My big break was that as a freshman in college, Jim Ryder, started going to church at our congregation just before the beginning of my first year, eleventh grade, with Mr. Daly. Jim was a student at San Diego City College and he'd take me to their library with him once a week. Coincidentally Mr. Daly assigned biweekly research papers so it just turned out real easy to complete his assigned work.

I certainly don't believe in literal angels on earth, but if I was going to I would have to think Jim was one. Without succeeding in Mr. Daly's classes I would never have had the academic career I have had. Without Jim priming the pump by taking me to a college library on a weekly basis, I would never have had the level of success I enjoyed. Jim showed up with perfect timing, disappeared after I was on my way, and after he was gone we realized no one really knew where he had come from, where he went, or ever heard from him again. A mysterious friend, yet one who created such confidence that even my overly protective mother trusted me in his company. (And he had a "bad" reverberator in his new Chevy that was amazing to listen to.) Maybe he was an angel.

Anyway, I have always prided myself that no one could be more pigheaded and stubborn than me--if I was right. And Mr. Daly was wrong. Both times. Once he was mad at the whole class and made us all stay after school. I had, personally, been prepared for class, but that wasn't his issue. Although I didn't it think it "fair" that I had to stay after school, the issue I argued with him was that I hadn't been able to reach my mother by telephone to let her know I would be late. I told Mr. Daly I would have to do detention the next day because my parents insisted I be home or let them know and I hadn't been able to get a hold of my mom. He told me I had to listen to him, not my parents. I knuckled under and stayed, but I wasn't happy about it. He didn't like my attitude and threw me out of class the next day. I would have quit his class then, but my counselor, Mr. Kern, made it so he would have to let me in if I went back.

The second episode found Eddie, Sprague, and myself forced to move our seats to separate corners of the room because we were fooling around too much. Guilty as charged. But the next day Sprague and Ed got to the classroom first and sat down in their former seats. So, I did too. Only Mr. Daly asked "Where do you think you're going young man?" and I responded "To my seat." "No, no you're not. You're going where I put you."

"What about Ed and Sprague?"

"I'm just talking to you."

"It's not fair."

"Get out of my class and don't come back."

I had no intention of ever going back. The next day I went back to my counselor, Mr. Kern, and he, reluctantly, gave me the transfer to another class. I was supposed to have the teacher from the class I was dropping and the teacher whose class I was adding sign the transfer. I had absolutely no doubt that I was making this change. Officially it had already been made by Mr. Kern. I walked down the hall of the Social Studies wing of the school quite proud that I had not knuckled under. I had made a choice my pride would let me live with.

And somewhat to my own amazement I walked back into Mr. Daly's room and sat down. He said nothing. I stayed. Later won the Bank of America Award trophy for the school's outstanding Liberal Arts student. (When Miss Gilloon, the college counselor, who knew me by reputation, was forced to tell me I had won the award, she said only, with a slight shake of her head, and disgust in her voice, "God help you." It wasn't a religious proclamation.)

Did I sense what a momentous decision I was making at such an early age staying in Mr. Daly's class? Was Adam Smith's invisible hand guiding me? Was it a moment of divine inspiration? Fate? Luck? That one moment in my life lends me my limited appreciation and perhaps emotional under-standing of the existentialists. In many regards I was a "stranger" to myself. I didn't have any better idea of how it happened that I stayed than Mersault knew how it had happened that the Arab had been shot by the gun in his hand. Maybe it was the blinding sun.

In Sartre's The Plague the doctor stays to help fight the disease, but he could just as well have escaped the city. If the only meaning is that given by the person making the choice, in my own mind I had better reason to leave than to stay. I was not ungrateful even then for the things that Mr. Daly had done for me. I would not have knuckled under more than I did. Since then I have marvelled that I stayed, grateful that I did. The road not taken.

Chapter 8

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