#11-Story continues: 1-24-13 b People and Pimpmobiles
Our family usually got together at nightly meals and for some weekend jaunts. We also used the standard American 2 or 3 week vacation to travel or go camping when Dad and Mom, sometimes with Grandma, would explore parts of America. I really enjoyed those times … but again they did not give me that individual feeling of being independent. Everything I did was felt to be tethered to our family home. Internally, I felt trapped in life. I retreated into my mind of intelligence and thought. Books were, as I said, my friends. Especially, science fiction and the remote possibilities that form of fiction represented.
My parents tried faithfully to bring me into the Christian faith through their chosen doctrines of the Lutheran Church. I did what every kid does … conform outwardly. Inwardly though, I was never comfortable with the church or its beliefs as depicted in the Bible or church doctrine filled with dogmas and traditions or rituals. One reason was my memory.
I have memory back to birth … consciously. I also have half a dozen or so of what can only be described as PAST LIFE memories. I don’t think I ever related those memories to my parents or my younger sister or anyone else … until much later in adult life. The church said such things were not possible. There was no reincarnation. Period. Today I know different.
There were also the nagging internal “knowings” of many things about science and the universe that seemingly contradicted my learned school knowledge. Especially when it came to religious subjects. I never could buy into the idea that God was a being to fear. That God was a being to cause “tests” of pain and suffering on His people. That God needed to send a Son to our world to kill him for us …. a blood sacrifice.
That and so much more just felt WRONG.
My parents made sure I was exposed to the religious ways of the Lutheran church until I was old enough to stop going to church and begin to escape the ridged thought. Eventually, by the time I attended college, I simply let my church affiliation go stagnant. They did not force me to attend further…they were giving me a choice of belief.
When I entered my first year at Arizona State University I found myself ill equipped to deal with the close interaction of others, both instructors and students at various levels. I was surrounded with so many possible choices yet, in a crowd of humanity, I was alone and lonely. I was wanting a relationship and had not the simplest idea of how to create one.
My first year was much like high school. I lived at home with its restrictions of thought and experience. I lived in my mind with books and television shows. I was working at a few part time jobs that helped me slowly adjust to others, but again I was ignorant regarding people and emotions. I have no blame for my parents. My dad was working hard at long hours to keep his family in the ‘best’ situation he could. His love was shown through his support financially. Mom also did her best to help her family through keeping them safe and teaching basic rules of integrity and honoring truth and such. Home cooked meals and clean environment was how she showed love, along with continual verbal confirmation of her love with many warm hugs.
What my spirit needed though was something I couldn’t even share with my parents because of the religious blocks and societal paradigms they lived under which I felt were wrong on certain basic levels.
I perceived my parents as good people. My self perception was that I must be inwardly evil as I could not fit into their life paradigm. I chose to leave home for my second year of college and join a fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, the same one Richard M. Nixon had joined. I didn’t join because of that. I joined because of a saving influence
named Mark R.
Everything I had lacked in life experience, Mark had in abundance. For reasons I little understood at the time, Mark ‘rescued’ me from potential pledging at a rival house of ‘jocks’ called SAE and got me to pledge at SPE( Sigma Phi Epsilon). It didn’t hurt that SPE was full of brainiacs like myself and Mark was in need of tutoring in science and math subjects as opposed to life subjects.
I needed tutoring in life subjects.
Mark came from a fairly wealthy Jewish home. He had been traveling the world as part of a song group called Up With People. His depth of international experience made me feel like a child. Mark had a gift for gab and schmoozing anyone with his disarming little boy smile and eyes. He was at heart though a hedonist. He took me with him on many of his jaunts to nightclubs where he would always “score” and I would always be in the background watching and learning or at least trying to learn how to “score”. I was pathetic. But, I did learn more about social interactions that I really needed. Even if I was so naive.
I worked hard at part time work and obtained a student loan and misused many of the funds to “get popular” by buying the right clothes, shoes and I thought an improved car. Actually, I had my old reliable Chevy II repainted turquoise blue with a white spray on simulated landau cloth top. I thought it looked pretty cool at the time. Looking back I see why my fraternity brothers always referred to it as the ‘pimp mobile’. Any pimp would have been pleased with it for his travels if he was a struggling new pimp!
Mark had a brand new Cutlass S with all custom features. It was the envy of many a college student. I never did understand at the time why he never wanted to drive mine when he would lend me his from time to time. I now understand fully why … my pride and joy car… was just was too embarrassing for his higher class taste.
The period with Mark has a special reason for inclusion into this narrative. He gave me a crash course in people and how to interact with them enough, that I changed my life social strategy. He and his successful insurance father taught me this: “It’s not what you know that gets you what you want. It’s who you know.”
Networking in other words.
My parents tried unsuccessfully to dissuade me that what I know was more important and to stay in school.
Mark gave me enough social knowledge and kicks in the pants socially allowing me to locate and eventually marry my first wife. That life choice led me further into the rabbit hole like the well known Alice and her white rabbit.
Continued next post.