Living Extraordinary Lives

A friend of mine posted a link on Facebook to a political blog (I think) with a headline that blared:  ‘YOU’RE NOT SPECIAL’: WELLESLEY HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER GIVES THE MOST BLUNT COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS EVER. Intrigued with the blurb that the publication chose to quote, I followed the link to the complete text and formed my own opinion.

Erm . . . to be blunt, the headline missed the point.  The point of David Mccullough, Jr.'s speech was not that the 2012 graduating class of Wellesley High School were spoiled and coddled, but that they should go out and make their lives something special.  With kind words and a humorous approach, he managed to deliver his message and still leave his students feeling positive about themselves.  I suspect he is a favorite teacher at Wellesley High School, which explains his role as faculty speaker.

I felt it such a good speech, I wanted to share it.



Mr. McCullough (purportedly the son of David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian) summed it all up in his closing statement.

Efficiency

As I mentioned in my last post here, my #2 son, Dallas II, is a writer.  (When writing, for disambiguation, I refer to him as D2). He was the editor of his high school newspaper, The Bearchat, his senior year, and penned a widely followed and eagerly anticipated humor column in it for two years.  

I, of course, am his #1 fan.  I claim this distinction over his wife, Lynda, because I have been cheering for and laughing with him the longest.  Even so, it delighted me to learn that  he found an eternal companion who laughs at his (admittedly occasionally obscure) jokes as much as I do.

D2 has just graduated from Texas A&M with a master's degree in mechanical engineering.  He, his wife, and their 15-month-old son will be moving to Austin, Texas, in a few weeks, where he will begin making microchips at Samsung.

While I hope I can claim some of the credit for his love of reading, I blame him at least partially for my eclectic taste.  Through him, I discovered authors such as Orson Scott Card (The Ender's Saga), Robert Jordan (The Wheel of Time), Brian Jacques (Redwall), J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter), and J.R.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings).  He writes engrossing speculative fiction with a delightfully wry voice.

D2 is currently on vacation, and I thought it would be a perfect time to hit him up a guest post for this blog.  I guess he's bored because the following was his response to my query.  Enjoy.

— Penny Freeman

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Efficiency 

by Dallas Freeman, II

Short: 3 AM

by Penny Freeman

1am:  Unable to concentrate, I close my book, turn out my lamp, and settle in for sleep.  Dallas turns down the volume on the BBC documentary he is watching on Channel 8.2, the marvels of metal.  Doesn't bother me, as his lamp does not.  I'm used to it, and I'd rather have him here, in bed, than snoring in his office chair, sitting up in front of his computer.

2:20am:  Dallas starts making grunts and other inarticulate noises at the TV.  Groggy and put out, I huff, roll over, and pull a pillow over my head.  I spare him the tongue lashing as I'm too asleep to bother.  It's just a soft murmur now and again.  He should get the hint.  He doesn't.  The intermittent babbling continues as I fade in and out of consciousness.  I think, if you're going to talk to the TV, at least take it in the other room.  PBS has moved on to the wonders of plastics.

2:40am:  The babbling has increased, but now his soft voice is sweetly holding a conversation in nonsensical words.  Wondering if he's a lunatic, I wake up enough to decide he's actually asleep.  The TV and glasses need to go off and the CPAP on so he can settle down into restful slumber.  Getting up and walking around the bed don't quite wake me up, but his glassy-eyed stare does.

Pale and clammy, Dallas is flat on the bed, staring up at me and babbling.  Drenched through, he looks like he stepped into the shower in his pajamas, then came to bed.  His feet are cool—too cool—as are his hands and face.  But, it's not the worst I've seen him.  The worst I've seen him, he was as cold as death.  I had to check his breathing to make sure he wasn't.  That time, I couldn't wake him up with shaking and slapping.  I mean, really slapping his face, like you see in movies.  That time, two of my sons were there when my panic set it.  It was his second ride to the ER in an ambulance.

"You're in trouble, aren't you?"  I say softly.  It's not a question, more like me trying to calm myself with the sound of my own voice.

SDL: The Cure For Perfection: My Response

A couple of days ago, my nephew, Dan, wrote a follow-up column to his very widely read post "The Disease Called 'Perfection'".  In one week, more than a quarter of a million people have viewed that page.  Yesterday, he posted a follow-up column called "The Cure for Perfection".  In it, he admitted that he could not possibly offer the balm required to heal the galaxy of sorrows and injuries that people posted on his first post.  Instead, he asked his readers to write the column for him, through the comments.  He asked for people to write what was their greatest struggle ever, what the person they are now have to say to the person they are then, and how the Perfection post affect their lives.  My abbreviated post is too long for even Intense Debate's generous allowances, so I posted my comments hear.

My Comment to The Cure for Perfection

There were 8 whole comments when I first started writing this comment yesterday morning.  I've given it a lot of thought, a lot of writing, a lot of deleting, and finally decided it's impossible to put 35 years of struggle in two paragraphs, or to leave religion out of it, since I would have never reached any of these conclusions without my faith.  However, the biggest factor in my deciding not to go into detail: this is my husband's story as much as my own, and I have to respect his right to privacy.

Engagement photo November 1979

THE STRUGGLE (In a nutshell):   

I've had lupus since I was 14.  I got married when I was 17.  My husband had just turned 19.  I gave birth to our first son when I was 19.  He was diagnosed with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus when he was 21.  The first 15 years of our marriage were a long string of tag-team hospitalizations, the drain of medical expenses, both of us struggling to control our disease, major surgeries for me, and the high-risk pregnancies of three sons, all bound together with under- and unemployment when my husband got kicked out of the Air Force for having diabetes.  To say we had a rocky marriage would be an understatement.  Our expectations of marriage were diametrically opposed.  Our life together was one very small, very leaky boat caught in a raging storm that never ended, with both people trying to captain the vessel and no one manning the crew.