Go To College You Dummy

In 1971 I returned to my parent’s home in Springfield Virginia, where I went into a deep depression.  I was suicidal.  It wasn’t the first time, nor, as it turned out, was the last time I would wish myself dead.  What I could not stand was the thought that I was going to just be a grown child loser living with my parents.

If I was too afraid to kill myself, what was I going to do to live?  If you stay alive, you have to move forward.

I owned and was making payments on a brand new Gremlin.  To keep the car I needed a job.  

I was so depressed I just could not figure out what to do.  I did not want to live at home.  I had no idea how I would earn enough money to rent an apartment, make car payments, and feed myself?

That is when I got the idea of going to college.  

It occurred to me that a college provided the students with a place to sleep, and a cafeteria.  I could borrow money to pay for my place at the college.

My father liked the idea when I suggested it to him, but he preferred that I go to Abilene Christian College [ACC].  Abilene Texas was a long way from Springfield, Virginia, so the location seemed good.  The problem my father had with ACC was that it was then some time in Spring, and that meant I could not start at ACC until the Fall.

My father had talked with somebody and learned that Oklahoma Christian College had a Trimester System.  My father felt that there was a risk that I might marry my high school girlfriend, Pam, and he did not want me to marry Pam.  This was his fear even though she was away at the Blacksburg Polytechnic University in Blacksburg Virginia.  So my father’s plan for me was to send me to OCC in April, and then have be transfer to ACC in August.

I had to sell the Gremlin.  My mother outfitted me with stuff I could put in a footlocker, they bought me a plane ticket and off I went to OCC.

What happened to me while I was there:

I had a great roommate, Berry Hopwood, who guided me into the world of OCC.  Unfortunately, I talked up Abilene, and when Fall semester rolled around Berry transferred to ACC and I stayed at OCC.  

I met Kathie Eavenson, the woman who became my wife.  Kathie was beautiful.  I was very attracted to her both physically and to her personality.  After spending that Summer School Semester together I decided to propose which I did.

I returned to OCC in August, and I was there a day or two before Kathie showed up.  I couldn’t wait.  I asked her to meet me at the tennis courts.  I went back to my room and got the engagement ring I had inherited from my great grandmother Norman.  I asked Kathie to marry me and she said yes.

It is clear to me now, at the age of 65, that I am not very romantic.

I was also a little disappointed that being engaged to Kathie did not result in an increase in physical affection between us.  Kathie was “a good girl.”  I had some experience with girls who were willing to mess around, and receptive to the braille method of sexual expression.  I was still a virgin and I think all of the girls I dated were also virgins.  I was hotter than a $2 Cook Stove, but I was still in the church of Christ, I was a Bible Major, and so I was not just willing, but I was supportive of “waiting” until I was married to have sex.  I loved Kathie so much that I was willing to limit our affection to hugs and kisses ONLY.  To touchy-feely stuff went on between us..

Kathie noticed that when I had a test coming up that I spent a lot of time with her, or playing PingPong.  I didn’t study.  I thought the test was to find out how much I could recall from sitting in the class.  Kathie explained that you could actually memorize information and improve your test scores.  This was a foreign concept to me.  Kathie insisted that I study with her, and she showed me how to study.  I wasn’t great at study, but my grades did improve.  I started to think maybe I could finish college.  It was possible, maybe, that I could get a college diploma.  It seemed unlikely, but possible.

Kathie was an insulin dependent diabetic.  At this time, diabetes was poorly controlled.  The intake of food had to be controlled.  Sugar levels were checked by urine tests.  The diabetic had to pee in a cup, pour some pee into a tiny test tube, a tablet was dropped into that test tube, and instantly there was a chemical reaction.  The test tube would be instantly too hot to touch the glass of the test tube.  The urine in the test tube would turn a color.  Then you took a paper with colored squares and a cut line telling  you that the color in the test tube matched the color on the paper that your sugar level was 40, or 100, or 200, et cetera.  I learned all this mostly after we were married.  I also, eventually learned that if you test urine you are getting the sugar level that was in the blood about 2 hours before you took the test.

Urine tests were inferior to blood tests, but at this time in Kathie’s history home blood testing of the sugar was not possible.  The problem is you could have a high urine sugar level, but since it was two hours old, your actual blood sugar level could be very low.  Since the test would tell Kathie her blood sugar was high, when it was actually low, she would take more insulin.  Taking insulin when your sugar is already low means the insulin reaction that would follow would be horrible.  At other times the urine test could show your sugar level was very low, when the actual blood sugar level was high.  Instead of taking enough insulin to knock the high sugar down, Kathie would eat something sweet and take a low amount of insulin, or perhaps she would take no insulin at all.  The result of this would be extremely high blood sugar levels.

Low blood sugar and high blood sugar both made Kathie feel like something you wouldn’t want to step in, if you get my meaning.

Kathie and I talked and she told me she was afraid to have children.  She talked with her diabetic specialist about us getting married, and he said he thought she could have one baby if she had it before she’d had diabetes for 10 years.  Kathie had had diabetes 9 years when we met.

I remembered when my mother was pregnant with the twins and how she would run to the bathroom and vomit violently heaving over and over again.  I remember thinking then, “I am never going to make a woman go through that kind of misery.”  I was OK with us not having children.

I was so OK with the idea that I actually made an appointment with a church of Christ doctor who had an office near the OCC campus.  I told him I wanted a vasectomy.  He made an appointment and told me to bring $300.  For a kid in college coming up with that much money was difficult, but I’d been working jobs around and we had it.

When the time for my operation arrived Kathie went with me.  We sat in the waiting room.  I was nervous.  I’d read up on the operation and although it was “out-patient” it was still an operation on a place on my body that was not eager to be operated upon.

A nurse or receptionist came and said the doctor wanted to see us both.

Odd.

We were escorted back to his office and there was the doctor behind his desk.

“I know you came here today expecting to be operated on,” the doctor said, “but I have rethought this whole thing.  The health problem is hers,” the doctor said, “not yours.  So whatever we do, should be done to her, not you.  Kathie has diabetes.  It is not uncommon for people with diabetes to die in their thirties,” he said.  “If you have a vasectomy, and she dies young, well, you could remarry.  Your next wife might want children.”

I hadn’t had sex with one person and he is imagining there could be two women on earth that would be interested in having sex with me?  That seemed farfetched.

The doctor suggested that instead of a vasectomy, that we consider Kathie using an IUD.  

We left the doctor’s office and Kathie broke down in tears.  She was understandably upset that she was a 20 year old woman who was just told she would probably be dead in 10 years.

Years later I would learn that the way an IUD works is it prevents a fertilized egg from implanting on the uterine wall.  To some that is the classic definition of an abortion.  The IUD allows the egg to be fertilized, but not to reach fruition as a living human being.  It was an odd suggestion from an OCC graduate and medical doctor.

We decided that when we got married Kathie would start out on the birth control pill and we’d have this vasectomy done later.

My Cousin Jim

I suppose this looks like name dropping, but then, I have a name to drop and I’m dropping it.

The cousin closest to me in age is Jim Beaver, who had significant roles on HBO’s Deadwood, and TV’s Supernatural.  He has actually been in tons of stuff.  Google him.  He was Bobby on Supernatural so he has a huge fan base.  You don’t have to be known by everyone to still be known by millions, and my cousin is such a person.

Here is how he comes into my college years account of life.

While I was NOT in Vietnam, Jim enlisted in the Marines and was shipped of to Vietnam.  We exchanged a couple of letters while he was in bootcamp, but I just didn’t hear much from him, and, of course, he didn’t hear much from me.

Jim was just gone.  I didn’t know what was happening.  Then one day around the time the Fall semester at OCC was starting I am walking down the sidewalk holding Kathie’s hand and I see this guy, tall, he has a full beard and he is wearing blue tinted sunglasses like some kind of hippy.

This hippy looking character took off his sunglasses and tilted his head like a puzzled labrador retriever.  It was clear he was looking at me, but I did not recognize him.  Then suddenly it all came together.  It was my cousin Jim.  He was out of the military and enrolled at OCC.

I’d just lost my dear friend Berry Hopwood as a roommate, so I was able to room with Jim for the next year.

Jim was smoking, which I wasn’t.  I had smoked earlier in my life.  I smoked later in my life.  But since I was a Bible Major I figured I would not smoke at that time.  

Jim was involved in theatre there.  He seemed to be gifted in performing.  He was new to the campus and right off the bat he was the lead in Molière’s The Misanthrope.  I remember his costume had this long beard that appeared to be a modified Mop Head.  He was great.  Jim was actually too great to stay at OCC.  I don’t know if the church of Christ ambious was too stifling to his creativity, but after a year he transferred over to Central State, more properly called the University of Central Oklahoma.  I hate how distance, proximity, so often has so much to do with being part of one another’s lives.  Over time Jim and I just didn’t talk or get together that much.  I remember going to see him in my favorite Shakespearean play, King Lear.  

I should add here that Jim has not only been like a big brother too me, at least through part of my life, but he also was the bane of my existence.

bane: a cause of great distress or annoyance

Therefore the  bane of your existence is the chief annoyance or distress in your life, it is something that prevents you from enjoying life, turning it instead to misery.

When I was young, my parents had this sort of routine they did every time I got a damn report card.  

“Why can’t you be like James. [They called him James when he was very young, which Jim may hate, but hell, they started off calling me Richy so there.]

“James could read before he started school.  James makes all good grades.  James can spell.”

I am pretty sure Jim is a genius, or, at the very least a really, really smart dude.

In my adulthood I wanted to be an artist.  I don’t mean a hobby artist, but a serious, makes his living from his art artist.  But I really wanted to have sex, and, being in the church of Christ, that meant I had to be married --there would be[no living in sin for this guy-- and married people have to support their partner and so rather than give myself to my art, I gave myself to the more common demands of life.

My cousin Jim, did something else.  I don’t know everything Jim did, of course.  Remember, we were only sporadically in touch after he transferred to UCO, but I know Jim went to New York City to act.  I was told he did Shakespeare in the Park there.  I heard that he was getting tiny parts in TV shows like Dallas.  One night Kathie and I drove to Shawnee to watch a movie.  I think it was Semi-Tough.  I remember how stunned I was when this happened.  The scene was a bunch of people in some sort of cult like training where the participants were locked in a room and not allowed bathroom breaks.  One lady stands up and says, “I just peed in my pants and it was wonderful!”  The joke was that Burt Reynolds had gone out and purchased a Truck Driver's Friend -- a bottle taped to the calf with a tube that goes up the pant leg and on to the end of Mr. Winky.  Burt Reynolds is just sitting there and you can hear the sound of pee hitting an empty metal bottle.  LOL.  But the shocking part to me was that the guy sitting right next to Burt Reynolds in that shot was my cousin, unknown actor, Jim Beaver.

One time in more recent times I heard an acting student ask Jim about how he “made it” as an actor.  His answer was, “I had no plan B.”

That was true.  Jim slept on the floors and couches of friends, so he could  keep working to make it as an actor.  Jim was only briefly married in college and that relationship didn’t last.  I felt bad for him.  To me Jim gave up the pleasures of ordinary life in order to be an actor.  He had no wife, no children, and when other people were home at night watching TV he was acting.

I remember another time Jim came to Oklahoma City to perform in a traveling play, Natalie Needs a Nightie.  He was great in the play.  He was funny.  But he was, at that point, just a common bread and butter actor.

Later Jim did marry, and he now has a daughter.  Jim’s wife died of cancer and he did a magnificent job of telling that part of his life in a book published by an actual publisher, Life Is That Way.

I still have little knowledge of how Jim is doing, but my impression is that Jim has succeeded.  I have seen him in almost all of my favorite TV shows:  Third Rock from the Sun, The Mentalist, CSI, Monk, et cetera, et cetera.  You should google him, or wikipedia him to see all the stuff he has done.  Jim had the courage to pursue his art.  Like reading and spelling, and making good grades, Jim Beaver bested me yet again with his courage to be an artist.

Other College Life  Details

While at OCC I found out they had a program where you could “challenge” a course of study. What this meant was you could go to a testing center, just take a test on a course of study, and if you passed it, all you had to do was pay for the cost of the course and receive credit.  I’d recently dropped out of Preston Road School of Preaching where the Bible study had been intense.  I felt I could probably “challenge” some of those Bible course.

I took the test on New Testament Survey and Old Testament. Survey.  The test question was this:  write a summary of every book of the Old and the New Testament.

I challenged another course where I was asked to write a paper on the topic of Church Discipline, in the New Testament.  The requirement was 25 pages for 1 hour of college credit, up to 75 pages for 3 hours of college credit.

I wrote the paper and was proud of the work.  At that time a 75 page long document was the longest thing I’d ever written in my life.

This was at a time when there were no personal computers.  I was typing using a small Sears manual typewriter.  I wrote something that I felt was surprisingly good.  My research on the topic of Church Discipline later played a major role in my life.  

Getting Married

I did not graduate from Oklahoma Christian College [now it is Oklahoma Christian University], but I did complete my Bible Major.  The Bible Major part was my justification for dropping out of college.

I know it is like beating that poor dead horse, but I wanted to have sex, and I thought I knew enough about the Bible to get a preaching job.  I could get married, get a little church somewhere, and start my life.

I got married on the last day of finals at the end of my second year at OCC.  I’d “tried out” at several churches around Oklahoma.  That is how you got a preaching job in the church of Christ, you “tried out.”  The church would invite you to preach, maybe teach the auditorium class, you might be questioned by the Elders.

The Wewoka Church of Christ hired me as their associate minister and song leader.  We were on our way to confusion and despair.