Confessions of an Adventurer

Teaching Pre K-8, Nov/Dec 2004 by Raymond, Allen

During my lifetime it would have been satisfying to achieve like Tiger Woods in golf, or Jimmy Connors in tennis, or Yo-Yo Ma on the cello - or a host of other people who excelled in their chosen fields.

But when I was about five years old the die was cast; as I grew up I'd be a cocky, undoubtedly obnoxious kid who tried everything because he was sure he would be good at whatever he tried. Insufferable.

My parents - bless them - learned when I was very young what life would be like living with me. I had not even entered kindergarten when, standing on the sidewalk outside our home in Utica, New York, I proceeded to tell the man delivering coal he was doing it all wrong. If he didn't change the direction of the chute, I told him, the coal would land on the basement floor in a location that would make it hard for for a little kid, like me to shovel coal into the furnace.

He was very patient, but finally it got to him, and he said to my mother, who was standing nearby, "What are you going to do with this kid when he grows up?"

My mother, possessing a good sense of humor, related the incident to my father and it became a family joke. Eventually, even I began to think it was pretty funny.

As you can guess, life with a cocky kid who thinks he can do anything - and lets everyone know it - is a drag for parents.

My mother and sister were musical, so I took music lessons on both the piano and cello. During orchestra recitals in elementary school I'd play the piano in one orchestral piece, and then switch to the cello for another. I suspect I was lousy at both. One year I also somehow got the lead in the school play (until I got sick and my understudy gleefully took my place).

I tried football, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, golf and tennis. I ran the mile and the half-mile in track. I also tried pole vaulting. In the summer I raced sailboats.

On weekends during the winter I'd ski, until I discovered girls and found that dating was a pretty neat thing to do.

There were Saturday night dancing classes where I learned, over the heated objections of the dancing instructor and his wife, how to dance cheek-to-cheek.

I did graduate cum laude from prep school - Lord knows how - and went to the University of Michigan to study engineering. My first semester I earned very good grades but at the end of my freshman year I missed a significant honor by a whisker. Things went downhill from there... fast.

I found that if I waited on tables I could earn money to take girls to dances. So, I became a good waiter (still am) and, in my sophomore year, and without putting up any money, became half owner of a campus restaurant.

I liked engineering, but school seemed to play second fiddle to everything else. Thus, when 1 took on the job as manager of a one-person editorial office turning out alumni bulletins for fraternities and sororities, that was the last straw...everything caught up with me. In my junior year, facing self-inflicted disaster, I dropped out of school for a semester, and so graduated a semester after my classmates.

As I look back, perhaps the experimentation with music, sports and girls was a way of getting that adventuresome spirit satisfied so I could finally settle down.

Which, I guess, is what I thought I was doing, in 1971, when Patricia Broderick and I launched this magazine. But this, too, has been a long and exciting adventure.

Thankfully, it ain't over yet.

Allen A. Raymond