What looks good in history, often is unpleasant, and
probably, avoidable. At 15, I ran away to Florida from upstate New York for 1
million different reasons. One day on my journey I was in Columbus, Georgia. I
apparently had walked into a "colored" bathroom and all the
African-Americans were laughing at me. This was the first time I realized there
were real problems in the America I loved.
So in 1962, I stood up in my high school fraternity and said
we should have African-American members. Since the Boys Club where we met was
full of black kids it seemed like a reasonable request. However it seems that
the kid with ADHD had mouthed off too often and finally pissed too many people
off.
A few days later, after my outrageous behavior had
crystallized attitudes, I was invited to duke it out with a guy who was 6 foot
four in the public park in front of the school.
I couldn't not show up, so I went out there and kept standing
up until everybody was disappointed. With his arm span I had never gotten close
to landing a good one. It probably looked pathetic. But I learned one thing
that day, which later became a cliché: 90%
of life is just showing up.
By the time I got to my doctoral dissertation, my ADHD was
really a problem. I solved that by getting a carrel in the library and writing
for 20 minutes then walking around the library for 40 minutes and talking to
people. I got my doctoral dissertation published in a Journal, and took enough
shit for 30+ years to become a professor emeritus with good health care. Ninety
per cent was just about showing up.
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