HUMAN POTENTIAL: THE BURDEN OF GREAT EXPECTATIONS

Human potential grade from counselor: “You can do anything you want to do.”

Human response: “What am I supposed to do with that?”

And so begins the journey of great expectations with:

“What do you want to be?”

I knew what I didn’t want to be early. My dad told me.

“I don’t want to live in the same town as my sons like the other dads. I don’t want to hear about some fight ending up in jail. The Police Chief is a friend of mine.”

My dad had lots of policeman friends. He borrowed a lie detector from one of them to solve a family theft.

A treasure chest, my mom’s jewelry box, held a garnet for each kid, and a golden dollar from one hundred years before our births.

A golden dollar was missing and no one confessed, so we got the test.

I passed. This time.

2

One of my grandfathers got married. A lot.

His saying was: “I like to change up my cars and wives every few years. A man needs a fresh ride.”

The final wife, his seventh, was a jail matron in the Dallas County Jail in Dallas, Texas.

We visited her work, got mug shots taken, and walked the Lee Harvey Oswald path. His last.

It was creepy in 1968 and just as creepy in 2022.

The head man on duty, a short thick bull of a man, didn’t carry a weapon.

Someone asked him why he wasn’t armed.

He gave a quick smile and pulled a knife out of pocket. A big blade sprung straight out of the handle.

That was the second time I’d seen a switchblade and I wanted one real bad.

The first time was in third grade, and teacher confiscated it.

My mom snatched mine away the first time she saw it and said she’d give it back when I was ‘old enough.’ I was twelve at the time.

She gave it back when I turned thirty-five, which seems a good age for safe-keeping.

Educating For Human Potential

The family took a trip to England once to meet my wife’s relatives.

One aunt had an unusual boyfriend.

He had been one of King Charles’ tutors when he went to Cambridge.

Since my kids would be college bound sooner than later, I gathered them and asked the professor what he looked for in students who applied to Cambridge.

“Other than being suspiciously inbred royals?”

That’s not what he said, but he did say:

Cambridge students don’t come here to find themselves, they come here to find us.

They come with a good two to three years of concentrated research on a topic that interests us.

We don’t have classrooms in the classical sense, but meetings to gauge progress and give insights.

Our students are self-motivated and work diligently as if their future depends on it.

They leave here ready for the challenges of graduate school, or the challenge of joining a force of change to improve the world.

2

I looked at my kids. They looked at me. I nodded toward our academic host with a yes. They shook their heads no.

My takeaway was at least they were exposed to an ambitious learning schedule that was more than a four year vacation in a dorm room.

If they allowed it I’d be bragging on them here every day telling how proud I was of them.

But they are smart kids, smart enough to know self aggrandizement when they see it, smart enough to know the difference between ‘Look what I did,’ and ‘Look what you did.’

All credit goes to the University of Oregon?

No, more to their mom who was a better academic counselor than the professionals on staff who said:

Many students take an extra year to find their major.

Momma looked at the transcripts and said:

If you take these classes you’ll finish with a double major and a minor.

Why am I unusually proud of their academic achievements?

They beat my family record of going to college in three decades, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s.

If not for my wife, I wouldn’t have done it, and I told my boys that. Over and over.

You vs Your Human Potential

‘Potential’ searched on twitter to keep it alive.

‘Potential’ search on boomerpdx to keep it alive.

If Elon Musk makes a bid to buy BoomerPdx, where does it start?

Now back to regular programming:

There are two kinds of people:

Those who think there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t.

And,

Those who strive to achieve their human potential, and those who have tapped out.

For example:

I was my father in-law’s caregiver at the end of his life, and he lived longer as a result.

One of my friends at the time asked, “Why are you wasting your life wiping an old man’s butt?”

Fair question, though misinformed.

An broken down old man has as much human potential as you can load onto them.

The problem is finding it. I found it.

He’d been institutionalized with incurable advanced Parkinson’s and dementia.

After one failure followed another, he landed in a hospital death room with his wife hanging on by his side.

Blue lips and fingernails told the story.

I brought him home to die. Instead he made a recovery. Who knew?

After that my mother in-law was my partner in care. She handled the appointments, I handled the rest.

2

The home caregiver environment showed what a family is capable of.

As a former Army Medic I followed a strict regime: Don’t kill the patient. That was it.

Sometimes it felt like too much, like it was killing me.

The comfort was knowing the old man wouldn’t drag his wife from one assisted living facility to the next, one nursing home to the next, one hospital to the next.

We tightened up the schedule, got him his meds on time, exercise, and intellectual stimulation.

He was my captive audience, which is all a writer wants, so he and I discussed my work.

And that my friends is how you too can pursue your human potential.

Do something worth writing about, write it, then find someone to read it to, show it to.

Find someplace to post your work.

With luck, you’ll find a reader who will make you an offer you can’t refuse.

Welcome to the big time.