I was born in the midwest in 1956. That makes me 65 years old, and I now have retirement time to sit, reflect, and write about my life experiences and ponder unanswered questions. There are many things I was taught growing up that are not true. One of the biggest falsehoods is related to happiness and it’s ugly counterpart, anger. As a youngster I was taught life’s lessons by 4 primary sources- my parents, the church, public school, and close friends or relatives.

I grew up in the suburbs, in a house that was not any larger than 1200 sq. ft. And I shared a bedroom with my 2 other brothers until I was a senior in high school. As I senior, my parents granted me a small bedroom in the basement of the house that was no larger than a big closet. There was no air-conditioning in the house until I was in high school, we all shared 2 bathrooms, watched TV on 2 small b/w TV’s, and ate the vast majority of our meals together. We were compelled to live in harmony , Mom, Dad, 6 kids, and a dog. I was not allowed to have a car until after I graduated from high school, and had to pay for insurance, gas, and all repairs from money I earned working part time jobs. I started working when I was 11 as a paperboy, and worked various small jobs until age 15 when one day my mom told me to “lie” about my age and not come home until I had a job. My first real job was as a dishwasher at the Cousins Too restaurant on Lyndale Avenue in Bloomington MN. I have not stopped working since. I have worked at dozens of jobs, part and full time over the years. Right now is the first time since age 11, 1967, that I have not been gainfully employed.

We went to church every Sunday, and confirmation training on Wednesday nights. During the summer I went to 2-3 weeks of Bible School as was the custom at Lutheran Churches of the time. I went to Bible School for several summers, but usually spent most of my summers up north at our lake cabin. School was pretty easy for me because I was a good reader and most classwork from elementary through high school was easily accessed and understood if you were a facile reader. There was no such thing as Special Ed., or Title 9, until late in my high school years, only beginning as I finished high school. Most coursework was standardized for everybody. The vast majority of students took 3 yrs of Math, Social Studies, Science, English, Phy. Ed., and a sprinkling of Art, Music, or Language electives. There was no such thing as AP or IB. I memorized well and turned in my homework. I did very little school work outside of the school day. There were far fewer sports in my day, and they were highly competitive, and you played JV or Varsity or not at all. Students were self divided into 2 groups, jocks (athletes) and freaks (everybody else), there were no racial or ethnic boundaries because diversity was almost non-existent. The only 2 black kids in my class of of 600 were regularly voted onto the “court” for homecoming as a novelty, certainly a humiliating experience for them.

I was 2 generations separated from immigration and got the same messages from both sets of grandparents and parents. Don’t get above you’re raising, believe in God, work hard, be respectful, and you will most likely have a decent, comfortably unspectacular life. Get married, have a few kids, don’t stray far from home, friends and relatives, and hold down a job for the long haul, the company being as good to you as you are to them. Change happened in due course, but it was usually in small predictable ways that did not significantly alter life with a sudden jolt. Nothing, save only the closest people and events in your daily sphere, felt super vital or important. Sure – I was interested and curious about politics, sports, books, movies and the like, but most of it was well pasteurized and homogenized so as to not see the rough edges and thorny issues. Radical people, ideas, and events always occurred elsewhere and if they happened to get squeezed into a 15 inch b/w television or on the front page of the daily newspaper, we only received a very small slice of the larger story, boiled and edited down for the common man.

When I take the long view it seems to me that my world felt about the same, more or less, until I was 45 years old, when 9/11 happened. The world being more or less the same means to me that events were somewhat predictable, the trajectory of life events went on in a very similar pattern as when I was a child in the 60s and that the future looked bright, people seemed somewhat friendly, jobs and long employment were attainable, nothing really scary in all that. My friends and relatives existed in a world that was just 1 standard deviation to the right or left of the mean. Yeah we disagreed somewhat on politics, but nothing major, again 1 standard deviation away from center. The institutions that governed my life from my parents, the church, and the government seemed safe, secure, and all knowing in a benign and benevolent way. I stayed in the first teaching job I had after college for 33 years, until 2013. I taught music in the St. Paul Public Schools from 1980 until 1995, and then began an administrative track starting as an Assistant Principal in 1995 and retiring as a Principal years later.

If change came, I was confident I could handle it—-I couldn’t. The first face of change was unpredictability, followed by disruption, then retribution, purging, blaming, with anger gathered and thrown as fireballs from Titans spreading chaos and confusion across the land. Unfortunately for me, I was in the firing line for retribution, and did not even know it. It started at my job, in 2009, when an employee that I recently hired used the phrase “white male privilege” in a meeting, as a way to describe me —-all of me —-everything that I was, and it was not meant to be a compliment. I was stunned, shook up, scared, and then the epic fall from grace. I was accused by my boss of a whole series of actions, from things that I supposedly said, things I did, or didn’t do, all total fabrications, blatant lies, half-truths, or gross exaggerations. Next, one of my employees was summoned to a parking lot meeting for 3 hours with my boss, and grilled over and over with the same questions about me. The questioning consisted of items like “Are you afraid of him”, “Do you feel threatened by him”, “Do you find him intimidating”, “Do you think he is a racist”, etc. How do I know about this interview? The employee came back to the office and spent several hours typing at her desk, and towards the end of the workday knocked on my office door and attempted to handle me a thick envelope. She was crying, and we both wordlessly communicated, that I was not going to accept the envelope, and she left it on a chair in my office. I stayed very late, grabbed the envelope on the way out the door and read the 10 pages when I arrived home. It was only then I knew that my career was overland my reputation after 29 years was shattered. Of course there was no cause, nothing that could be pinned on me, and could not be fired, which was the goal of the Superintendent. Instead, I was hauled downtown and read a statement by the Chief of Staff, removing me from my position, and reassigned me to report to the most reviled supervisor in the district.
The last 4 years of my career, I was shamed, shunned, not allowed to participate, and did not talk (upon the advice of attorney). It was the most humiliating 4 years of my life, and I still suffer the PTSD after effects from it even now, 8 years later.

I am still very angry about the way that I was treated and with some of the individuals involved in that torture. But I am also very curious as to the antecedents of that abusive behavior. But I am not angry at the institution, or the general policies or direction of the institution, just those few who were allowed to get away with that kind of treatment. I remember watching an interview with a Jewish holocaust survivor who when asked why he stayed in Germany after the anti-Jewish rhetoric, sentiment, and violence started to ramp up in the 1930s. He explained that it all happened do slowly, like a frog slowly boiling in water, that by the time the full realization of the horror occurred it was too late.

From my view, I have some self righteous reasons to be angry, but I am not understanding the same I the generalized severe anger I am seeing everywhere today.