Here is the continuing saga, Part 7
Read or review earlier installments here:
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6
It seems that rather often in my life I have chosen the unusual way to do the usual things. Sometimes the choices were of necessity, sometimes they were a direct result of my peripatetic need to move on to something else for a while. Or as Grandma used to say, "you've got the Gypsy in your soul." I got bored easily with mundane things, or interesting things made mundane by a lack of passionate presentation, and I had very little concern about dropping them and moving on to the next bright shiny object of my curiosity that surfaced somewhere.
This was the cause of much disappointment to my family and some friends. In my parents' generation, one was so glad to have reasonable employment and a steady income the conventional wisdom was you went to work for a company, you did your best and you worked your way up to better and higher positions in that company and 40 years later you picked up your gold (more likely gold-colored) watch and you retired. If you went to University, you went straight through until you graduated, then you went to work for someone and worked 40 years and retired. Or if you were female, you went to University until prince charming galloped into your chemistry class and swept you off your feet. You quit school, got married, had children and the generational plan repeated ad nausium, rinse and repeat.
Attending Brigham Young University for my first year of college was one of those weird choices. BYU is the Mormon founded and operated University in Provo, Utah, some 40 miles south of Salt Lake City. What was I thinking? This doesn't really look like a very wise choice on my part what with my growing dissatisfaction with the church and all. Living on campus 40 miles from home meant I was NOT living at home, a very exciting prospect in my opinion. It was also the only school my parents would find acceptable for me to move out of the nest and be somewhat on my own. It seemed like a clever choice on my part. I takes my victories where I finds them. At least I got a great deal of what I was hoping for in some independence. I would deal with the church stuff as it came up. Dress codes. There were dress codes in high school (no jeans or slacks for girls. . .no jeans for boys either), there were dress codes at BYU. This was 1958 and there were more rules at BYU than you can imagine, certainly more than I ever imagined. All designed to keep our young, virtuous, Mormon girls and boys, well. . .young and virtuous. Of course you know this was a college campus and these were college age kids from all over everywhere, all 10,000 of us.
Everyone was discovering their sexuality (or already had), their levels of independence, the who of who they were becoming. I doubt, even in that ultra-virtuous environment that it was too much different from other college campuses. There was decidedly less drinking because Mormon's do not condone drinking alcohol ever. Most likely, there was nearly as much sexual activity going on but no one was talking, or bragging about it. A virtuous woman was a potential wife and to be sought after by every maybe-virtuous young Mormon man. The expectations were exceedingly high, and really quite contrary to the age group and normal progression of young people's lives in general. I mean, hormones don't check your religious belief before they rage. People were having sex at BYU in 1958, and plenty of doing everything short of "going all the way." Quaint saying we had in those days, all the way. I wasn't one of those people having either.
The decision to major in Art was an interesting one. Did I forget to tell you I loved to draw and paint? Yeah, it was a wonderful and exciting part of my creative self that I found very fulfilling and at the same time very frustrating. It made me incredibly angry with myself that I could not transfer what I saw in my minds eye to the sketch pad or canvas in front of me with the exactness I expected of myself. I was an okay practitioner of this artistic process, I most likely could have learned to be proficient and maybe even passably good at it. But I would have had to have been one of those "mad" Bohemian types starving in an hovel of a flat in some crime ridden neighborhood of New York, San Francisco, or the like. And understanding my proclivity for the slightly dramatic, I would have also been one of those to never sell a painting while alive.
So here I am at the wrong University, suffering through the wrong major, and horrendously lonely for my best friend back in Salt Lake, and my group of friends from high school. It created a great atmosphere for writing. . .well, yes. . .lonely, sad, discouraged, many of the perfect elements that push writers to write. The only things missing were drunken alcoholic hazes as I wrote by candle light on yellow legal pads and a lot more drama like a broken heart, an unrequited love, an insidious rare illness slowly stealing my young life away from me. As you may suspect, I had nurtured and grown some interesting, maybe even strange personality traits. We have already established that I was perhaps ultra-sensitive emotionally even though I had certain areas of my emotional life I could stuff and hide even from myself. I was also a dreamer of grand dreams. Any grand dream you want to pick, I could dream it. Okay, sure, we call it imagination. I had it in seemingly endless quantities. The laughter bubbles up from me just now as I think of how many times over this life of mine when asked, "What do you do?" My answer would be: "I'm a philosopher, poet and dreamer of dreams." And even more laughter comes forth thinking of those ones who would respond to that with: "Oh, do you interpret dreams?" Ah, no, that would be two doors down on the left, Madam Yolanda. I just dream them folks, you gotta figure out your own here.
The good times at BYU? I roomed with 5 other girls in a dorm room apartment. Three bedrooms, a large kitchen and one bathroom. One bathroom for six women? Obviously designed by a man. An almost impossible situation scheduling bathroom get ready time. The reception or common areas of the dorm were in the center as you entered the building. Couches, chairs, end tables, lamps, all those cozy "living room" items to make it just like home. Anyone could come to the common areas, but no boys beyond there, ever. Dorm parents and assistants on duty at all times to insure compliance. It was a cozy little girl-family that pretty much got along most of the time. My real joy at BYU was my Japanese language class. Totally fascinated with all things Japanese, I loved this class. What could have been better than not only having to learn to speak a language but to have to learn how to read and write the Chinese characters that are the basis for Japanese written language. The professor was a handsome, I mean movie star handsome, young man of Hawaiian-Japanese ancestry. He spoke 19 languages fluently. How that is possible I cannot say, but it was so. In the course of learning to read, write and speak Japanese we also had to learn cultural specifics. Speaking the language is entwined with understanding the cultural expectations of social interactions. We had a great deal of fun in that class. I used to love it when I would get my Japanese kanji character writing assignments back with comments in French from Mr. Kanaheli. . ."Tres Beau."
BYU has a beautiful campus nestled right up against the base of the mountain range. One of my favorite places was the science building. as you entered the building from the front, there was a soaring several stories high domed ceiling overhead. In the center of that area was a fully operational Fulcrum Pendulum. I found it endlessly fascinating as well as the tiled design on the floor space beneath the pendulum that allowed you to visually assess the earth's movement on its axis. Spellbinding. I am no scientist, but I know art when I see it!
Lonely, unhappy and frustrated as a freshman in college is a lot of stress. Freshman in college is enough stress by itself in my opinion. Midway through my spring semester at BYU I got sick. Actually I awoke one morning with a horrendous backache. I could barely move and I certainly could not bend over to put my shoes on. In addition to my searing pain, I felt generally lousy. I took a day off figuring it would get better. Why I thought that, I don't know. My family taught me by their example that we do not needlessly cave into physical discomfort. We are very stoic about such nuisances. Tough it out is the order of the day. A couple of days later, I was just sicker. I managed to get myself to the campus health clinic where two young med students told me after a 5 minute exam, I had a muscle strain, "take two of these and don't call us in the morning." By the weekend my parents were concerned and drove down, picked me up and got me into a doctor in Salt Lake City. I had a rather well entrenched kidney infection (not urinary tract). The doctor, who was a rather gruff old lesbian, chewed me out most of the time she was examining me telling me I could have had serious consequences had I not seen her when I did, and why did I wait so long, yadda, yadda, yadda. While she certainly lacked any bed-side manner at all, she made her point. It is not exactly clear to me that it is highly valuable to treat sick people with such stern admonitions, all in all, when we are really miserable most all of us just want our "mommy." not the dominatrix. Make no mistake, I can see very clearly how I assisted in creating this illness so I could change my situation. My normal course of action would have been to stubbornly stay in the unhappy place I was in and attempt to get through it by force of will.
It took me about 3 weeks to recover from this infection, so I decided to withdraw from school since I doubted I had the determination or the desire to catch up. I moved back home. Just as we don't give into illness in our family, we also do not hang around and do nothing, like write for hours on end on legal pads. Time to get a job. Ah, me and jobs. Most of my life I never saw a job I went after that I couldn't get. Seems like after I told them I could do the job they were offering they hired me. Yes, I faked my way into more than of few of them because I knew I could figure it out before it became apparent I didn't really know much about it. Sound familiar? Yes, it was certainly putting the advice from my brother into action. My work history is nothing if not colorful and varied. The game was to get them to hire me. Usually the hiring was followed by various periods of time that I was fascinated by keeping a few steps ahead of them finding out what I didn't know and learning it, followed by intense boredom once I really knew what I was doing. I didn't lie to get hired. I just convinced them I knew I could do the job. I was right. I could. I am not so certain that this is as much ego as it might sound. I really had a firm belief that I could do the jobs, and I was not wrong in that belief. I got a job at Arthur Murray's school of ballroom dancing. Yeah, 19 years old, an athlete but not exactly a dancer.
They trained me, and I taught middle aged, timid men and women how do those lovely old ballroom dances. It was pretty fun except for the sales part of it. Selling more and more lessons and long term contracts for lessons to these rather easy marks felt unethical to me. Sure, if they wanted to take more lessons that was fine, but to coerce them into a $1,500 package that would teach them to dance like Arthur Murray? ( Since most of them had no sense of rhythm I doubted they were going to hit that goal.) This was a personality based business. New Instructors were given the new "walk ins" while seasoned instructors had a clientele (ones they had sold those expensive packages to) and only took on new students when necessary. Apparently I had a personality, my students liked me. They were very nice folks that wanted to do something to change the sameness of their life and maybe even become more interesting or more socially acceptable. They didn't have an over abundance of skills in people interactions. Most of them could not really afford an expensive package of dance lessons. I could not in good conscience push them into it, even though their fondness for me could very well have led them to make such an unwise decision. I became a pretty darn good dancer and I seemed to be a fairly good teacher, but I had way too many ethical conflicts to be a super salesperson. After a few rounds with the Diva that owned the franchise about how I needed to sell, sell, sell more, I moved on from there. Dancing is fun. It should be participated in for the fun of it. In my opinion, it doesn't matter a bit how silly you may look when you are dancing, it matters how much fun you are having. So follow the wise advise to "Dance as if no one is watching."
The Electrolux vacuum company moved their regional billing and collections office from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. Cheap labor has always been an enticement. As they opened up the new office, I was hired to work in collections. In those days we didn't make endless harassing phone calls to customers we sent them a series of letters of increasing sternness. Letters typed by hand on manual typewriters. (Oh my God! The days before computers.) There were six of us hired into these new jobs in this department. We were trained by two very funny middle aged ladies from the San Francisco office, Joanne and Andy. They were supposedly sisters, but I am pretty sure they were lesbians. They stayed for about 3 weeks and put us through our paces. I hated to see them go, they were such great fun. When they left they recommended that I be made supervisor of this little group. Now that was not the best or smartest idea they had ever had. Our group had women of many different ages, and I was certainly the youngest. A couple of them were pretty unhappy with the snot-nosed kid being put in charge. Can't say as I blamed them. Most of them had previous office/clerical experience. I had none, but I was a good typist. And what in the world did the people pleaser Shirl know about supervising? Nothing. I could hardly get my group of friends all together for a night out of pizza.
Why this job has any particular importance at all is because of some of the new friends I made while there. We probably had about 80 or so total employees, most of which were women. During breaks and lunch I eventually made friends with some of them. Those whom I welcome into my circle of friends have always been an eclectic group. At this job, there was Cheryl and her mother, a great Italian duo that I found fascinating, Karen and Carolyn whom were, shall we say a bit on the less feminine side, and Marilyn the Regional director's private Secretary who was an absolute knock out with plenty of intelligence, charm, wit and savoir fare to go with it. Cheryl was attractive and a sweet fun kid about my age. Karen and Carolyn were different, not unattractive, but more the athletic type, and obviously could care less about anything too feminine, also about my age. Cheryl's mom was just a great, fun mom type mom, and what a great cook!. Marilyn was a stunning thirty-something beauty. The complete package. Always smartly dressed, perfect make up and perfectly coifed blonde hair. She was also a no nonsense, extremely capable business woman, with a crack sense of humor and an incredible warmth. Guess who I became closest friends with? Oh, I know that was too easy. Marilyn of course.
Karen and Carolyn started asking me about me. . .the way normal people who are not so damn shy do such things. We found out we had a common interest in sports and especially playing softball. They asked me if I wanted to join with a group of them that were getting a county recreation team together. Heck yes, I was more than willing to do that. Now about half of this team were in high school and we often went driving off in Carolyn's 55 Chevy across town to West High School on our lunch hour. So I got to meet Mattie, and Sandy, and a few others that would become team members. Thus began the education of Miss Shirley Anne Johnson. I don't know what version of what world I had been living in, but there was sure a lot I didn't know about the rest of the world outside of my little realm.
Cheryl and her mom lived about a block from our offices and I often got invited over for lunch with them. Sometimes I got an invite to dinner. They were great fun. Cheryl was one of those sweet, naive, cute as a button young things who came across as very vulnerable. No doubt she should be protected somehow from the big bad world. I sort of took that on as my job. Yes, this could be perceived as the naive leading the even more naive. I especially loved it when they invited me to Friday dinner because her mom made the best clam sauce marinara for spaghetti that I have ever had anywhere, even to this day. Cheryl was pretty much about as shy as I was yet we seemed to get along quite well and never ran out of things to talk about. We became quite good friends. I know how goofy this sounds, but I used to write her poetry. Such a great ice breaker, giving someone a poem you have written about them.
Now the poem that I wrote for Marilyn got me invited over to dinner at her fancy house with her and her husband John, whom I really liked at lot. The two of them were so much fun and so eager to engage in interesting conversations, I loved my many visits with them for the many, many years that they continued. Looks to me like I figured out poetry was a great meal ticket and conversation opener that would really take me places. Boy howdy, did it take me places. . .