#remember that dave is a quick thinker | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

patroclusonly · 4 years

Text

Buck Begins headcanon: why he joined the seals, how he fell into firefighting and bi buck confirmed all in one.

Some people are actually starting to like this headcanon of Buck’s boo, so I decided to make a post about this to have everything in one place.

Big thanks to @himbo-buckley for coming up with some great ideas and helping me and waiting patiently until I finished this! <333

(Hopefully y’all read it and like it and even come to my inbox with thoughts because I want to hear them)

(tw: cancer and death by cancer are mentioned)

Buck started sleeping around right after he left his parents house. They were distant and also didn’t allow him to do much so he didn’t have a long dating history, was pretty inexperienced and his self-esteem wasn’t so good. (still isn’t but we’re talking about physical image here and we know he loves that now)

Being a 6’2, blond, blue eyed and pretty smile, charismatic hunk did help him a lot there. He got girls’ attention really quick and he was surprised, but after the first two he was like “damn,I got game” and started his journey of countless hook ups.

Not long into that journey, he realized guys were hot too and that college was a place to try new things right? So, boom, he discovered he was bi.

After college he went to south america and he got that bartending job. Now, I need to add pictures because I’m a visual thinker, so Buck looked kinda like this (but with like, no shirt or something because summer in south america):

And one day while he was working at the bar, this super hot dude walks in and they hit it off but not for a hookup at that first moment(both think the other is straight).

This dude’s name is Dave, he’s a SEAL, around 26 I guess, and he looks like this (remember, visual thinker):

He’s there with Jimmy, his high school best friend who always tries to plan get togethers when Dave is off duty. (this one get together vacation is special but you’ll find out why a littler later)

The idea of Jimmy started with a SEAL buddy of Dave, then changed to be a high school best friend that is actually a woman named Jemma that goes by Jimmy and that looked like Laura Harrier and that is actually a lesbian. BUT, after discussing it some more, Jimmy is still the high school lesbian bff but now she looks like this:

Because I saw a picture of Zazie Beetz and went “damn, she has the vibe to be Jimmy” so, she is now.

That first night when Buck and Dave met, they talked a lot. Even after Buck’s shift was over, they just sat there -way too close for two straight dudes who just met- and talked for hours.

Buck told him about his life, his sister, how he didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life now that he was out of college.

Dave told him how he met Jimmy, how he was a SEAL because his family was a military family but that his true dream was to be a firefighter.

They did that almost every day for maybe two weeks? before Jimmy was like “Make a move or I’ll do it for you!”.

So Dave, looking like that but not being even half as smooth as Buck, tries and fails to make a move. But that gives Buck the push he needed to make a move and he kisses him.

Things move pretty quickly after that, they start sleeping together, sort of dating but not really talking about it, just feeling it.

They fall hard. Like, “I’m so in love with you that every time you smile at me my heart melts a little” in love. Like “I see you looking at me with the softest eyes and I can’t help but smile” in love. That hard. But they never admitted it out loud. Until that last day.

Dave was sick. He had been sick all that time but by the end of the fourth month he was getting worse.

He noticed six months before going to that vacation, when he was working and couldn’t keep up with his team anymore. He got tired fast, started coughing when he did routine exercises. He went to the doctor and discovered it was regional small cell lung cancer.

The SEALs wouldn’t let him go back so he spent those six months trying everything. Chemo, radiation therapy, different meds, nothing really worked. And he hated how that made him feel, so he just gave that up.

He started feeling better and that’s when he and Jimmy decided to go on that vacation together. It was probably going to be their last and they wanted to have a good time.

When the symptoms came back and Dave couldn't hide it anymore, he decided to tell Buck. Not without first convincing Jimmy that they had to leave. Go back home or whatever, but not stay there where Buck would see him just get worse and worse.

That last day, him and Buck have a perfect day. The three of them spend the whole day on the beach, enjoying the warm sun and calming sound of the waves hitting the shore.

At night Buck and Dave go to Buck’s room. He lived in an apartment with a roommate but the good thing was that their shifts were usually fixed so that when one was working, the other wasn’t. And he could get the place for himself for a few hours.

After a moment in silence where Dave was mentally preparing himself to tell Buck the truth, he does. He tells him he’s dying and that there’s nothing he can do and that he will not stay there to make Buck watch him slowly lose the life in him. He want Buck to remember him for those perfect months they had together.

Buck gets angry at first, not like, yelling angry. But just that heavy feeling in his chest that turns into sadness after a second. His eyes fill with tears and he just hugs him as tight as he can and stays there for a few minutes. He asks him to stay but Dave doesn’t answer that.

Instead he tells him that it’s okay, that he knew that was coming and that he’s sorry he didn’t tell him sooner. But he’s so glad that he got to meet Buck before and that if he were to die the next day he’d die happy. Right then he finally says I love you for the first time.

Neither of them has said it before, and Buck just stares at him for a moment. He doesn’t want to say it, not then when it feels so final. So he kisses him, slow and desperate at the same time. To let him know that he does love him, that he loves him so much the affection and the fondness and the sadness he feels about losing him compares to nothing he’s ever felt before.

They make love for the first time that day, not sex, but real love making with all the feelings and intimacy and closeness they needed to reassure themselves that everything they lived those past months had happened and that they were lucky enough to find each other. Even if it was for a short period of time.

Buck falls asleep and Dave stays awake, looking at him, smiling to himself, holding him close and kissing him one last time.

He leaves in the middle of the night. He doesn’t say goodbye, doesn’t explain, doesn’t leave a note. And when Buck wakes up and realizes that, he understands and forces himself to move on, but the heartbreak he feels is still the worst pain he’s felt up to that moment.

He stays there another month. Until he gets a call from Jimmy. She tells him Dave died and invites him to the funeral. That is the worst pain he’s ever felt.

He decides to go. It was on the u.s. so he quits his job and goes back.

At the funeral he feels out of place. He doesn’t know anyone and nobody knows him other than Jimmy, who hugs him and cries when she sees him. The two of them are probably the only ones to know that Dave ever dated a man. She tells him he loved Buck like he’s never loved anyone else and that those were the best months of his life.

And Buck can’t cry, he can’t react, he can’t feel anything. He doesn’t want to, because he knew that after the moment he got that call and cried until he ran out of tears, he built a fort around his heart and that if he were to let out everything he really feels, he would just break down and not get back up again.

After that he decided to join the SEALs, as a way to honour Dave, but after six months he realizes it’s not really for him.

So he’s between jobs, and maybe he saves someone accidentally and stays there until the firefighters get there. And that reminds him of the first time he met Dave and how he said his real dream was to be a firefighter and he thinks maybe he could try that to honor him, since the SEALs didn’t work.

So he joins the academy and he passes and he gets a few offers from different stations, because he’s damn good at it.

But one of the offers is in LA, and he can’t say not to that. Not for how they are the best in the whole country or anything like that, but because he remembers how Dave used to love the sun and the ocean, and that seems like the perfect place for him. So, that’s how he starts working at the 118.

He tries not to think how funny and cruel the universe is.

By this time, he’s sleeping around again. Anything to get that closeness he craves but without his heart getting broken again. (Here’s where we find him in season one)

He never told anyone about Dave and he didn’t even hooked up with another man again. He just did everything he could to forget about that and move on.

He can’t do anything but confront his feelings and that triggers a wave of repressed memories and emotions that he can’t control.

But then, one day he starts getting messages and calls from Jimmy. But he’s worked really hard to let that time of his life go, so he just ignores her. Until he can’t, when Jimmy shows up at the fire station.

And this is as far as I can go without involving the present characters. Maybe I will do that?

#i hope this makes sense and y'all like this #because it turned real sad real quick #but i love this idea so much #i have pictures and all #boo i hope this meets your expectations!#it took me a second but here it is #evan buckley #season 4 predictions #buck begins #evan ends #911 headcanon #911 fox #dave #jimmy

87 notes · View notes

thebuckblogimo · 4 years

Text

The Faja Essays.

May 22, 2020

We have all met people along the way who have influenced our lives. If I were to do a “top ten” of those who influenced mine, Garry Faja, my high school buddy who died last summer, would be high on the list. The son of working class parents whose father emigrated from Poland and repaired machinery at the Rouge plant, Garry went on to become the President and CEO of St. Joseph Mercy Health System. Recently, I and four or five of Garry’s friends and former healthcare profession colleagues were asked to write essays for a book about him being compiled by a friend from his grad school days at U-M. It is intended to be a keepsake for Garry’s only child. I was honored to be asked to contribute stories about Garry’s early life. Because several people who follow this space knew him well, I’ve posted the portion I wrote below:

First Impressions.

I had heard of Garry when he was an eighth-grader during the 1960-61 school year at St. Barbara’s grade school, near Schaefer and Michigan in East Dearborn. I was also in the eighth grade, attending St. Alphonsus school, just a mile or two to the north. Garry and I both had neighborhood reputations as athletes at our respective schools.

St. Al’s, however, had a much more successful CYO sports program than St. Barbara’s. We won our divisional football championship in the fall, going undefeated; we won our divisional basketball championship in the winter, going undefeated again; and we were 6 and 0 in the league in baseball that spring when we played Garry’s St. Barbara team on a sunny May afternoon at Gear Field.

That’s when--BAM--it happened: “Down go the Arrows…down go the Arrows…to Dearborn St. Barbara’s.” An old news clip from The Michigan Catholic, a popular weekly newspaper in those days, included the following snippet about CYO baseball that spring: “Dearborn St. Barbara’s came through with the upset of the week by knocking off St. Alphonsus, 11-8. St. Alphonsus still holds first place in the Southwest Division with a 6-1 mark.”

Neither Garry nor I could ever recall how either one of us performed on the field that day. We did recall, however, that we both looked forward to joining forces and playing sports together in high school. St. Barbara did not have a high school; St. Alphonsus did. Garry had long planned to enroll for his freshman year (1961-62) at St. Al’s, where his brother had been a track star, one of the top high school hurdlers in the state.

When we began high school in the fall of ‘61, I recall standing in the middle of the playground with my close friend Anthony Adams, along with Sam Bitonti and Patrick Rogers. I remember looking over to Calhoun, the side-street on which the high school was located, and noticed a small procession of cars dropping off new students from St. Barbara’s: twins Jim and Mike Keller, Sue Hudzik, Margo Tellish (Garry’s grade school girlfriend) and the “big fella” himself.

At the urging of Garry’s mother, Jim, Mike and Garry wore white shirts to school that day. “The boys” and I, on the other hand, wore multi-colored shirts (mine was purple), skinny ties, tight pants and pointed shoes. Looking like “the Sharks” from West Side Story, we approached the new kids, welcomed them to St. Al’s and shook their hands.

I’ve long thought that the way we were each dressed that day—Garry in his white button-down, me in my bold attire—portended the essence of what we would ultimately take away from each other at the completion of high school: for me, a determination to go about things the right way; for him, a touch of edginess.

The Person. The Scholar. The Athlete.

I never knew anyone who didn’t like Garry Faja. Unless, that is, you count a hulking bruiser by the name of “Bucyk” from Ashtabula, who elbowed our buddy Tony Adams in the chest and tried to intimidate us on the street at Geneva-on-the-Lake, Ohio. (Thank God we talked our way out of that one.) Otherwise, all the guys, girls, parents, nuns and coaches of the St. Al’s community loved Garry. He commanded respect on every level—for his heart, his intelligence, his athletic prowess.

Garry was a born leader. Despite being the “new guy,” he made such a good early impression in high school that he was elected president of the freshman class. He was a member of the student council all four years. And he was elected president of our senior class.

Garry was an excellent student, a member of the National Honor Society. He was neither class valedictorian--that was Lorraine Denby--nor the salutatorian--that was my girlfriend, Leslie Klein—but he had an extraordinary ability to “figure things out,” enabling him to excel at algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, the sciences. Moreover, he was highly disciplined. He had what our parents called “stick-to-it-tive-ness,” and it served him well at everything he did.

Garry was an organizer, a strategic thinker, who rallied for increased student attendance and crowd participation at high school games, involvement in a big-brother/big-sister-type mentoring program by seniors for freshmen, as well as causes he believed in. For example, it was Garry, with support from senior class leaders such as Larry Fitch, Vince Capizzo, Tony Adams and myself who compiled a list of “Ten Demands” that were presented to the school principal, Sister Marie Ruth, on behalf of the Class of ’65. It was, essentially, a protest against what we perceived to be unreasonable rules and disciplinary actions created by the priests and nuns of St. Alphonsus: single-file lines and “no talking” during change of class; locked school doors on sub-zero mornings during winter; mandatory daily Mass attendance, etc.

It was a daring, out-of-the box challenge to religious authority for a bunch of Catholic high school kids in those days. Predictably, our demands went nowhere and we were disciplined by having to stay inside the school for two weeks during recess, and, ironically, forbidden to attend daily Mass for two weeks. (The nuns showed us, I guess.)

Sometimes I wonder whether our youthful backlash, with Garry at the forefront, was an early tip-off to the kind of student thinking that morphed into the free-speech movement and anti-war protests that developed on college campuses across the country a year or two later.

As highly as Garry is remembered as a person and leader by St. Al’s Class of ’65, he is recalled by “old Arrows” for his basketball playing ability. He was a starter on the JV squad from day one of his freshman year. However, it took just a few weeks for the coaches to realize that he was talented enough to help the varsity. In Coach Dave Kline’s last year at St. Alphonsus, Garry was moved up to the varsity where he became “sixth man,” before being designated a starter at mid-season. That was big stuff, really big stuff, for a freshman at our school.

So what kind of player was Garry?

A mini-version of former U-M standout Terry Mills, in my estimation. He was a shade under 6’2” tall…thick-skinned…had a nice 15-foot jump shot…and an ability to use his derriere to “get position” under the basket. Any former St. Al’s player would tell you that Garry had game and a distinctive way of gliding up and down the court. For some reason, he also suffered severely sprained ankles more often than any other young athlete I have ever known.

Garry and I were starters together for three years under Coach Ron Mrozinski and were elected co-captains as seniors. Garry once said, “Lenny, we gotta be the team’s one-two punch.” I had speed and quickness, often stealing the ball at mid-court, and would dump it off to Garry who could be counted on to fill the lane. If he came up with the ball after the other team turned it over, I was to beat my man and streak toward the basket, expecting to receive the ball from Garry. We pulled that stuff off dozens of times each year. But we never realized our dream of winning the Catholic League’s A-West Division title and competing in the Catholic League tournament at the U-D Memorial Building (now called Calihan Hall).

However, Garry was named to the Dearborn Independent’s all-city basketball team after his senior season in 1965, a particularly special honor when you consider that St. Al’s had an enrollment of just 450 students, while most other first-teamers and “honorable mentions” on the all-city squad came from Class A schools with enrollments approaching 2,000 (Fordson, Dearborn High and Edsel Ford).

Happy Days at Camp Dearborn.

It was prime time for Dearborn during the early-to-mid ‘60s. The city had idyllic neighborhoods, spilling over with kids from the baby boom generation. The Ford Rouge plant was pumping out record numbers of vehicles, including an all-new “pony car” called the Mustang. And it owned Camp Dearborn (in Milford, 30-35 miles away), over 600 acres of rolling land with several man-made lakes, devoted to the recreational interests of Dearborn residents.

One of Camp Dearborn’s attractions was a narrow tract of land along the Huron River, designated for tent camping by teenagers. Dubbed “Hobo Village,” it was “chaperoned”—if you want to call it that--by a couple of disinterested college kids who worked day jobs, cleaning up the camp, and who lived in their own tent on the river. As 15-year-olds in the summer of ’62, Garry and I got our first taste of independence when we camped there together for a week.

We set up a large tent, with two cots inside, that my Dad had purchased at a garage sale. We hung a Washington Senators pennant to decorate its interior. And we subsisted on Spam and eggs that we cooked in a Sunbeam electric fry pan (we had access to electricity) that my Mom let us borrow.

Every evening we’d cross the camp on foot en route to the Canteen for the nightly dances. We’d get “pumped” every time we heard “Do You Love Me” by the Contours playing in the distance. Our goal, of course, was to meet “chicks,” and we attended the dances for seven straight nights. However, I don’t recall that we ever met a girl. Or even mustered the courage to ask one to dance.

But that all changed in the summer of ’63.

Camp Dearborn had another, larger camping area for families called “Tent Village,” featuring hundreds of tents built of canvas and wood, set on slabs of concrete, each equipped with a shed-like structure that housed a mini refrigerator, mini stove and shelves for storing staples. The mother of our classmate, Patty O’Reilly, agreed to chaperone a tent full of St. Al’s girls, next to the O’Reilly family tent, while Tony’s mother, Mrs. Adams, agreed to chaperone a tent full of boys, next to the Adams family tent.

Tony, Vince Capizzo, Larry Fitch, Dennis Belmont, Garry and I occupied one tent. Our girlfriends occupied the other. Much to my amazement, my parents allowed me to take their new, 1963 Pontiac Bonneville coupe to camp for the week. So we had everything we needed—hot chicks, a hot car, rock ‘n’ roll, the dances and secret “make out” spots in the camp (Garry’s girlfriend at the time was a cute blonde St. Al’s cheerleader, Donna Hutson). It all made for perhaps the happiest days of our teenage lives.

And we did it all over again in the summer of ’64.

During both years we were involved in shenanigans galore: We threw grape “Fizzies” into the camp’s swimming pool…we switched out a hamburger from Vince’s hamburger bun and replaced it with a Gainsburger (dog food)…and one afternoon we took my Dad’s Bonneville out to a lonely, two-lane country road, just outside of General Motors’ proving grounds in Milford, where we floored the accelerator and topped out somewhere north of 100 mph. It scared the shit out of us when we hit a bird in mid-flight that splattered all over the windshield. Thank God for laminated safety glass. Thank God we lived to tell the tale.

Which brings me to the “edgy” side of the teenage Garry Faja.

Stupid Stuff We Did.

When Garry came to St. Al’s, my circle of friends became his circle of friends. And an eclectic group it was. Some were college bound kids. Some were mischievous pranksters. A few were borderline juvenile delinquents. None of us, including Garry, were immune to peer pressure. Consequently, we did some pretty stupid things. Here are a few examples:

The Toledo Caper--On a snowy Friday night after a basketball game during our sophomore year in high school, Garry, Jim “Bo” Bozynski and I trudged down Warren Avenue in our letter jackets, headed for Bo’s house, with the intention of ordering a pizza.

It was, perhaps, ten o’clock at night as we crossed the field in front of Bo’s home on Manor in five-inch-deep snow. As we looked ahead, Bo surmised that because the house looked dark, his parents were already in bed and likely asleep. That’s when he hatched a plan:

Bo proposed to enter the back door of his house, go to the kitchen and retrieve the keys to the Bozynski’s ’58 Mercury sedan. Then, he, Garry and I would quietly open the garage door, push the Merc down the snow-covered driveway and out to the street, where we would start the car…and head for Toledo.

Neither Garry nor I objected to the idea. Ultimately, the plan worked to perfection.

However, we were just 15 years old and had not yet obtained our driver’s licenses. Plus, Bo grabbed a bottle of Bali Hai wine that he had stashed in the garage. And, the snow kept falling…then turned to rain. We drove through slop and glop on Telegraph Road, made it to I-75 and took turns at the wheel between gulps of cheap wine as the windshield wipers labored to clear the mounting sleet piling up on the windshield.

I was sitting in the back seat, the bottle of Bali at my side, when the car slid out of control in the middle of the southbound freeway, somewhere in the downriver area. I don’t recall whether it was Bo or Garry who was driving at the time. But I do recall that the car made a 360, sliding across two lanes of freeway, before coming to an abrupt stop in a snow bank on the side of the road.

We got out of the car. No one had hit us. Miraculously, we had not hit anyone or anything. There was no damage to the Bozynski’s family car. That’s when three stupid teenagers got back into the vehicle, reversed course, headed for Dearborn, killed the engine as we turned into the Bozynski’s driveway, silently pushed the Merc back into the garage, and turned in for the night at Bo’s.

No one was ever the wiser.

The Speeding Ticket—Both Garry’s parents and mine were strict disciplinarians when it came to girls and dating, but they rarely said no whenever we asked to borrow the car. We had already turned 16 when on a beautiful June day we took a bus downtown, filled out some paperwork (or maybe took a test) and obtained our drivers’ licenses. My Dad used his old ’58 Chrysler to get to work that day and let me have the Bonneville for our use when I got home. So, Garry, Larry and I jumped in the car and headed to Rouge Park for some joy riding. As usual, we disconnected the speedometer and took the “breather” off the carb so that the exhaust would make a throatier sound when we put the pedal to the medal. When we got to the park, I turned the wheel over to Garry. It was not as though he ordinarily had a heavy foot, but he did that day. I doubt that Garry was at the wheel for more than a few minutes when he spotted the red flasher of a Detroit cop car in the rear-view mirror. We pulled over. The policeman was all business…and gave Garry a ticket for speeding. Garry’s parents were furious that afternoon when he got home and explained what had happened. Garry went to court and lost his license for 30 days.

The Stolen Cadillac--It was a beautiful summer evening and we were playing our usual game of pick-up basketball in the alley between Tony’s house and Schaefer Lanes. As I recall, four of us were just shooting around—Garry, Tony, Butch Forystek and me. Someone looked up and noticed that a 1963 Cadillac Coupe de Ville had turned off the side-street, Morross, and was slowly making its way up the alley. It stopped in front of us. Our pals, Joe McCracken and Gary “the Bear” Pearson, jumped out of the car. Turns out that the Caddy had been parked in front of a store, with the keys in the ignition. Joe and Bear got in, fired up the Caddy, and drove it to Tony’s. Then we all got in, took turns driving the car, and went to M&H gas station to buy Coke and chips. For reasons unknown, Joe and Bear unlocked the trunk of the car. Underneath the rear deck lid were piles of pressed clothes on hangers in plastic bags, apparently for delivery by someone who owned a dry-cleaning establishment. Also, there was a narrow envelope atop the pile of clothes. Someone opened it. Much to our amazement it contained over $200 in cash. We all got back into the car and headed for a cruise down Woodward Avenue. We stopped along the way at a sporting goods store to buy a new basketball. On northbound Woodward, as it passes over Eight Mile Road in Detroit, Butch grabbed a handful of cash and threw it out the window. (It seemed hilarious at the time.) Garry and I each took a five-dollar bill, reasoning that keeping such a paltry sum would not be considered a “mortal sin.” After taking turns doing “neutral slams” at red lights, we turned the car around, headed back to Tony’s, and continued playing basketball while Joe and the Bear ditched the car.

Again, no one was ever the wiser.

The Shotgun Incident—It was a crisp fall afternoon. Garry and I were hanging out with Tony in his parents’ basement, while Mr. and Mrs. Adams were away, attending some sort of event. Tony knew where Mr. Adams, a bird hunter, stored his shotgun, and proceeded to take it out to show us. There were also a few boxes of shells next to the gun. Tony informed us that his Dad owned a large piece of vacant property in an area that was known as Canton Township at the time. Knowing that his folks would not be home for several hours, we took the shotgun, a box of shells and placed it in the trunk of Mrs. Adams’ Ford Falcon. Off we went to the property in Canton. To hunt sparrows. Tony had seen his father load the gun. Otherwise, none of us had ever had any training in the proper handling of firearms. We knew enough to stand behind the guy with the shotgun in his hands. We took turns shooting into the trees. And bagged a couple of small birds. We eventually returned to Tony’s and put the shotgun away.

Yet again, no one was ever the wiser.

How The 53-Game Streak Started.

Most people know that Garry and I attended 53 straight Michigan-Michigan State football games together—whether in Ann Arbor or East Lansing—from 1965 to 2017. In fact, when the streak ended, we had been in-stadium for 48 percent of the Michigan-Michigan State games ever played.

Prior to the 2018 game, however, Garry determined that he would not be able to negotiate the steep ramps to the second deck of Spartan Stadium due to his failing knees. So, for the first time in our lives—since the days of black and white TV--we watched the game together on the tube. Here is the seemingly unremarkable way a renowned tradition began…plus a closing thought:

As I remember it, Tony Adams, Garry and I were sitting in my bedroom on a hot, steamy, mid-August afternoon, making future plans as we counted down the days to the beginning of our respective college careers. Tony would be going off to Western Michigan University as a business major. Garry would be attending U-M, majoring in engineering. While I planned to attend MSU to study journalism.

We had been athletes. Competitors to the core. Garry and I knew that our respective schools would rarely, if ever, be playing Western, but we certainly understood that he and I would be butting heads in the future, pulling for opposing teams in the Big Ten Conference every year. So, in a spirit of friendship, we mutually decided to get together every fall to attend the Michigan-Michigan State football game until one of us died.

It was as simple as that.

But when I think back to that muggy August afternoon when we made our pact, it seems a metaphor for all the goals, hopes and dreams we so often talked about between the games, joy rides, dances, pranks, parties and school projects we collaborated on at St. Al’s from 1961 to 1965. I often think, for example, about how Garry and I worked alternate days at my uncle’s store, from the spring of our junior year until the fall of our senior year, and shared tips and insights into how we each did our jobs—long before anyone ever used the term “best practices”--so that we could be the best damn stock boys my uncle ever had. As I hinted earlier, I will always be grateful to Garry for making a lasting contribution to my determination to do things the right way in life. And I’d like to think that Garry thought well of my tendency to “push the envelope” on the things I attempted, and that maybe I made a contribution to the release of his creative potential.

Miss you, Big Guy.

1 note · View note

thelovingschool · 5 years

Text

Which kind of captain to be?

One week of school is now in the books, marking my second first week as a school leader (week one of year two). I am exhausted mentally and physically, but not in a bad way. As part of my Principal internship course at Lehigh University, our professor, Jon Drescher, asked us to read the book Crossing the Unknown Sea by poet David Whyte. David Whyte says that “the cure for exhaustion is wholeheartedness,” and that is how I feel at the end of this week: so enriched by the work I get to do making Middle School as wonderful a place as it can be for both the kids and the adults with whom I am lucky to work.

The subtitle of the David Whyte book is “Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity.” Reading this work when I did had a profound impact on me. At the time, I was living in Panama, a stone’s throw from the canal. Each day on my commute to school I saw massive ships and tankers passing through the Miraflores locks beginning their journey to cross between two oceans in a few hours rather than a few days. In the book, David Whyte uses the metaphor of a ship and its captain to talk about work and relationships. Whyte also discusses life on the edge, referring to a time when he worked on a boat touring around the Galapagos. In a romantic way I’ve always pictured my life as on the edge as well, because who doesn’t? Life lived safely in the middle is void of excitement and adventure. Perhaps that’s why I’ve lived overseas for the past 15 years. It’s even interesting for me to think about that term: overseas. Technically the only thing that’s ever geographically divided me from my home in Boston has been the Panama Canal, not an actual sea. But that romantic sense of the sailor and the captain remains, even in our labeling of the expatriate experience. In a sense, my travels have all been a pilgrimage for me to figure out who I truly am.

I have often felt that in changing my educational role from a teacher to a school leader, it was a bit like crossing between two oceans. The interesting thing about the Panama Canal is the series of locks that require you to enter via either the Pacific or the Caribbean, get raised up, cross the isthmus of Panama via a man-made lake and a very narrow cut through the mountains, before getting lowered via another series of locks into the other ocean. Because the navigation of both the cut and the locks is so complicated, ship captains are required to temporarily give up the captaincy to a Panamanian captain who is licensed to navigate the locks, the only time an abdication of this sort ever happens on the high seas. As I made the journey from teacher to school leader, not only did I rely on the crew with whom I was working to help raise me up, carry me across, and lower me down again, my team of teachers in Panama and colleagues from around the world, but I also needed to be guided by other captains. These included my internship professor, my former principal, and the current school leader with whom I am lucky to partner as I begin my leadership journey. Their guidance has made the crossing between the oceans of teaching and leading manageable and joyful.

In thinking more about captains and crews, during that Lehigh course we were challenged to create works of art to exemplify various aspects of leadership. In fact, I remember one direction very clearly: “DON’T write a paper, and DON’T send me a Powerpoint!” I was excited, because while I love to write, I have written enough grad school papers for two lifetimes at least. So my group and I created a project based on Star Trek, examining school through the lens of the popular science fiction story. I like to think metaphorically, and ever since the 4th grade I have been a fan of both the original series and the Next Generation, so I geeked out and worked with my team to tie leadership and schools to Star Trek and the Enterprise. It was fun.

I reflect a lot on what it means to be a captain now. I also must confess that I am a huge fan of the “____ Like a Pirate” books by Dave Burgess Consulting Press, including Teach Like a Pirate by Dave and Lead Like a Pirate by his wife Shelley and Beth Houf. Shelley and Beth’s book had an enormous impact on me as I learned to lead schools through “culture first, culture next, culture always.” Luckily for me, without ever having read Lead Like a Pirate, my current principal understands the importance a positive school culture has on student learning.

So in thinking more about the captaincy, I often recall the leadership lessons in Star Trek. Of course the first captain was Kirk, the hotheaded, somewhat trigger-happy heartthrob who was quick to act but compassionate. Kirk’s counterpart, of course, is Spock, the logical half-Vulcan who showed little emotion and stuck to the rules, particularly the Prime Directive. While I love the campiness of the original series, and will always love Shatner and Nimoy, as leaders I am more drawn to the examples from The Next Generation (TNG).

Captain Picard, as brilliantly portrayed by Patrick Stewart, is certainly an effective leader. Humble, diplomatic, and courageous, Picard takes in information quickly, synthesizes it effectively, and makes decisions based on a well-defined set of principles. His first officer, Commander Riker, wonderfully played by Jonathan Frakes, was originally created to be more in line with the original series’ Kirk: quick to action, somewhat emotional, and someone who was respectfully critical of the captain’s decision, so that Riker could understand what was happening through the lens of his own perspective.

I like to joke with my current principal that he is like Picard while I am Riker. Picard could effectively negotiate a truce with the Romulans or the Klingons, while Riker could effectively defeat either in combat. Picard is a thinker while Riker is a doer. Picard is a bridge builder (in fact, he did mediate the succession of the Klingon leadership!) while Riker is fiercely loyal to his crew and only his crew.

While this may make it seem like one is good (Picard) while the other not so (Riker), in fact the true reason the Enterprise worked effectively was because of their teamwork. If all Picard did was listen all day, he might never act. And if Riker’s actions were never held in check, he might needlessly cause another war. I strive every day to be more of a Picard, but that doesn’t mean I want to lose my Riker tendencies. The answer of how to effectively lead lies in the partnership between the two: action after reflection, and reflection after action. This is what I’m lucky enough to experience right now: an effective partnership, built on mutual respect and trust and shared values. Like on the Starship Enterprise, my principal and I have one mission: to boldly educate students who have not yet been educated before! And when we are true to that mission and work effectively as a team, we hope that the entire school community benefits.

To give a quick example, today an issue popped up with a colleague that I wanted to solve right away with an email. My principal cautioned me that a face-to-face meeting focusing on asking questions would be more effective. In the end, the solution I suggested was decided upon, but through dialogue in a face-to-face meeting rather than a top-down decision communicated via email. I needed the ear of Picard to make sure the action suggested by Riker happened. I even got a thank you email from the colleague!

To bring this back to where we started, David Whyte tells us that as the world continues to move faster and faster, everything that is not built on human relationships will get washed away. Therefore all you have in schools is your relationships. As Baruti Kafele writes, the relationship and partnership between the Principal and the Assistant Principal sets a tone for the entire school to follow. If you are lucky enough to work at a school where the leaders have the same level of trust as Picard and Riker, the school should move in the right direction, and the crew should be able to do their jobs effectively. As I continue my pilgrimage toward my own identity through work, and as I cross the unknown sea, I am so grateful for the captains who continue to guide me as I learn to be the most effective captain I can be.

Thank you for taking the time to read a part of my story.

#thelovingschool

0 notes