By Bob
February 16, 1999
Every once in awhile, something happens to me that gives me a whole new perspective, or view, of how things are or how things work.
In kindergarten, it happened when my Mom took me with her to a parent/teacher conference with my teacher. I don't remember what Ms. Fiocchi looked like, but I do remember that every day, before she'd let us leave, she'd line us up by the door and make each of us kiss her goodbye. Try that today and you'd end up fired -- or in prison. Anyway, I remember Ms. Fiocchi telling my mom what a smart little boy I was, and for the first time in my life, I realized that I actually was pretty smart. I also realized that being smart was something that teachers liked, so if I kept being smart, all of my teachers would like me and think that I was good. I kept being smart from then on.
Back in high school, I got a new perspective when they gave us a bunch of aptitude tests, to help figure out what each of us was suited to do for a living. Up until then, I had always known that I was one of two or three smartest kids in my classes, but I never really felt good about being smart, because, in my school, smart kids were loved by the teachers, but hated by the other kids. In fact, being smart had been the main reason that I had been chased around the playground and beat up several times each year, all through grade school. As a result, I eventually broke the school record for the 100-yard dash in eighth grade, finishing in only 11.3 seconds, about 4 feet ahead of school hero Paul Van Deuser for the first and only time in my life. True story. Anyway, I took the aptitude tests and quickly forgot about them. A week or two later, I had an appointment with my academic advisor, Mr. Rurey, to discuss the results. I had known Mr. Rurey ever since Freshman year, when I had taken his data processing (computer) course. My older brother, Rich, had taken that same course a couple years earlier, and had told me that if you ever wanted to waste some time in that class, just ask Mr. Rurey about his rabbits, and that would take a good half an hour. One day, in Mr. Rurey's class, I asked him about his rabbits, thinking that he'd laugh and ask me if I was trying to waste some time, but instead, he talked about his rabbits for about a half an hour! Now here we were, sitting across from each other, and he was going to tell me what I would be doing for a living for the rest of my life. What had the aptitude tests revealed about me and my future? Was I going to be an accountant, a teacher, a social worker, a lawyer, a garbage collector -- a dreamboat or a dud? Mr. Rurey held the results of my tests up as he said, "According to these tests, you can do anything you want to do, as long as you want to do it." Wow! I could do anything I wanted to do -- but what did I want to do?!! Since then, I've been a musician/singer/songwriter, a pastoral assistant, a photographer, a TV producer/director, the manager of a video arcade, a college instructor, a computer consultant, and a lot of other things that I wanted to do.
I had another perspective change when I was sixteen and met Bonnie, the woman who has been my wife for almost 24 years. Bonnie lived in Ohio and I lived in Illinois. We met at a week-long Christian retreat in Indiana that my parents had forced me to go. For some reason, she liked me, and for a lot of reasons, I liked her. Up until the time I met Bonnie, my Dad had always cut my hair. About every two weeks, he'd drag me down to his workshop, put a plastic poncho over me and buzz all the hair off my head with one of those electric clippers. Crew cut every time. Even shorter around the ears. Ever since about age 12, I had hated having a crew cut, because I thought it drew attention to my unusually-large head. Despite tears and arguments every time he gave me a haircut, my Dad didn't take "no" for an answer, so there I was, sixteen years old, with a crew cut that I hated. Despite my crew cut, Bonnie thought I was handsome. That was all I needed to empower me. Once I had a woman who loved me, it gave me the courage to say "no" to my father's crewcuts. Never again did he cut my hair. Our relationship changed forever. Within a year after meeting Bonnie, my hair was "really long" (completely covering my ears). A year later, it was past my shoulders. By the time I was nineteen, I could reach behind me and pull the ponytail that went halfway down my back. The Crewcut King absolutely hated my long hair, and complained loudly that he couldn't stand to sit across the dinner table from me, which was all the more reason for me to love it.
I had a musical perspective change when I was about eighteen. I had played the guitar since age 12, and I played OK, but not like you might expect for someone who had been playing as long as I had been. I never had any lessons, and couldn't read a note of music, but I had a good ear and could play the chords to pretty much any song I heard. Anyway, one day, when I was visiting Bonnie in Ohio, we were watching TV and the old 60's sitcom, "Hogan's Heroes" came on. The theme song to that show sounds very military, starting with drums, which are joined by flutes, trombones and other instruments after the first couple of beats. A few seconds into the theme song, I heard Bonnie's younger sister, Linda, humming along with it. There was something unusual about what she was humming, so I listened closely. I was surprised to hear that she wasn't humming the melody at all, but instead was humming some sort of counter-melody, that danced and twisted and turned around the real melody. After a couple more seconds, I realized that what she was humming was also coming out of the TV set, but it was a part of the song that I had never even noticed before. I was fascinated. When the song ended, I asked her, "how did you do that?" and she replied, "Oh, that's just the clarinet's part". With those words, Linda gave me a whole different view of how music works and a whole new way to listen to it. A couple years later, I wrote a song called "Sing To The Lord", in which the verses are normal, with normal harmonies, but the chorus has two different melodies with two different sets of lyrics that are sung at the same time. The lyrics to the main chorus melody are, "Sing to the Lord a song of peace. Sing to the Lord a song of praise. Sing to the Lord a song of Light. Sing to the Lord a song of Love." At the same time, the lyrics to the second chorus melody are sung twice during the same time that the main chorus melody is sung once. Those lyrics are, "All of God's children live together in the world He has made, and they love each other, father, mother, sister, brother, through every day." The first melody is slow, while the second melody dances and twists and turns around first one, just like "the clarinet's part" in the theme song to "Hogan's Heroes."
You just never know when someone is going to say something or do something
that gives you a brand new perspective. That's what makes it such a fun
surprise when it happens. It's also a lot of fun to look back and think
about the things that have happened in your life that have given you new perspectives,
and think about the things that you can do to give them to other people.
I guess I should say it's fun for me, but it may not be fun for you -- it all depends on how you look at it.