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Reveal Your Personality Type & Weak Areas. During a fly by the seat of my pants phase, I moved from Ohio to Texas.I like a change now and then. I was on a bus exploring and the inevitable call from the big city bus driver was urgent, “Move to the back of the bus please. Make room for more passengers!” There it was, my personal boulder, one 4-foot Black lady stood between me and compliance with a request to move to the back of the bus; I understood she didn’t want to go to the back of the bus; I knew the implication. But certainly I could go to the back of the bus. “Excuse me, I need to move to the back of the bus.” She ignored me. “PLEASE move to the back of the bus; MAKE ROOM for more passengers!” shouted the bus driver. “Okay, lady, I gotta move to the back. Excuse me,” I apologized as I was pushed past her by the enthralling crowd moving like toothpaste through a tube. She pointed her finger in my face and said “You Mexicans, you come here and think you own the place. Why don’t you go back where you came from?” Yes, things are different in the south and this little pink caucazoid girl from the north experienced it first hand.
Success without honor is an unseasoned dish; it will satisfy your hunger, but won't taste very good.
Joe Paterno
There it was, someone's dream job, advertised in the Sunday paper. The art director's position with a well known, long-established studio and headed by the President of the local Society of Illustrators. It sounded like an opportunity to work with people who knew what they were doing. As I waited for the owner to arrive, I flipped through the studio's portfolio; lots of quaint illustrations in ads all laid out exactly the same. But the walls were covered with sophisticated, multi-planes-in-space editorial illustrations signed with the same name as the studio owner. I was impressed and eager to meet him. Oh, sure, we use computers here. It didn't take long to realize he was not the man who did the fabulous illustrations. I came to know him as the man who threw his chair into the wall when his airbrush clogged and as someone who displayed his brother's illustrations to imply they were his. Oh, and yes, they had a computer; the one used to invoice clients. Hmmm . . . no foolin'
In the third grade at Saint Mary's, I sat next to Mary Ellen Stanton. Her Uncle Bill was a Senator in Washington D.C. When he visited our class, he told us government was for the people, by the people. So when I needed a few shafts of wheat for my art project, I called the Department of Agriculture. "Hello. Can you get me a few stalks of wheat for my art project?" I asked politely. The reply was brusque, "We don't do that." She slammed the phone down. Though I was just eight, that didn't seem right. Those government people worked for me, right? I wrote a nice letter in third grade cursive to the Senator. Shortly thereafter, I received a mailing tube with a half dozen shafts of wheat, a letter of apology from the Senator, a letter and telephone call from the local Department of Agriculture and a free ten year subscription to the Congressional Record.
My dad was 17 when his father took him to the factory, “This is my son. Give him a job.” Dad worked at that factory for thirty-six years, always on time and always with great loyalty. He never understood my life choices, and kept his doubts to himself, except during the inevitable separations.
