Deja Vu ~ Feel Like I've Been Here Before

My Uncle Mickey, a true Yorkville son, died last October. Yesterday, I visited  my Aunt Barbara. We spent the afternoon talking, remembering, laughing and crying. Shitty memories are buried under a ton of love.

I believe there is a point and time when your career fate is sealed. Your life's path is chosen. It happened early for me, but took 49 years to figure it out.

I'm a mechanical idiot. My cousin, Jimmy, taught me,"lefty loosey, rightytighty," seven years ago. Before learning this helpful rhyme I stared at screws, helpless, bringing myself to tears not knowing which way to turn the screw driver. I did know, if I went the wrong way, too hard, I'd strip the screw hole and mess everything up.

Here, you see me making a bathroom decision at two years old. Even then, I needed something to read in there. Faced with a choice between the practical "Popular Science," and "True." I chose "True," the man's magazine loaded with high adventure, sports profiles and dramatic conflicts. At two, writing was ready for me, but I'm plodder and I wasn't ready to write. But I was thinking about it.

I wish I occasionally grabbed a "Popular Science." Come Monday, Jimmy, his son, Matt & I are painting my Aunt Barbara's apartment in Elmhurst. I expect to be used as a water boy and everyone is right with this choice. Painting an apartment brings back a complex memory.

In 1967, my parents decided to paint our new Sunnyside, Queens place, they asked me to help. My father gave me a gallon of white paint and told me to do the closet in my room. Somehow, I got the ladder, the paint and me into the small space. It was hard to breath in there.

About an hour into it, I left the closet and asked Dad for more paint. He looked me up and down, went to the closet, shook his head like a horse, turned, shook his head in a downward motion towards me, walked to my mother in another room and said something. Mom came back to the closet, looked in it, looked at the empty gallon of paint, then walked over to her handbag and pulled a bill out, then came back to me and said, "Tommy, throw your clothes away, take a shower, here's ten dollars, go into the city and stay with your grandmother for the weekend."

I fear paint, I fear Monday. May God have mercy on my soul.

Jimmy & Peter Ryan, Tommy & Rory ~ Sparkle Lake ~ 1961

Hunter College's Best Teacher Ever ~ Robert J. White

Nothing is more disappointing then revisiting a memory and finding out it's less then you remember.

Nothing is better than revisiting a memory that enhances that memory, builds on it and tells you everything you've told friends and family about a person and what they've meant in your life is more than true. I forgot half of the treasure I took away from my time as a student with Professor Robert J. White at Hunter College in the 1970s.

He taught me the classics and literature. Professor White is the coolest, smartest, funniest and warmest teacher I ever had and that goes all the way back to Mrs. Brown in P.S. 77's kindergarten in 1960.

There were 16,000 matriculating students at Hunter, we moved from class to class like cattle. Hard to make friends, most of us worked after school. But, if you were in a Professor White class something happened. Everybody felt it, we bonded, we talked to each other, he'd lead you through a subject with an intense quirky passion and you were compelled to go along, and you learned! Your interest grew, you wanted to please him, he cared too much for you to let him down.

My storytelling would be no where near as funny, clear or interesting without me knowing him. His detail was exquisite. He may be the funniest person I've ever met. My home life was chaotic during my time at Hunter. I had plenty of opportunity to self destruct. Professor White was the strongest and brightest light on my road. He triggered my passion, curiosity and love for dialogue in and about the classics, literature and film: Fellini, Pasolini, Truffaut, and on. I never read The New York Times until we were introduced. It was the only way to keep up with the references in his anecdotes.

I met Professor White at Hunter College this week for the first time in 33 years. We talked movies for two hours. How cool is that? I'm so glad he knows what he meant to me, and that his influence still runs through me.

Teach your children well. Well done, Professor White.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=az9Az6S1nus

Thank you, Diana Conchado for arranging our meeting. hugs, Tommy