People will point to major events in their lives as the
turning points where destiny was fulfilled.
I think it is more often insignificant things which actually put people
into the places they end up. I love to
tell this story which illustrates my point.
My father was the City Manager of McCook, Nebraska. He had applied for the same position in
Hutchinson. McCook was celebrating some
sort of centennial so most the men in town had grown beards or mustaches to look
like pioneer guys. This only worked so
well as they still wore slacks and button down shirts with ties, but hey, it’s
the thought that counts. Dad had grown a
mustache to be with the in crowd in McCook.
He goes down to Hutchinson a day early for his
interview. He drives around town to get
the lay of the land and checks into a hotel for the night. That evening he looks in the mirror and
decides to shave off the mustache, a small decision for which even he didn’t
have a real explanation for why he did it.
Flash forward several days.
My father is hired to be the City Manager of Hutchinson. The vote to hire him was 4 to 3 by the City
Commission so he was barely hired (the vote might have been 3 to 2, Wikipedia
doesn’t have an entry for this so I have exhausted my research capabilities). Flash forward several more days. There is a reception to welcome Dad to town. One of those stand around with glasses of
punch and balancing little smokies in one hand while shaking hands with people
you know full well you will not remember their names even ten minutes from now
because you have been unenthusiastically introduced to roughly seven thousand
people in the last three hours, kind of receptions. During this reception he mentions to one of
the commissioners that he had a mustache the day before the interview but had
shaved it off that night. The
commissioner tells him she would not have voted for him if he had still had the
mustache at the interview. (It was 1966,
and only hippies and Dan Rowan had mustaches back the.)
Think about it. If my
father hadn’t shaved I would not have moved to Hutchinson at a young age. I would not have met the friends who shaped
big parts of my personality. It is
because of those friends that I decided to pursue a career in the movie
industry. That is the reason I majored
in film studies at KU. That is the
reason I dropped out of college and moved to Los Angeles. That is the reason I hated living in LA and
moved back to Kansas. That is the reason
I returned to KU. That is the reason I
ended up with a film degree from KU. That
is the reason I worked at a bookstore in Kansas City. That is the reason I did an open mic night at
a comedy club. That is the reason I
abandoned the dream of being a comedian.
That is the reason I had to go back to college years later to get a
degree which led to an actual job. That
is the reason I became a teacher. That
is the reason I pursued writing as a hobby.
That is the reason I started writing a newspaper humor column which paid
roughly thirty dollars a month. That is
the reason I became a principal. That is
the reason I made enough money to send my kids to college, well, not enough
money, enough to go into mind numbing debt in order to send three children to
college because mind numbing is required when you sign that master promissory
note. That is the reason I still kind of hope I will
be discovered and whisked away to be a comedy writer. That is the reason I wistfully ponder being
whisked. That is the reason I am writing
this particular column. That is the
reason you are reading this column right now.
So if you hate this column address your angry letter to the Gillette
Corporation who made it possible for my father to shave off his mustache. Darn those activist razor companies.
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