American Dreaming - 1983 through 1989 / Part I

A lot of things go through your mind, when you are confronting the visage of death. The gentleman that I found dead in his car that evening had been an employee at the college for about 10 years. He had finished up his shift that night and made his way through the snow to his car, started the car then, apparently had a massive coronary. I saw the guy in passing a few times on campus, probably exchanged the usual pleasantries but I don’t even think I knew his name until I found him inert in his automobile.

Well, that pretty much soured me on the security guard job. I had that image in my mind for a more than a few weeks after that. I quit when I heard back from one of the civil service jobs I had applied for.

Onto the wonderful world of the food service industry…

Basically my next job consisted of following a “food cart” up onto the residential wards in this facility and doling out institutional food for the developmentally disabled residents that had the misfortune of becoming wards of the state. For the most part this was another mindless job but, it afforded me decent hours, I started my day around 5:00 in the morning and was home by 3:00 p.m. This, in turn, allowed me to continue my educational pursuits in the evening. It sounded like a plausible plan for the immediate future anyway.

It was during this time frame that a good friend of mine embarked on a little hitchhiking journey across the country. It was truthfully a little whimsical in its
“non-planned for conception” and a tad scary. Perhaps that is why I refused him when he invited me to come along. I thought about the offer and was very tempted by it but, it didn’t fit into what I was currently engaged in and I would have felt pretty guilty bagging on the commitments that I had only just begun to work on. It’s odd that sometimes, we don’t see the forks in the road that we are deciding between until long after the decision’s ramifications have played themselves out. I wouldn’t say that the trip changed my friend’s life or even that it had some material or spiritual benefit to him. I’m also not convinced that had I gone, it would have had any material effect on the path I would have chosen moving forward within my life. I only kick myself in retrospect because it seemed (to me) that this was just one more instance where I “played it safe”. I’m sure that, at a minimum, there would have been some great stories in it if we had taken the trip together.

Through this time, I continued to struggle with finding a direction or purpose to follow. The job’s work was meaningless to me but it was basically (again) a path of least resistance.

I also found myself falling into what would become a long-term relationship with a younger girl. In retrospect, this was another case of being somewhat scatterbrained in my youth. I didn’t seem capable of really planning and was all too willing to allow others to plan my way for me. That was, in essence, what this relationship was all about.

I let my soon-to-be betrothed pretty much run the show. It was fun and I cared about her deeply (as much as I cared about anything I think in those days). We were married within the next year and were parents within another year after that.

I moved from one civil service position to another over the course of the next couple of years. It was really more a show of “killing time” more so than developing any kind of career path. I pretty much allowed myself the luxury of letting time pass by and enjoyed a relatively calm five or six years.

The birth of my son was marvelous. I will never forget that night. He seemed so fragile and even though he was a pretty big baby (over 9 lbs when he was born) he gave us little trouble during his infant years. Life might not have been marvelous or carefree but we were pretty happy and content for a time.

During that time frame, I actually had myself convinced that I had some direction and purpose (I was a family man now…). I let all of my youthful aspiration wither (but not die0 for a time. I focused on family and took solace in that relatively safe environ. It was easy. Required little to no effort on my part. It afforded me a lot of what folks would have termed the American Dream. We were able to purchase a home (with help from her family) we managed to whether some fiscal crisis (with the help of her family and mine) but, despite the good fortune my wife and I basically grew apart instead of closer as the years trickled by.

I tried college a few more times (part-time) but couldn’t seem to gather a lot momentum towards any educational goals. I guess I lost my love for academic work. I needed a cause. I needed a reason to get up in the morning and pursue something larger than myself. It was only after the breakup of my marriage and all the heartache and uprooting that this change caused my family, my friends and myself that I found some focus.

---Jim