* Local Slacker Nominated For Major Award!

Life is amusing sometimes. It’s mostly complicated, but there are days...

Statistically, my own life has been nearly impossible. It shouldn’t have worked out as it did.

First Love

I fell in love with radio as a kid. I began working on the air in radio when I was 14, after my father drove me 150 miles to Mobile, so I could sit for the exam for the ”then-required to be a DJ” FCC Third Class Radiotelephone Permit

Two years later, at age 16, I dropped out of school - much to the chagrin of my highly educated teacher/librarian/professor parents, drove myself to Miami and sat for the significantly harder exam for the FCC First Class Radiotelephone Operators License, which I passed, with a Radar Endorsement. I came home and was hired as the chief engineer at my hometown radio station.

My father - still mortified over his dropout son - insisted I take the Florida GED exam in January of 1972, so I did, and passed that too, and that June I sat in the audience at my class’s graduation - my own high school diploma already in hand. It was a little card - not much of a diploma. I put it in a thick book - the ITT Engineering Handbook - where it remained for over 40 years, never once examined by a potential employer.

I went on to have careers in radio, television, satellite communications and the early internet, where I helped set standards and design technology you are using right now.

During the 30 years between 1968 and 1998, when I sold my satellite and internet businesses and retired at the ripe old age of 43, I lived a life as statistically variant from the mean as my success in business was, fathered four children in two marriages, and in many ways, thought I was living the American dream. I traveled and worked in 48 states (I never hit the Dakotas) and 40 countries, including a few that attracted the attention of some three-letter agencies here at home. (The attention of the management - see below.)

The last trip I took for that firm in 1997 found me spending a morning addressing the Board of Hyundai Heavy Industries in Seoul, which I immediately realized needed a network my company didn’t offer, so I spent my time with a white board teaching the full Board what their firm needed, who could provide it and how not to get ripped off or oversold at that negotiation. They could not believe it, an American who didn’t try to sell them something, called me Sensei and even offered to buy my company so I would work for them (it had just been sold, alas, and I liked those guys a lot more than the whistlepigs we’d just sold to).

But - Not bad for a high school dropout with a GED, I thought at the time. Not bad.

Fast forward another 20 years. After serving as a minor elected official and on a few charitable boards, traveling a little and living abroad for a while, developing solar heating and power courses and teaching them from CMC to Rutgers, I have ended up a single father of a nearly 12 year old at age 64.

When my youngest started school, I had nothing to do during the day so I volunteered at the school library. (Living up Sweetwater, there was a lot of incentive to NOT make the drive twice a day, and I grew up in libraries - my mother was a librarian. I knew how to do the day to day work by the time I was 10.)

After a couple of years, I was encouraged to become a substitute teacher, which I did. The application for this position involves a background check and fingerprinting and the production of ... a high school diploma.

A 45 year old card, in my case, that had never once been seen since sticking it in a book in 1972.

A book that was still in my bookcase - its formulae well referenced over time.

Yes! There it was. I got the job.

The first year I subb’ed in preschool (Fabulous! The children are not yet indoctrinated free spirits and I got to sit on the floor and play with blocks), elementary and middle school (if you have kids in this range and don’t buy their teacher a magnum of wine next month, it should go in your permanent record! I could not do what these saints among us do daily) and high school (very much the same as pre-school, except high school kids are growing out of the indoctrination and wear bigger shoes).

After 5 years of mostly high school subbing, where the kids know me as Bill, the dropout who retired to endless high school, or Bill, the guy with just two rules in class: 1. Always look busy, since you don’t want to greet the rapture with your feet up, texting, and 2. Never, ever, attract the attention of the management, I received a letter yesterday saying that some of those kids had nominated me for an efec “Friend of Education” Award!

Like I said, I’m amused. Humbled, too, but amused as hell.

First of all, guys: damn, this nomination has again violated Rule Two. Management had to write the letter. They’ll have to see me (and maybe even a date) at the big Ball and Gala on May 5th up at the Hyatt!

The attention of management has been attracted. I know that’s why you did it, too, since you understand that rules are mostly ... well, guidelines. I think we’ve discussed this. You also know that, in high school, rules have to be rules. So, you have to act like they are. Look contrite, right now. That’s better.

Second, while I naturally suspect the motivation of all teenagers. I heartily accept your nomination since, as my own GED proves, education is the most important thing you can obtain in this life we live. Nobody gives you an education. You have to get it yourself, wrench it from every source you can, snatch it from failure and success, and never stop looking for more of it. Because if you don’t, as I’ve said many times, you’ll end up like me. Retired in high school. Spending your golden years with kids like you.

Don’t be me.

Right?

Be better.

Be you.

Now. Stuff those ballot boxes. I want to win this thing!

The Rules

As a substitute teacher at local high schools, I try to leave the students with a few life skills. Like, There are rules. There really are a few rules in life. One: Always look busy. Two: Never attract the attention of management. Three: If somebody, especially politician or a corporate executive, says “I don’t recall” in a witness box, they’re lying.  Flat out. Lying. And finally, the single thing I remember from my days in high school, a remark made by civics teacher extraordinaire Bill Jones in the fall of 1968: “If a policeman ever wants to know your name, you may rest assured he doesn’t have your best interests in his heart.”