The 3 Errors

There have been three errors that have informed my actions and thoughts for over four decades. After considering these errors I decided that it could serve a future generation if I shared these blunders with someone young enough or inexperienced enough to read this and, if they had a pittance of sense, avoid them.

The first error was not mine but I, as a participant, or rather victim of, the error, failed to learn the lesson the first time the hint of the faults existence became apparent. So, in essence the first error is “Failure to Learn from Experience”.

When I was about 10 years old, I was considered “smart”. Maybe not gifted but ahead of the dimwits in class. One huge contributing factor that gave me an advantage was that I was shut in most of the day after school. You see, I had alopecia and my mother, in her attempt to soften the blow of reality, purchased a wig and had me wear that when I was out of the house. A nice, shiny Afro wig, that no boy of ten could possibly portray as the truth. She wasn’t ashamed as much as she was afraid of how the neighborhood children would treat me. It didn’t help. Th neighborhood children’s perception too keen, my presentation too timid, I was savaged either by verbal insult, if fortunate, or by physical assault (much too often) if not. Living in an urban “working class” neighborhood I experienced my portion of the brutality that was meted out to me by destiny, and so I found solace in literature and fiction and scientific or cultural magazine articles — and stayed in the fucking house.

One gray winter day, while in the bubble of my solitude, my father, after his Saturday round of drinks, unprompted, takes me to my bedroom (relax, no molestation happened). We lived in an ancient house that had wooden floorboards far beyond refinishing (thank you restrictive covenants and red-lining), so they were covered in extruded plastic sheets called linoleum. Father goes to a corner of the bedroom, lifts a corner of the linoleum floor, covering the underlying wood floor. Set in the wood floor was a metal grate from which heat used to rise from a coal furnace during winters. That system was long gone with the steam boiler and radiator system raggedly installed now, but in the grate my father had hid a metal box which had, what looked to me, like thousands of US government savings bonds. Some were in $100.00 denominations, others were $50s. I wasn’t sure why he showed these to me, but I liked what I saw.

And here is where his error of deceit, and my error of belief, began. He told me the bonds were for my “college”. I felt warm and wonderful, knowing that my education had a source of support and maybe this encouraged me to do even better in school (I regularly made the honor roll until my sophomore year in high school). I heeded Father’s warning, not to tell anyone about this, or to touch them. And, after eight years, after high-school graduation and years of experience seeing Father’s lack of character, on the very morning that I was about to be driven six and a half hours to college, he gives me a twenty-dollar bill and says “good luck”. Not even a handshake.

It was a hard lesson, but one I hope you learn from this is summarized in Maya Angelou’s quote: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” I trusted that my father would keep his word. What I wish is that I had been presented with options that would have helped me pay for college when I was a young adult rather than having to struggle having completed a degree 20 years later. So, the lesson to learn here is: See people as they are. They will show you. It will be consistent. Make choices informed by facts, not feelings and not wishes.

The next error is much like the first: “Trusting a Smiling Face.”

After a disastrous freshman year, I left the downstate university where I attended and began attending a junior college in my city. I got a minimum wage job at a large restaurant chain and began my adult life.

The restaurant led to a job as a mover, the mover job led to a job as a metal fabricator in a factory, and the factory job led to my first corporate job as a customer service representative for an insurance company. Each successive job a grab for more money, and it was never enough. Each job more injurious, either mentally or physically than the next and to provoke this tempest even more I married the girl I took to prom, while working at the factory.

I made the leap from factory to corporate because that was my expectation but not knowing how was my problem. Why I ended up with the corporate job is covered in the third error, but “how” is attributable to networking. If you learn nothing else, understand the value of, and ability to progress via networks. I knew a deacon at the church I attended, that had a near psychopathic brother who was a director at an HMO. I can attest to his mental pathology after he offered to turn a plate of food over into my lap at a meeting, and another time offering a fist fight for some perceived slight. Anyway, I saw the brother at a gas station and asked if his company was hiring. Since their bar to hire was low and his desire to psychologically abuse staff was high, I was hired. From the HMO (closed for fraud), I was able to leverage my experience and be hired at a large insurance company, I’ll call X corp.

At X Corp incoming employees were tested to see if you possessed the competence for either medical claims adjusting or customer service. During the testing I and other candidates were instructed on how claims adjusting worked and then presented with scenarios to answer in writing (in pencil). I am no math genius, but this stuff was basic addition or subtraction based on the conditions of coverage. For example, “if a doctor’s office visit was for the flu and the doctor is out of network, how much would the patient be responsible for with two visits?” The candidates then looked at the patient’s coverage, subtracts the visits from the deductible, then calculates the percentage payable on what’s left after that for out-of-network physician services. Well, the instructor, let’s call him Declan, explained that my calculations were wrong, each time, every time, for like 10 questions. And that all other Black person’s calculations were wrong, each time, every time. All ten of us.

I received theses results with incredulity, feeling like I was being gaslit. However, Declan was a smiling happy-go-lucky kind of guy. “He couldn’t be lying, could he?” Well, I found out later he was a smiling — happy — virulent racist. All the Black people were sent to customer service, which was higher stress, lower paid, lacked advancement potential, and very much looked down upon within the company. I later found out that Declan hated Black people and in this huge company no Black person, ever, entered the claims department or management of anything other than customer service. I didn’t have the courage to quit or the conviction to follow my gut. All I knew was I was now in a job I despised, and that Declan’s smile should have been a warning, not a welcome.

Accepting these conditions was my second error. I accepted that good nature equated to good intentions and once I discovered the truth I was stuck until I could find another job. Unfortunately, jobs for Black men without a college degree were hard to find in the early 90’s. So, I stuck it out, but my mental and physical health suffered a lot. I was naive and wished I had seen the facts plainly and quickly. I feel bad writing this but I was just not equipped to think critically about something like this.

The third error was the result of me being vulnerable after leaving the state college, having no good role model or mentor (my mom had been incapacitated with strokes when I was in grade school), and having no idea at 19 what the hell I was doing with my life.

After dropping out of college I was aimless. I began working odd jobs, feeling lost and unsure of my values or sense of identity. I continued to visit the girl I took to high-school prom, Lori. Lori was staying with a male cousin, Geno, after her family had broken apart due to her father’s indiscretions. Her mother was institutionalized with an unrecoverable mental breakdown. Lori lived with two of her mother’s sisters briefly. However, after discovering that one or both of her aunts suffered from mental illness, manifesting in physical aggression, she was forced to leave their shared home. Unfortunately, such instability seemed to run in her family.

In retrospect I feel I should have known better than to try keeping this relationship together, given the surrounding pathology, but my want of direction catalyzed my attraction to misguided sources of comfort. What I lacked in wisdom I made up for in ignorant passion and so pressed on.

Geno seemed like a pretty solid guy, so when I visited we would have hours long conversations, listen to jazz music from the 1950’s and 60’s, and hear about his life in the Navy. We also discussed different aspects of Christianity. We would listen to some of his favorite radio ministers and talk about the scriptures they brought up so that more and more I found myself moving toward a belief system.

Geno was a substance abuse counselor and his faith informed his belief in the redemption possibilities of people. That faith gave him empathy for his clients. He stayed single, but had a child with a disability that visited sometimes. He dressed sharp and lived in a nicely decorated apartment. I admired him and he became my role model.

Listening to Geno felt right at the time, but it ultimately led me into a narrow way of thinking — or rather, not thinking at all. Philosophies like Christianity may not, by intent, be a bad thing, but when the interpretation of it requires the abdication of critical thinking that some denominations demand, it is only achieved by a type of naiveté and self-sacrifice or willful blindness. No matter the cause, when you can’t see you stumble. I willfully became blind and then I stumbled.

I started my vacillatory life journey with the belief that I needed to find a church. I bypassed the Catholic temples, and Baptist houses of worship I had previously quested for the divine in. No, I needed the charismatic experience the radio preachers boosted! My oldest sister, Sarah, who my family had berated for the type of severe religious beliefs she practiced, belonged to such a church. After speaking with her I chose to join the church with blind enthusiasm.

Error three: Relinquishing the power of critical thinking.

The church I joined was a place where people who had exhausted most, if not all, of the life’s possibilities congregated; ex-felons, ex-prostitutes, ex-substance abusers, adulterers, their children, and some relatives. People who were circling the drain found a common residence here and so did those who exploited them. The three types of congregants was composed of folks who were convinced that this life had revealed to them its wanting measure, and that the life hereafter was where the redemption for their deprivation would be found, or those playing the spiritual three-card-monte of the so-called prosperity gospel. The last type of church goer were people like me and my sister. Broken by trauma and loss, just looking for a safe harbor in the storm.

At this refuge wolves found a willing flock for their feast. The pastor and his family lived off the meager earnings of this flock. Many sermons were focused on money. One sermon that was common was: “You know I don’t like to talk about money”, which was every other sermon. This psychological jiujitsu is effective with people that want a chance at heaven more than their capacity to understand what’s actually going on allows them. Folks worn down by trauma and expropriation become malleable to this type of deception. Another common saying was “you can give your way out of poverty”, a claim so ridiculous that it takes the type of faith of an audience at a magic show has in the magician to believe. I went along with this because I was broken and wanted something to cling to, some way out of my issues, no matter how it defied logic or reason.

When I joined the church I was welcomed without hesitation. I was so enthusiastic that I had even sent my tithes via my sister before I joined. An amount that I was informed was “not enough”. I had given 10% of what I walked away from the check cashers with, the church wanted 10% of whatever your gross pay was; God gets his before the government, you see.

Another self betrayal came in the form of allowing myself to be pushed into early marriage. I wasn’t 20 years old yet and I was still dating Lori. Because she was my girlfriend I took her to the church and being just as lost as me she joined as blindly as I had. One day, not long after I introduced Lori to the congregation, I was approached by a “church mother” (a senior, respected woman ) who informed me that “we don’t believe in long engagements.” So I collected what little I had, bought an engagement ring, and proposed to her in the front of the church.

My open proposal then launched a new scheme, since the church was a small, previously functioning funeral home, it had to be “rebuilt” for our wedding! And guess what was needed to rebuild a church for a wedding: m-o-n-e-y. There were pledges taken for $1000.00 each from each member. I went to my credit union and took out a loan for that amount, and weekly still gave my tithes and offering from the factory job. I didn’t own a car, had only a high school education, and barely made the rent of my apartment. I had no furniture and slept on the floor in a sleeping bag. I used an ancient Boy Scout knife to open cans of corned beef hash and would eat leaves of Iceberg lettuce with Italian dressing for lunch. I lived like this so I could pay for someone else’s church, retirement, and lifestyle. But I was getting married!

I was married at 20 years of age. Through the fog of the wedding day I kept having a feeling of both excitement and regret. On my wedding day, as I walked down the aisle, a quiet thought echoed in my mind — “I’m going to be broke”, but kept walking. Next to dropping out of college and joining this “catch-all” of souls, marriage, at this age and without an education or career, was one of the worst choices I could have ever made. I didn’t know about things like taxes or the forms of employment discrimination that took advantage of naive people. Receiving my first federal tax bill is an example of just one severe shock. After marriage, I had no idea how much income tax increased. Receiving the bill was the equivalent of being punched while already down. I was desperate and borrowed heavily from my father, then when the shame of that was too much I borrowed from the pay day loan provider, so it worked one week I was paid the other week I paid a portion and borrowed again, and down the hole I spiraled.

I was married for about 10 years burning up my 20’s. I missed a lot of great music in the 1990’s, and became obese as a result of depression. The final straw was when Lori started cheating on me. I was depressed and reaping the product of horrible choices. It was the result of ignorance, naiveté, vulnerability, and avoidance. I was unhappy and looking for a ways to self-sooth and didn’t find the discipline to try digging myself out until I was divorced.

In analysis of these three events I see that I believed in the goodness and fairness of people, much more than was merited. The job trainer acted like a nice guy while insidiously disenfranchising Black people from more lucrative job opportunities. My father was short sighted and selfish when he promised to fund my education but didn’t at least confess that this was no longer probable after my mom’s illness. The pastor and his family either being intimidated by people with educations or convinced themselves that this was the best that any of his congregation were ever going to have, discouraged people from getting an education, remaining single, or being disciplined and forward thinking. The philosophy of the“end-times” I recall was a driving force that informed much of what was imparted to congregants. Communicating to young people that “these were the end time” had such a corrosive effect, because it acts of a robbery of their future for your present.

The present is what you have. Stop, take some deep breaths, and start looking for alternatives to easy ways out, or of someone telling you a deity’s will. Understand that, the hard way, or that of discipline is usually the right way. Anything you get too easily, in my experience, becomes a burden to you. Sometimes you have to look for a positive outcome not a particular one. And you always must embrace critical thinking.

I’ve recovered a lot, but the scars remain.