Today, my only sister Sarai turns twenty-six years old. That might not sound so significant. Except that my sister has sickle cell anemia. It’s a disease that can often claim one’s life before they reach adulthood. Even with our advanced medicine, the average life expectancy of someone with sickle cell anemia is forty-five years. Not to mention the pain involved in having such a body-draining disease.

As much as I love her, the fact is that Sarai probably shouldn’t be here. Between the disease and what we were going through as a family in ’82, it’s hard to believe that Sarai managed to survive in the worst of our worst times. I had just gone through my summer of abuse at the hands of her father, my mother had struggled through picket lines because she didn’t want to lose her job (only to get her hours cut in half anyway), and we were eating as if there was a global famine crisis. By October ’82, with my mother working part-time, I knew we were up crap’s creek without a lifeline. What would come next left me both more cold and adult-like and more in search of escape than I had been.

A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, I noticed something about my mother. At a time when we all looked starved, my mother looked round. Her stomach and cheeks were telltale signs. So I asked her, my tweener voice cracking all the while.

“Mom, are you pregnant?!?”

“Yeah, Donald, I’m pregnant,” she sighed.

“What! You got to be kidding! You mean you’re still having sex with him?”

“Watch ya mouth, boy!”

“Mom, what are we going to do? You can’t have a baby, not now, not with all these mouths to feed!”

“Donald, what I’m supposed to do?”

“You need to get an abortion, that’s what!”

“I don’t believe in abortion. It’s against God’s will.”

“Well, we can’t feed the kids that are here now, so how can you feed it? Get an abortion Mom, before it’s too late!”

Before my mother could say anything else, I stormed out for yet another store errand for milk, diapers, and all the things I couldn’t eat. I wanted to cut Maurice’s balls off and shove them down his throat. I wanted to shake Mom until her eyes rolled back in her head. Most of all, I wanted to get her to an abortion clinic yesterday.

It was time to do something desperate. We needed money just to eat the most basic of food. We hadn’t done a full wash of our clothes since the beginning of September. Me and Darren both needed a new pair of sneakers about every other month. The ones I had were forming holes on the sides and bottoms.

So I turned to Jimme. Mom was always complaining that he didn’t pay child support anyway. And I knew where he lived now. It was 120 South Tenth, not far from the East 241st Street station in the Bronx, the end of the line on the Subway’s 2 and 5 lines running from Brooklyn and Manhattan. There were a bunch of watering holes nearby, making Jimme pretty easy to find.

Darren would usually come with me on what gradually became our weekly hike from the land of 616 to the near Bronx and the city. Jimme being Jimme, he would grab me by one hand while giving me the money and put his left arm around my shoulder, whispering in my right ear, “Don’ give Darren nothin’,” or “You keep fitty for yo’self an’ give Darren ten.” “You a Collins, don’ be sharin’ nothin’ wit’ them Gills.” I almost always broke with Jimme around this.

Yes, Darren often was a selfish goofball and my 616 family was just a step or two above total chaos. Yet I couldn’t go to eat at a good pizza shop with Jimme and Darren and let my mother and my younger siblings subsist on bread, water and milk. I couldn’t watch them run around in graying underwear and just wash my own clothes. Not as hard as my mother worked, not as long as I lived there. I wanted to help as much as I could and still take care of my needs.

Jimme knew I was helping out at 616 too. So he would say things like “Don’ be givin’ your motha my money. Those ain’t my kids. Dis jus’ for you and Darren.” Or “Don’ give them muthafuckas nothin’,” which would start a brief argument between me and him about the needs of innocent children. Even with that and his drunken ups and downs, Jimme helped save the day for us and me as we plunged into the watery abyss of welfare poverty.

—————————————————————-

For some reason my mother didn’t listen to me, giving birth to my only sister, Sarai Adar Washington on the ninth of February ’83, born in the middle of a snowstorm. I refused to visit my mother in the hospital in New Rochelle. I didn’t want Sarai, and was tired of watching my mother make incredibly bad decisions. Maurice tried to force me and Darren to go. Since I refused, it was my job to clean our increasingly sparse space. This would’ve normally been a hard task, but with so little furniture, it was mostly a matter of sweeping up dust and garbage. It was the way I hoped our problems would disappear.

Sarai came home a couple of days later, obviously stricken with the disease, as she looked like she was in pain then. I was so mad whenever I was home in Sarai’s first days. Not mad at her. Mad with my mother. Even at part-time, she could’ve seen a doctor about her sickle-cell trait, and screened to see if her idiot husband had the trait also. Even in ’82, even without his participation, through my brothers Maurice and Yiscoc, my mother could’ve learned early on whether both her and my then stepfather Maurice had the sickle cell trait. She long knew that she had it, and I’d known about my trait since I was seven. I’d learn about a year later, in ninth grade Biology with Mr. Graviano, that with two parents, there was a one-in-four-chance with every pregnancy that full-blown sickle cell anemia would be passed to a child. For the first time in my life, I saw my mother as an idiot.

By the middle of the summer of ’83, Sarai was obviously in trouble. She hardly gained any weight, all of her food had to be fortified with iron, and she only had “three strands of hair,”as my mother put it. It was more like a few dozen in three spots on Sarai’s scalp. She always needed help. Sarai even then was in and out of the hospital, in need of the occasional blood transfusion, and at time in excruciating pain.

With all of this, my mother would say to me, “See, that why you shouldn’t wish for an abortion,” as if I was supposed to feel guilty about what I said to her the year before because Sarai was sick. As if I had anything to do with her being here. I just gave my mother a weak smile whenever she’d say something like that.

Despite all of this, I grew to love my sister, if only because there was nothing else to do. It wasn’t her fault that her parents had about as much common sense as a wino on South Fulton Avenue in Mount Vernon on a hot day in August. Sarai wasn’t to blame for her own condition. And me suggesting that my mother get an abortion — it was obviously too late to get one by the time I yelled the idea at my mother — didn’t make Sarai one sickle cell sicker than she already was.

Over the years, Sarai did get better, then worse, then better again. I stopped babying her by the time she was a teenager, but my mother didn’t know how to stop treating her like she was a toddler. By the time of the family intervention in ’02, Sarai was obviously ready to leave 616. She moved to Alabama five years ago, to live with her high school friends and to live a slower life away from my mother and the rest of us. Even though she still has many days with pain, and more in the hospital, Sarai’s living her life her way. I’m happy for her for that. I only hope that someone somewhere finds a cure or at least a way to help people like my sister experience less pain because of this disease. Happy birthday, sister Sarai! I hope that it’s as good as you want it to be.

putz (pŭts) n.
Slang: A fool; an idiot.
Vulgar Slang: A penis.
intr.v.: putzed, putz·ing, putz·es Slang To behave in an idle manner; putter.
[Yiddish pots, penis, fool.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

I can’t take full credit for this. My wife coined this phrase more than twelve years ago, as Marv Albert was arrested and put on trial for forcible sodomy of his then mistress of ten years. It was a trial known more for DNA evidence that Albert had bit his girlfriend more than fifteen times in their last encounter, the one that led to his arrest. Albert didn’t serve any jail time, and was fired from NBC for a short time before resuming his duties as the play-by-play voice for NBA games for them and TNT in ’99. As to why Albert was only temporarily hurt by his biting trial, my wife Angelia said, “It’s the putz factor.”

As soon as she said that, I knew she was right, not only about Marv Albert, but about other putzes out there. I recognize that this is a Yiddish word, but it has universal human applications. After all, some of us are better able to get away with public missteps and criminal behavior than others. In our pop culture, so many famous folks screw up, ethically, legally, and otherwise. When accounting for age, gender, race, orientation and money, it often comes down to the putz factor as the difference between a short-term disgrace or permanent ostracism.

This blog space is likely not enough to fully explore “the putz factor” in pop culture. But we can start with a few basic axioms.

1. Hair, or lack thereof, can make or break “the putz factor.”

Not to make too much fun of a serious situation, but most people know that Marv Albert has been wearing a full toupee for at least three decades. His various attempts at wearing ones that didn’t fit his age prior to his sodomy trial in Virginia in ’97 were perfect examples of his putziness. That alone would and did make many of us, unconsciously of course, feel sorry for him as his trial progressed, at least until he pleaded out with an assault charge for the bites on his girlfriend’s back.

Contrast this with the recently ousted Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich. His hair is as toupee-ish as Albert’s, but it’s all his hair. And the former governor has seemed vain about it, at least throughout his three months in the national spotlight. He may have many of the characteristics of a putz — including the habit of inserting foot in mouth — but his outwardly narcissistic behavior, combined with all of that hair, puts him several locks past putz. “Schmuck” is more appropriate here.

2. Dress does make the putz.

This is somewhat easy one. For many, the most obvious putz in the pop culture glow over the past thirty years would be film icon Woody Allen. Besides some of his films, the most controversial issue he’s faced was his relationship with and marriage to his former girlfriend’s (Mia Farrow) adopted daughter, Soon-Yi Previn, in the ’90s. While he was never legally Previn’s stepfather, their relationship certainly raised many moral and ethical eyebrows. To be sure, Allen has been the recipient of significant venom as a result of this entangled relationship. But, he’s a putz, and he acts and dresses the part of one every day. Allen hasn’t suffered any long-term damage to his glorious reputation as a film maker, and still makes regular appearances to Knicks games at MSG, often with his wife. All without a single boo or hiss.

At the other end of the spectrum is former Senator John Edwards. That he looks a decade younger than his age, wears well-tailored suits, and is on record for spending $400 for a haircut all make him the anti-putz. All of which made it almost impossible for the press and public to feel sorry for Edwards when it came to light that he had a one-time relationship with a media consultant at the start of the ’08 presidential campaign cycle in the fall of ’06. That this came out after his wife had battled cancer was bad enough. That this was revealed just as now President Barack Obama was making his pick for VP — and that Edwards’ wife had known about the affair for well over a year — ruled out any possibility that “the putz factor” would save him. Edwards isn’t a putz, but he’s a lot of other things, none of them good.

3. One’s occupation can often negate “the putz factor.”

There are certain positions in the work force that lend themselves to the term “putz.” A car salesman, an accountant, a professor (including myself, sort of). There are some occupations, though, where someone’s hair, dress, or affect, putzy or not, doesn’t matter one iota. What fourteen-time Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps is going through right now is a good example of this. It really shouldn’t be a big deal, him toking up and all. If one’s reputation is built on a sense of good values, hard work, and athletic excellence, then drawing in weed smoke through a bong is a putzy move. But, Phelps has more gold medals than Mark Spitz and Jesse Owens combined. Though Phelps may have all of the characteristics of a putz, his out-of-this-world achievements in swimming make it much harder for him to be treated as one in the public eye.

4. Mean-spiritedness, no matter the person, cancels out the putz factor.

This is a simple but seldom followed point by folks in the public limelight. One’s mean-spirited personality, once unleashed in public, can’t be overlooked or excused. It completely contradicts the entire notion of being a putz, a fool that is unknowingly so. As Michael Douglas’ character says in The American President about a rival, “Bob’s problem isn’t that he doesn’t get it. Bob’s problem is that he can’t sell it!” Like the character played by Richard Dreyfuss, many in the public eye and in pop culture are simply too calloused to be putzes.

Take former New York governor Eliot Spitzer. This is a man who built his entire political career as a prosecutor throwing white-collar criminals in jail and attempting to throw away the key. A man who verbally bludgeoned his rivals on his way to Albany in ’06. Only to get caught up in his own hypocrisy as part of a federal investigation of a DC madam and a interstate prostitution ring. Or take former Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, who was forced to resign from his seat in ’07 because of his arrest for “homosexual lewd conduct” in the men’s bathroom at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. While not as eloquently mean-spirited as Spitzer, his actions should give us more than enough pause to ever declare him a putz. Craig, obviously in the closet based on reports since he left the US Senate, had supported a Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban gay marriage in ’06, and voted against extending the federal definition of hate crimes to include sexual orientation in ’02. If Spitzer and Craig are putzes, then so is Michael Vick.

5. Can a male of color or women regardless of race be a putz?

Speaking of Vick, up until now all of the examples I’ve used have been of White males. Can “the putz factor” be an inclusive tag? That depends. It doesn’t really work for Vick, who, while seemingly not as mean-spirited as Spitzer or Craig, certainly helped finance and participate in maiming and killing dogs on his properties. Plus, Michael Vick’s previous occupation was NFL starting quarterback, rarely a putz job even when occupied by Eli or Peyton Manning. Even once forgiven in pop culture, Vick will never likely have his earlier money, reputation or integrity, not through professional sports, anyway.

There are males of color who could qualify as a putz. Certainly actor Clarence Gilyard, Jr.’s character Theo from the movie Die Hard could be a possible candidate. Between the nerdy glasses and dress, not to mention his occupation as a computer geek, the character’s putziness might have helped in if he had gone on trial for attempted robbery, terrorism, and murder. Somehow, though, I seriously doubt it.

The closest thing we’ve seen in recent years to “the putz factor” for males of color is NBA star Kobe Bryant’s arrest and aborted trial for allegedly raping a White woman in ’03. Though Bryant was vilified in the media and his endorsements came to a screeching halt in ’03 and ’04, by ’06, Bryant’s career and pop culture status had all but recovered. It was Bryant’s reputation as a nerd, polyglot and his immature affect as someone too foolish to “get it” that made him a borderline putz, and therefore, less vulnerable to a long-term downfall in the public eye.

As for women, no, there aren’t any good examples of women as putzes. Not that women can’t be unknowingly foolish, dress weirdly or wear bad wigs in public. Examples of that include Cher, Joan Rivers, Mary J. Blige, Lil’ Kim and Aretha Franklin. But the term putz, based on the the definition above, is a gender-specific term, and as such, women can’t be putzes. And, women can do one thing in our double-standard pop culture that men can’t when they get into trouble. They can always cry.

This semester, I’m teaching World History I (from Genesis 1:1 to 1500 CE or AD 🙂 ), something I haven’t taught since grad school at Carnegie Mellon. Except that the Carnegie Mellon version was from Plato to NATO, or from “men becoming farmers because they discovered beer” to Western Europe becoming masters of the university — what I derisively called “World Stereotypes.” The judgement of the powers that are at University of Maryland University College for this standard course was such that we didn’t order Peter Stearns’ textbook (the standardbearer for this subject for nearly three decades). Instead, we have a nice textbook titled Traditions & Encounters.

It really is a nice textbook. It’s also a bit too politically correct. “Traditions” sounds pretty benign, except that many traditions end up so because they’re rammed down people’s throats by those in power. Particularly religious or economic or ethnic ones. And “encounters”? I guess that’s a good word to describe things like the consolidation of China into an empire under Qin Shi Huang Di by 221 BCE, or Caesar’s conquest of Gaul (modern-day France) by 50 BCE. Or not. I’m usually a fan of being politically correct, when the task is to speak plainly or eloquently without insulting other people or spinning the truth about others’ lives and experiences. Traditions & Encounters is too PC, even for a progressive like me.

Speaking of traditions and encounters, the Steelers — my second-favorite football team and my wife’s first, of course — are Super Bowl champions again! I should be happy, but I’m not. Maybe it’s because of the way the Steelers won. Not likely. This time last year, I was celebrating the Giants sticking it to the Patriots on a last-minute touchdown after the throw of all throws and the catch of all catches. Or maybe it was because I’ve seen Ben take the Steelers down field for a game-winning score twenty times in his young career already. No, don’t think so. Or I felt bad for the Cardinals because if it weren’t for all of their penalties and the Harrison 100-yard run-back of a Warner interception for a touchdown, the Cardinals would’ve won, and I would’ve felt some pain in Steeler Nation today.

It’s none of those. By rooting for the Steelers and watching them win at the last minute, I found myself rooting for a frontrunner, a team that most people expected to win. As much as I love the Steelers, I do feel bad for the Cardinals, a team that hasn’t won anything since my mother was a year old and Truman was president. I feel bad for Warner and Fitzgerald and Boldin and James and others, if only because an underdog coming so close to winning to only lose is heartbreaking. Sure, they’ll make their millions, but making money is hardly the same as leaving a mark on your career or profession. That’s a real sense of accomplishment, of immortality, even of happiness.

By rooting for the Steelers, I broke one of my all-time cardinal traditions (no pun intended there). I always, always, always cheer for the underdog, openly or in my heart, even if it sometimes means that the team I grew up with or have adopted loses. Just like I don’t like any team to lose the Super Bowl 55-10, I don’t like seeing an underdog give their all only to fall short at the end. Maybe that’s because I see myself in underdog teams or in the midst of underdog circumstances. I don’t enjoy it as much when a great team wins a championship. It’s like cheering on Bill Gates to break the $100-billion net-worth mark — $83 billion is still more than millions of us will make in a lifetime.

The Steelers did nothing wrong. They deserved to win, and the way they did it is something to celebrate. I’m glad that they have their sixth trophy and ring for the other thumb. Still, there’s this part of me that is a little sad today, knowing that few outside of Arizona care about this group of underdogs. Sadder even to know that most people don’t care about any underdogs, regardless of what they face and who they are. It’s a shame, really, to think that any of us with any underdog leanings at all slug it out in this world every day, all while being told that whatever we’re attempting to achieve is nearly impossible or might well not be worth the effort. We far too easily cheer for the folks on top, as if life is a script that we should all follow, that the tradition of the frontrunner winning is something to cherish.

It is easier, I think, to do so, to go with the flow of traditional fanship. To expect that things will only work out for folks in the most advantaged positions in life. That money or beauty or power is more worth admiring than someone with none of those advantages, metaphorically, as in sports, or in our real lives. So while I remain a Steeler fan, I still love the underdog. Here’s my a shoutout to the Cardinals, a symbol of my lingering hope that underdogs everywhere can break tradition and encounter success in their lives and efforts.

Today Congress is set to vote on the $825 billion economic stimulus package that is a good political balance between infrastructural, long-term economic stimulus — the multiplier effect — and tax cuts and incentives that will allegedly prime the economic pump in the short term. Great. We have a plan that almost no one is happy with, politically or practically, that no one is sure will work, and that few outside of the neocons think has enough infrastructural stimulus in it. Still, it’s better than what the Reagan Administration did to deal with the last great economic recession of 1981-83, nearly two years of icy cold economic stagnation and decline.

Both Obama’s package and the malignant neglect of the Reagan Administration of the working poor and the bitterly poor have much in common, in that the “raising all boats” philosophy of economic growth remains out in the cold. Yeah, some shoring up of COBRA for un/underemployed workers in need of health care help. Extending unemployment payments and putting more money in the system so that states don’t have to dip more in their bare coffers to make those payments are helpful. More of the plan looks like the same old, same old than even the most optimistic care to admit.

We have more people unemployed now than we did in October-November ’82, when the unemployment rate hovered just under 11 percent. The unemployment rate may be significantly less than that (at least for now), but the number of folks unemployed is currently at a twenty-six-year high. Whatever else could be said, at least Obama’s response has been to do as much of something as possible, even if the “something” isn’t much for the poorest among us.

I should know. This time twenty-six years ago was my mother’s last week or so working for Mount Vernon Hospital as a supervisor of the Dietary Department. Not that she loved the job, but she had been working there for more than sixteen years, including fourteen in a supervisory role.

Now some of what happened to her in this job was her own fault. Six months earlier, my mother had a choice to make, between standing in solidarity with her co-workers on the picket line and crossing the line to keep money coming in. Although she was a decade-and-a-half veteran of Mount Vernon Hospital, my mother never joined the union. She didn’t want to pay “them bloodsuckers” dues, and said that she “couldn’t afford them” anyway. That was her excuse for becoming a strikebreaker.

Who could blame the union for going on strike in July ’82? Now only was unemployment nationally was at ten percent, and Mount Vernon’s rate was probably double that. Inflation in ’79 and ’80 was about 14 and 11 percent respectively, and was over seven percent in ’81. It had easily wiped out any cost-of-living raises over the previous four years and management had refused a five-percent-per-year increase in wages over three years. Even I realized at twelve that the union had little choice but to strike.

Despite my mother’s negative attitude around unions, her co-workers and friends—all union members—hoped that she would join them at the picket line. My mother refused, citing parental hardship and the need for money as reasons. I can only imagine how much spit and venom my mother faced on her way to work every day for three weeks. Considering our financial state, which I knew because I checked the mail and looked at our bills every day, picketing and getting union benefits might have been better than working. It wasn’t as if there was food in the house to eat anyway. She was taking food from work and bringing it home for us to eat for dinner at least three times a week. As much as enjoyed Mount Vernon Hospital’s Boston Cream Pie, I thought that picketing for a better wage was the better way to go. My mother’s fear for our short-term future would be one of the worst mistakes she ever made.

The hospital’s concession of five percent increases per year over three years at the end of July left them looking to cut costs. The only personnel left vulnerable were non-union service workers and their supervisors. In October ’82, my mother had been cut to half-time by her boss Mrs. Hunce. Of the two other supervisors, one was a “West Indian” woman—my mother’s language, not mine—with seniority, the other a “White girl” with less than three years of experience but had a union card. My mother was screwed, but it was a screwing of her own making, at least in part.

I wasn’t surprised, but the news made me ask myself “What else could happen?” After all, our Hebrew-Israelite diet had declined to the point where the last week to ten days of every month was spent eating Great Northern Beans and rice, and that was when my mother worked full-time. The first month after the work reduction, all we had left to eat in our two-refrigerator kitchen was a box of Duncan Hines’ Devil’s Food cake mix, Pillsbury All-Purpose Flour, and some sugar. And this was six days before my mother got paid again. That last weekend in October, we truly ate like Torah-era Jews. Mom made us pancakes out of the flour, without baking powder, eggs or milk, and cooked down some sugar in water to make us a crude glucose syrup.

The other shoe, though, was that my mother was pregnant, again, with the baby that would become my only sister, Sarai. To say the least, this was the first time in my life that I truly thought that my mother was stupid.

It wasn’t completely her fault, though. Between the inflation-fueled recession, the inevitable transition of our economic to cheap service industry labor, and Reagan’s efforts at union busting, my mother had some rather difficult choices to make. Through in an abusive, un/underemployed husband, four post-natal kids and the sheer sense of helplessness that comes from all of this, and it become easier to empathize with what my mother was going through. Like many of us right now, she was desperately attempting to hang on, to her marriage — even though she likely knew he wasn’t worth it — to her kids, to our basic food, clothing and shelter needs.

Reagan’s tax cuts didn’t help matters. Nor did his decisions to keep the minimum wage at $3.35 an hour, to reduce unemployment benefits, to keep what used to be AFDC — welfare — stagnant, to basically shred the already thin social safety net created by FDR during the New Deal years of the Great Depression. My mother and my family, forced to go on welfare in April ’83, had become a socioeconomic statistic because of dumb decisions and the Reagan economic agenda. We were now a part of the underclass. Being on welfare did save us from homelessness, but it did nothing to inspire us to think of having a brighter future.

Whatever else can be said about Obama’s package today and it’s limited impact on the poor, it in no way can be said to be making things worst for the poorest among us. It may well be too much to expect a plan that cleans up more than three decades of political expediency around the nation’s economy and infrastructure, and this package is hardly the best it could be. Maybe, just maybe, it will help to make another mother’s decision to fight for living wages and her kids easier and not harder. And keep those teetering between working poverty and TANF welfare poverty from falling all the way in the rabbit hole.

It’s funny how we meet people, make friends, start dating, bonding and get into serious relationships. It’s not like we wake up one morning and say, “Let’s make some friends today.” When I was fifteen years younger, I might’ve thought, “I need to get laid tonight,” but I didn’t exactly sit down and plan for something like that. Regardless of what some of you may think of that thought process, the fact is that there have been times in my adult life when it has been amazingly easy to become friends with folks. Complete strangers with little in common other than a school, a church, a city, a bar or a job site. With a wife, a son, and the “lofty” positions of consultant and professor, it’s not so easy to be friends, even with my current friends.

One goofy example of how friendships have happened in my life was one Friday twenty years ago. I was in the middle of my sophomore year at Pitt, with a full class load of existential philosophy, macroeconomics, Shakespeare, the second half of Biology, and a writing seminar for history majors. I was working full-time at Pitt’s computer labs, somewhere around 36 hours a week between the end of January and the beginning of April in ’89. It was a busy schedule, but I needed the money and thought that a semester of Keynesian economics and Kierkegaard’s “teleological suspension of the ethical” would be fun. Yeah, sure. With work and classes taking up so much of my time and energy, it was difficult to find a social life that would bring some balance.

It took one Friday at the end of January to solidify one group of folks who I would count in my circle. After a long week, I wasn’t feeling particularly hot, so I went home after my Bio class and took a long nap. When I woke up, it was already after seven. I quickly washed up and decided to spend the evening at the student union watching TV since I didn’t have any plans. Poor me.

I went to the TV room and started watching what seemed like the three-thousandth episode of Dallas on CBS. I hadn’t seen much of the show since Victoria Principal’s character had awaken from a year-long dream about losing her husband, played by Patrick Duffy. Almost two years had passed between episodes for me, yet it only took one twelve-minute segment for me to figure out the new story line. I turned to Kenny and his tall friend, both of whom were sitting behind me in the next row, and said, “This story’s ridiculous.” Nothing particularly profound. Except that opened the door for Kenny to fire off some jokes, which then allowed me to put my sense of New York irony and sarcasm to work.

Before long we were having a good time making fun of the show. I soon learned that Kenny and his friend were from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital, which I’d gone through only by Amtrak. “I’m sorry,” I said in hearing the news. Still, it wasn’t Mount Vernon. “That would be worse,” I thought. Over the next few minutes, Michele, whom I’d met the previous semester, had come into the room said “Hey,” and joined in on our hilarity of the show. Two others came in over the next twenty minutes, others that would form part of a group that I’d stay in touch with for a decade. First there was Bryan, a short White dude with John Lennon-type rose-colored glasses whose hairline was already receding and thinning at the same time. He dressed like a young professor would, with a big green and blue-striped scarf that hanged down to his knees, along with khaki slacks. Bryan chimed in immediately, aware that we weren’t really watching the show.

And then came Terri, also short and different. At five-two, she had short dark-brown hair and also wore glasses, though not as cool as Bryan’s. There was something about Terri that I knew was different, that she wasn’t just “Black,” whatever that meant. She was one of the first openly biracial women I’d come to know. It seemed like those were the first words out of her mouth. Maybe not. But Terri did tell us she was “half-Black and half-White” before the night was over. Terri and Bryan obviously knew each other, as they came in together already in the midst of another conversation. She immediately jumped into our growing conversation once they sat down and criticized Dallas as one of many examples of lily-Whiteness on TV. That launched a whole new discussion, with everything from The Cosby Show to 227.

After about an hour of debates, jokes and wonderful conversation, we all went out into Oakland. We started at the The O, Original’s for those who’ve never been to Pitt or Pittsburgh. It had already been a mainstay for students and ex-steelworkers in need of cheap food and beer since 1960. The Pitt football team often drank and caroused there, often getting into fights with Pitt Police. This Friday it was overcrowded and dirty, and we wanted to talk. Terri had already become the leader of our pack, and took us over to Hemingway’s as an alternative. The bar and restaurant was The O’s opposite, very quiet, very reserved, very much an older and Whiter crowd. It was also the first time I’d been carded, so I couldn’t have a drink even if I wanted to.

The six of us talked until well after midnight, with me being the first to leave. We exchanged email addresses and phone numbers (in some cases) in the process. I was amped after having met so many folks so quickly and with so little effort. All it took was one innocent comment on Dallas.

Bryan, Kenny, Terri and Michele became a big part my existing and increasingly diverse group of acquaintances and friends. I continued talking to and hanging out with Elaine, who worked at Hillman Library. I eventually met her older sister Donna, who apparently had gotten Elaine her library job. Elaine also introduced me to her goofy cousin Kendall, goofy yet cool at the same time somehow. I learned that Elaine was one of six kids, each following in ABC birth order — with Elaine obviously the baby sibling — grew up in Homestead, one of Pittsburgh’s great steel-mill suburbs before USX (formerly US Steel) closed its plants in the mid ’80s.

It was another branch on the chain of discovery for me, discovering how to be a friend and how to maintain friendships. It was digging beyond the initial “Hi”s and small-talk conversations to real issues, hopes and dreams, jealousies and minor flaws of others that made me cherish these new people in my life. Of course, I still talked and occasionally went to lunch or a movie with my friends from my freshman year, like Regis and the Henderson twins and numerous others I’d come to know since the fall of ’87. I finally felt comfortable at the University of Pittsburgh, and for the first time in years, more comfortable with my awkward and goofy self.

After years of playing the role of loner and otherwise just not trusting anyone, it felt good to finally have folks in my life that I thought I could trust, or at least laugh out loud with in and out of the classroom. Seeing myself through their eyes enabled me to not see myself as an abused twelve-year-old anymore. Seeing myself through the eyes of my new set of friends allowed me to see myself beyond those years at 616 and in Mount Vernon, maybe and truly for the first time.

The best description I’ve heard of Obama’s inaugural address yesterday was from the ever-thoughtful David Gergen. He called it a “muscular speech,” one meant for our times. And these are hard times. When the New York Times needs a bailout, you know times are tough.

Folks who read my blog regularly know that I’ve taken up a lot of my postings of examples of the hard times in which I grew up. Heck, most of my childhood was filled with hardship, and more recent setbacks don’t seem like setbacks at all when measured against it. I can think of a more recent time when it was hard going for me and for my significant other (now wife), when it took every bit of energy I had to move on to the next phase of our lives.

It started soon after I finished my dissertation at the end of ’96. My advisor Joe Trotter all but refused to help me find a full-time academic job, and I didn’t trust his couple of ridiculous suggestions anyway. It was hardly the best way to start my search for full-time employment as a historian. Still, I had the spring of ’97 to find a job while still on Carnegie Mellon’s payroll as an adjunct professor. Despite my advisor’s lack of support, I ended up doing interviews at Teachers College and Slippery Rock University. Only to finish second in one process and for Slippery Rock to put the position on hold. My then girlfriend, meanwhile, had left her job as a personnel director at a downtown Pittsburgh market research firm to find better paying work and to complete her bachelor’s degree at Pitt, so money started to get tight.

Our economic fortunes went south that summer, as I was unemployed for a bit more than three months. Looking back, I guess I could’ve groveled for a course to teach at Carnegie Mellon. But I’d heard too many horror stories from PhD grads who found themselves jobless getting paid as little as $400 per course while teaching there, so I didn’t bother. I was also embarrassed to find myself both Dr. Collins and unemployed, so I stopped hanging out with my folks for a while. I ended up taking a part-time job at Carnegie Library creating curriculum for a community-based computer lab, something I could’ve done without any of my degrees. I did find a teaching gig at Duquesne University, in their College of Education, but my first course didn’t begin until ’98.

I spent most of the first half of ’98 working part-time and helping my girlfriend stay focused so that she could finish her degree. She now had a full-time job and was taking eighteen credits — six courses — at the same time. Her boss fired her the day after she finished her degree, unofficially because her degree put her in direct competition with him. Officially, it had something to do with her unwillingness to work one late shift after six months of working late shifts and occasional weekends. We did put one op-ed in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that spring. Other than that, I only applied for nine academic jobs that first nine months of ’98. I didn’t know who to trust for help, and I was both frustrated and likely a little depressed.

After teaching at Duquesne for a few months, I realized what I needed to do. Teaching grad students by day and working with homeless people who were jacking off to porn, elderly students who didn’t understand what a computer was, and teenage posses on computers and in classes at night was too big a psychological switch for me. So I allowed the grant allotment for my position to run out, quit my job and signed on for teaching additional course at Duquesne in ’98 and ’99. Even with partial unemployment, I knew that times would be tough and only get tougher before we’d recover financially.

Long-term underemployment does have one advantage over the daily grind. The time to think about your future, how to shape it, how to allow and enable others to share in that plan or vision, who to trust or at least ask for help, how to get out of your own way to make things happen. I realized that it would’ve taken me until now to get a call for a job I wanted if I only planned to apply for nine jobs in nine months. I wanted to write, but I realized that I wasn’t particularly interested in writing academic journal-length articles (I hadn’t figured out what I wanted to do as a writer). I also knew that we needed to leave Pittsburgh. I figured that the only way I’d find a job relevant to my degrees and training was if either of my advisors from Carnegie Mellon or Pitt were to keel over or if I picked up a teaching certificate. My other half was being turned down for jobs because she had a bachelor’s degree, and she was depressed herself.

At the end of ’98, I moved in with my girlfriend. It was primarily a financial decision. I realized that it didn’t matter what my mother or my future mother-in-law thought. They weren’t paying any of our bills, helping us find work, ponying up money for us to get married or to move. Despite the fact that we loved each other, and I spend much more time at her place than she did at my hole-in-the-wall efficiency, that was a rough first six weeks. We argued over the usual use of bathroom and toiletries issues. But we were also worried that this wasn’t going to work, that our financial situation would get worse, and that with only my meager income to depend on, we’d get evicted.

The worse of it was the week of January 25 in ’99. Because of the holidays, I hadn’t been paid in a month, and the only income we had until my first Duquesne paycheck for that semester — which was that Friday, the 29th — was my partial unemployment check of $131.29 per week. I paid rent for January with that, leaving us $5 to work with and about two days’ worth of food at home that week. I clung to $1.50 so that I could take the bus in from East Liberty to Duquesne to teach my class that week. Otherwise, I walked everywhere in the snow, just like I had in the worst of times when I was a grad student. My girlfriend must’ve cried three or four times that week because of the stress. I wasn’t surprised, given her middle class upbringing. I just hoped that she’d hold it together without me having to give yet another pep talk that was as much about keeping my spirits up as they were about hers.

We ate spaghetti on Monday and Tuesday, the sauce a watered down version of Hunts spaghetti sauce-in-a-can. I made instant mashed potatoes with homemade gravy on Wednesday, and fried dough that passed as pancakes for breakfast and dinner on Wednesday and Thursday respectively. The hardest part for my significant other was not having milk at home. Over the years, I’ve gotten used to and made fun of her, as she has said, “Eek! No milk!” with the whine of an eight-year-old about 500 times. But she did have a box of instant milk that her mother had given her three years earlier, which barely helped her get through the middle of that week.

That was the worse of it for us, when we had nearly $95,000 in debt and a combined projected income of $7,000 that year. I was paying my student loans on an income-sensitive payment plan of $20 per month, meaning that Noah’s grandkids would be my age by the time it would’ve been paid off. I still had my Amex card, but even with me using it sparingly, it was suspended because I didn’t pay that month. I couldn’t have been worse off if I had stayed at 616 after high school.

The winds of change, though, were already at work through a combination of some prayer, hard work, and opportunities. The following week would yield my first interview for a meaningful full-time job in eighteen months. I eventually interviewed for jobs at Tufts, Colgate, NYU, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, and Presidential Classroom in DC, not counting phone interviews. I reassembled what at one point was a lost panel presentation for a major historical conference in Toronto, my first “international” trip. By May, my girlfriend had found temp work, at Carnegie Mellon of all places, and by June, I was teaching at Duquesne and had taken a job with Presidential Classroom in the DC area. I proposed in August, we moved to suburban DC a few days later, and found ourselves climbing out of debt by the second half of 2000.

It was hard, but given what we learned about ourselves, it was worth it. Times may be hard now, for us and for others, but they won’t always be that way, especially if you can see beyond where you are now. It’s the difference betweeen success, survival and suicide.