Veterans day is here again. It means something different now that my son is a Marine. It was always a solemn and somber occasion in the past. My great uncle on my father’s side died in World War II, a training accident inside a Navy gun turret. My great uncle on my mother’s side was part of the second wave on the beach in Normandy. He was injured by a German grenade and moderately disabled for the rest of his life. I never got to hear war stories. He was too damaged to ever talk about anything that happened in the war. My mother’s cousin was flying a plane in the Viet Nam Conflict. It went up, and didn’t come down again. You think of those things, and wish it could be different. You pray that it will be different for your son who is a soldier.
But when the worst that can happen comes to pass… there are no regrets. Whatever future we have is rooted in the past. Pain and suffering are difficult to manage, but when you manage them, it leaves you stronger… better as a person than you were before. So I don’t take anything for granted. I was not a warrior in this life. I was a teacher, a story-teller. And I made some mistakes along the way. I have lost some whom I cared about very deeply. Ruben, Fernando, and J.J. are all gone tragically. I will always feel I should have done more to help them when they were boys and needed help. Miraculously with the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq I have lost no former students to war, though many of mine have fought. I pray that my luck continues to hold.
But there are no regrets. And “you can listen as well as you hear”, so listen to this. I love you.
Yes, I am talking to sons and daughters, to former students, to former colleagues, to everyone I have ever known. And even if I don’t know you, never met you, even if you never get a chance to hear this message… I am talking to you also. We are all one. We all live and love and strive together, and even if we disagree to the point of war… we still belong to each other. Thank you for being you. You needed to hear that at least as much as I needed to say it.
My son is coming home on leave for Thanksgiving. I will be giving thanks.
But that, of course, is not how it works in real life… even without the nuclear physics which was an exaggeration for humorous effect.
Driving, Driving, Uber Dallas
I find myself actually working again and earning money. This time, I am Uber driving. Yes, I am driving around the Dallas, Texas area for a freelance cooperative driving service based on a phone app. I pick people up when called and take them where they want to go. I can work whenever I feel well enough to do it, admittedly not often enough to keep a real job, and I can choose where as well as when to work.
But it is not all rose-smelling wonderful work. You don’t get to see or know anything about the people you are carrying in your own personal car before you have to decide if that is a good idea or not. It is true that you will probably not be mugged or robbed by the passenger. Uber knows where to find them if they commit a crime, and I can rate a passenger so low that it affects whether they can get their next Uber ride or not. I probably won’t get raped either. After all, a grumpy old man in poor health is probably not that attractive to potential rapists. But people talk to Uber drivers. Well, all but the pretty young woman I drove to her place of work in central Dallas, but she was probably worried about the creepy old potential serial killer that was driving her and she didn’t get to approve beforehand. And what people say when they talk can be potentially inflammatory, monumentally stupid, and, yes, this is Texas we are talking about, mind-blowingly racist. I guess because I am a white guy in Texas, they believe I must be amenable to any toxic tirade that may bubble up in their pointy little heads.
But talking for a living is what teachers do. I learned to do it well. If you argue with a moron, you get his back up and he digs the trench deeper that he is willing to defend and even die in. It is far better to listen, make neutral listening acknowledgements along the way, neither agreeing or disagreeing, and then when they allow you to state your side of the case, offer it up as “have you ever considered this?” backed up by coherent logic, and they may not only agree with you, but even commit to trying it your way even though you are suggesting the polar opposite of what they told you they believe until their dying day. “I understand that you think Mexicans are dragging the economy down by taking services like public education without paying into the system through taxes because they are undocumented workers. But did you know that most of them have taxes deducted automatically from every paycheck, but can’t claim anything in refunds… ever? They are not eligible for food stamp assistance or unemployment payments without documentation and valid IDs. And even green card holders don’t have all the rights of U.S. citizens. Maybe we should make it easier for them to become citizens so that they could be productive American workers and everything could be legal again.” They at least listen to me respectfully because I listened to them first.
And so, I have worked for Uber for over a week. I have made fifty dollars. And I think it works out to a little over four dollars an hour. Wow! Significantly below the minimum wage. Oh, well, at least I am working and talking again.
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