For Thursday, January 12, 2005 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 776 words


Key out


What makes one person succeed in life while another fails? I don’t know. What is the measure of success? I don’t know. What I mean to say is that I can’t speak for everyone. That would require research and clinical studies. I can, however, speak for myself.
I survived a wild, wooly childhood. I grew up surrounded by not only the good things – which are subjects for another time – but the bad, as well.
I grew up surrounded by drugs and death by drugs, alcohol and death by alcohol, crime and death by crime, violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, and all the other ugly things that can happen to anyone with bad luck. I climbed out of that environment and went off to college. I have worked hard all my life and will continue past today to lead a happy, successful life with wife and children and grandchildren.
How did I do it? How did I escape my upbringing? What stopped me from mixing into the madness and disappearing? For me, it was as easy as 1 + 1 =2.
This New Year’s Eve we were sitting in our living room, my wife, Susan, my friend, Gino, and couple of other local folks bringing in 2006. Somehow, the conversation got around to childhoods, growing up, and me.
My wife has heard all the stories, and began to share a few. I sat quietly on the couch and listened to the chatter. Everyone else had sipped perhaps a wee bit more champagne that I had sipped, which made them more talkative.
Gino sat forward at one point and exclaimed in an amazed tone like someone who had just seen David Copperfield levitate a whale. “How did he do it?”
Gino was best man at my Ridgway wedding in July 1986. He only remembers that he was terrified the entire time, something about a guy with a big knife needing a ride home. His girlfriend was afraid to leave her motel room.
Last year Gino got another taste of my home town when we spent several weeks there fixing my mother’s house. He got invited to my family reunion. After 31 years of friendship, he finally met my whole family and many more of my surviving friends.
Once I had a girlfriend after I moved to California, Janet. We dated three years and were deep into our relationship. I recall deciding at that time to make my first return visit to Ridgway since running off to college and California. I had not been home in seven years. When I started calling airlines, I never once, not even for a second, entertained the idea of inviting Janet to join me. In fact, I struggled over a diplomatic way of telling her, “No way. You’re not going. Not gonna happen.”
Understand I acted that way, not because I was embarrassed about my roots, but because I was afraid for Janet. I feared she would get beaten up. Janet was a fearless feminist with a big mouth and an axe to grind. I doubt she’d have survived 24 hours in my neck of the woods without someone slapping the cultured objectivity right off her face.
Anyhow, back to the central thread. Since our recent trips, Gino has been on my case. “I never really knew you until now. All those years we were friends, and I never knew what you had gone through.” He’d give me his familiar slack-jawed stare. “How did you get out of there?”
So that was the topic on New Years, except no one was asking me. They were philosophizing amongst themselves. “Maybe it was this.” “Maybe it was that.” “Maybe it was something he read in a book.”
Finally, after listening to them concoct the mechanisms of my motivation in one convoluted theory after another, I felt I had to put an end to it. I sat up and raised my hand, which is how one gets a word in edgewise in a room full of teachers.
“It was none of that,” I said. “It wasn’t any anti-drug or anti-alcohol campaigns. It wasn’t from any profound heart-to-heart talks with respected elders or teachers, or proverbs from a paperback. It wasn’t brought on by any of my near-death experiences. My escape was as simple as one plus one.
“In short, I had hope. Hope alone saved me. I knew I was smart. I was unafraid of hard work. I was curious and I wanted things. I knew that’s what it took to make a life – being able to see the future. That alone was my key out. I don’t know if it would work for others.