttered on in order to make fun of me. None of my elementary school friends or siblings ever made fun of my stuttering, at least not to my face. There was the one kid who asked about it once, but never made fun of it.

My mother was incensed and talked angrily of her son-in-law who would only ever talk to his daughter in cutesy baby talk during her preschool years, to the point that was how she grew-up talking and had to have additional help in her early school years to learn how to talk clearly, in an understandable way. But a lesson I learned early in life: We often complain most about the people who do the things we don't want to admit about ourselves. When the therapist asked me if there was anyone who had made fun of my stuttering during my life, the answer was yes, My Mother. She was the only person from my pre-high school years who made fun of my stuttering and mocked me about it when no one else was around.

And she was the coworker at the hospital whose insurance coverage was now enabling me to go to speech therapy for the first time in my life. While I doubted the therapist knew my mother personally, I didn't want to jinx my future appointments with her by saying it was another person who worked at the hospital.

As it turned out, it didn't matter. When I arrived for my second appointment, the therapist had to explain to me that she would no longer be able to see me as the insurance coverage was for people who began stuttering as the result of a recent health occurrence, such as a stroke, not for those who already stuttered as it was deemed a preexisting health condition. As the insurance was through the hospital, they had decided to wave the full cost of my initial appointment and a partial visit for today as they hadn't let me know in advance, but any further visits would have to be at full price, out of pocket. Well over a hundred dollars per visit, it was out of my budget and not something my mother would pay for either.

So to give me the best advice she could in lieu of having speech therapy, she told me to be aware of the additional ticks I had gained along with the stuttering and to learn to stop doing them and if there were people in my life who reinforced my stuttering by making fun of it, I should avoid seeing them. And when it came to the stuttering itself, it was a learned habit and I needed to unlearn it. The best first step was to pause when I thought I was going to stutter and wait until I could speak clearly, rather than experience the stutter itself and thus reinforce the habit.

With this rushed last bit of advice, I left the hospital and got into the car and drove back to my mother's mobile home where I would live for the next few years of my life...

With the only person who made fun of my stuttering, at least to my face.

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