AKA DOCTOR

DRIVEN

Born October 1951 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to parents in the upper midwest a healthy child represents perpetuation: the smooth cadence from generation to generation of middle class home, education, job, children, life and death. This dance was my legacy and until I reached my mid twenties I accepted it happily. Just as a hiker on a mountain accepts the twisting and turning of his chosen trail and ignores the fact that if he thinks he can make it he can shun the path made by others and walk straight up the hill to the top.

I grew up a healthy happy kid - I loved my parents my parents loved me. I endured the summers and survived the winters just like everyone else. I had a job with a big grocery chain through high school and soon after graduating I married my high school sweetheart. Soon we were the proud parents of a baby boy whom we named Joshua. The divorce, which came even sooner, was not unexpected.

Still striving to stay on the trail so to speak I shrugged off my failed marriage as only a young man can and went to work as an outdoor laborer for the City of Minneapolis believing that a change of job would give me a new viewpoint. The pay wasn't great but the physical work kept my mind off my recent disappointment, a disappointment that faded very quickly only to be replaced by a curious lack of enthusiasm, and any coherent goals. I was at loose ends in my life aimlessly going to work each day only because I was suppose to and coming home to sleep and get up and do it again. Maybe this sounds familiar to the reader and again maybe not - maybe this is most people's normal state of being. All I know is I don't remember being particularly happy or sad just that I was getting by.

Then my life changed once again for I met a wonderful girl named Meg and I realized I'd fallen in love for the first time. Perhaps you know how it is; you feel the prick of Cupid's little arrow and you seem to wake up from a deep sleep and look around at the world in a completely different way. Corny isn't it? Call me just another boy in love if you'd like but suddenly I felt there must be more to life than the same routine of working, eating, sleeping and so on.

Meg was a real pistol. Unafraid of and undaunted by what she viewed as life's imaginary restrictions. We'd talk for hours; sitting on the front porch, over dinner and drinks, lying in bed together on long cold nights - this was something different for me because the women I'd known in the past spoke only of marriage, jobs and babies. Meg and I, on the other hand spoke of the philosophical aspects of everyday existence the meaning of life I guess you could say. I know we weren't exactly the first people to ever toss these ideas around but it was all new to me and I ate it up. I started thinking for the first time how big the world was and that I might have a talent for something in it. All I needed to do was find out what that talent was. I was on fire and I got hotter with every passing day.

Keeping my vague ambitions in check I stayed on as a laborer for two or three years and saved as much of my pay as I possibly could. I didn't have to think about my job because there wasn't much to think about. It was good hard physical labor and I loved that sort of work - I had the build for it being a typical midwestern plowboy type. With my Ma's Scandinavian heritage ("The blood of the Vikings!") she used to tell me proudly as I grew to be 6' 1" and 200 lb. Ad to that my Polish father's thick brown hair and eyes. I contrasted nicely with Meg who was 5' 6", blond over blue with a hard little body, tanned, and healthy from weekends at her parent's house on Lake Minnetonka. I have wonderful memories of that lake where I learned to sail and where Meg and I would spend all our late spring, summer and early fall seasons in this manner sailing in her parent's 28-foot sailing sloop and just being in love.

My career if you could call it that was seasonal; winter comes early and stays late in Minnesota and so consequently does unemployment. For thousands of families in Minnesota and adjoining states this is the way life goes; work in the warm months collect unemployment all the long winter, back to work when the sun shines again, on and on until you get sick or die. This had been acceptable to me until I met Meg but eventually the unchanging tyranny of the seasons and their dreary, interminable monotony began to oppress me.

One year after the holidays I decided to break this rhythm - I decided to leave the trail. The future I could offer Meg here was not necessarily the one I had in mind though I didn't have anything specific planned to replace it. Knowing my son was secure (and indeed had been for years) in the capable hands of his mother and with Meg behind me one hundred percent I decided to drive down to Florida where there are no endless gray winters and no snow to shovel. I felt certain I could find something a little bit better for us in the sunshine state.

I wanted badly to leave home and I wanted so badly to stay. That January morning, standing in the driveway of the house in which I was born and raised, my parents and my sweetheart gathered around me I felt the full force of these conflicting desires. What the hell was I doing? Was this a bonehead move? There was only one way to find out. I had to take the chance, the risk, and the adventure (there goes that Viking blood again) and at least give it a shot. I was young and strong. I wanted to change things and this was the time to go looking - if I didn't go for it now I would always be kicking myself in the butt and crying in my beer over what I might have done and what I might have been. With these thoughts uppermost and fighting off my urge to stay I hugged my Ma and Pa as hard as I could and kissed Meg for a brief eternity, slammed the door to my pickup and stepped on the gas. I was off - to find the good life or maybe just a better life. Who the hell knew?

I wanted more and after I became "The Doctor" I got more.