Have you ever been “put-down” in your life. Well, dah… who hasn’t? How do you handle it? I’m sure some people get hurt and hold on to that hurt for a long time (perhaps a lifetime). Well, thinking over my life (I’ve been working on writing my memoirs or autobiography) , I thought of three put-down I’ve encountered that really affected and changed my life (good changes).
One that was very early in my life was the first airplane trip I ever took when I was around six years old or so. My mother, father, and I were going from California to Florida so my mother could have some dental work done by her brother. We drove to Dallas to visit with my father’s sister and from there we flew to Florida. It was a Delta Airlines DC3 aircraft, which was the modern aircraft of the day. I had no idea what “flying” was, so it was a new adventure for me. As soon as we took off, I was looking out the window and had an astounding experience of flight… I turned to my father and said something like, “wow! this is amazing, I can’t believe we are up in the air.” Wow! I’m going to be a pilot when I grow up!, to which my father immediately responded, “no you’re not! No son of mine is going to be a pilot, no son of mine is going to fly airplanes. It is too dangerous, you are never going to fly airplanes!”
I can’t tell you how I felt at that moment. Somehow, within myself, I made to commitment at that very instant to be a pilot when I grew up. I never lost that thrill and commitment I made that day. Many years later I did take up flying, getting my private pilot’s license, then my commercial pilot’s license as well as my flight instructor’s certificate and advanced ground instructor’s licenses. I eventually had a thirty-three year career with the airlines and did flight instructing and commercial piloting from a local airport while I worked for the airlines. I even ended up taking my father on several flights in my airplane, never mentioning to him how he tried to squelch my dream of piloting on that day many years before.
A second time I experienced a life changing put-down was in high school. Now I was not a top performing student in high school. I got by and was an average student. But nearing the end of high school I was denied taking a class, given the reason I could not take the class with my friends was because it was a college preparatory class. I signed up to take English Literature along with my friends but was told I was not qualified. My counselor called me to her office (ironically, her name was “Miss Hope.”) and explained to me that that class with Mr. Harada was a college prep class and that I was not “college material.”
I was astounded once again. I had taken many difficult classes in school and always did well or average. I never flunked anything. I never even thought about going to college, I just wanted to take the class, having never been restricted before by the school. I was upset. I went home and told my father. This time he was on my side and wrote a letter to the counselor and demanded they let me take the class if that was what I wanted to do.
My counselor finally relented and I took the class. I remember that I did just fine. What stuck with me was the thought that they tried to prevent me from doing what I wanted to do, telling me I was not that smart to even think of a college education.
So, in the end, one day about a year after graduation, I decided I was going to go get a college education, so I did. I took the SAT exam and applied to a college in Seattle (I wanted to get away from home and I knew three people at this Christian college in Seattle). After graduation from college I went to graduate school, a theological seminary in Chicago. At college I got better grades than I ever did in high school, and in grad school I did even better!
So, the third put-down is related to this college thing. When I graduated from high school I told my father I was considering going to college. He immediately responded, telling me that no, I was not going to go to college. He said everyone in our family went to college but nobody ever graduated and it was a waste of time and money. Once again I disobeyed my father and that made a huge difference in my life. My higher education was a high point of my life. I wouldn’t change that for anything.
So… I learned to never take “no” for an answer if I knew there was something I needed to do to be who I was to be.
Wally
Just a reminder…I am still working to learn how to set up this blogging website and currently have no comment section working. I have heard from someone they were able to comment by clicking on the title of the blog. I will continue working on this project, but I am technology challenged and a slow learner in this computer stuff.
