Entering Guidance Counselor Swamp

 No. 3 of 30 - Guidance Counselor series

Anyway, the story of my sad decline from a normal student doing normal things to having to be with the guidance counselor weekly instead of wrestling started with a short series of seizures. Which, while I wouldn't wish them on anyone, actually were very interesting. Beyond Sunday School, they were my first taste that the surface life we take for granted is not all there is. There are experiences that go well beyond the norm -- brain or hormonal disturbances, if you could only tap into them.

Did I like the seizures? Absolutely not. But they were something of a turning point for me, and not all for good, then they went away. I haven’t had any since around 15 or 16 and quit taking the medicine when I was around 20. At times I’ve had the inkling that I could bring one on if I set my mind to it, but either I haven’t set my mind to it enough or it's a bad theory, because there haven’t been any.  Throw in great hallucinations and it'd still be interesting.

OK, the seizures happened. Then a while later there was a mandatory semester of wrestling for boys my age. I dreaded the thought of wrestling, then as it happened my mom wouldn't allow me to participate in it anyway because she was afraid it might induce more seizures. These days -- more modern times -- when a kid gets an exemption because of diet, allergies, other conditions, fear of crossing the road, it’s all highly respected. Their feelings — perhaps exceedingly delicate feelings — get tons of deference. Not then!

Back then, if you weren’t bleeding from a severed arm or leg, exemptions weren’t respected at all. You’re a slacker, you’ve put a lot of thought into it, in short, it was the same as draft dodging, which was always in the news. By the way, I signed up for the draft in a responsible way and checked the box that said I would not be a conscientious objector. Although, say I was drafted, I probably would've mentioned the seizures out of full disclosure and how I was kept out of wrestling, and it might’ve saved my life again.

But for me it wasn’t the anger of other servicemen or countrymen I had to face, but the plain unexplained disappointment of one stinking bastard guidance counselor. Why it was such a big deal to him is anyone's guess. But he made me feel very low for having the exemption, and extrapolated from that what the rest of my life would be, various handicaps, lack of values, penalties for willful shirking, etc. Did he point blank say all these things to my face? Many of the things he said I’ve forgotten, whether by actual forgetfulness since or a defense mechanism at the time.  The fact is, though, just to personalize it from his vantage point, he wanted to be the wrestling coach, and since I plainly avoided wrestling class, there was something deeper wrong with me.

That my friend is a swamp! I couldn’t have the good (a wrestling deferment), my shining star, without the bad, a swamp to slog through for a semester, with the presence of an unhelpful snake, the guidance counselor, clamped on my heels and driving me slowly at first, then more quickly as the poison coursed through my veins toward a personal and academic death, possibly.

What would be my escape from this swamp, this satanic serpent coiled around me and squeezing out my life force? In the movies, a hero comes to rescue Nervous Nell from the train bearing down on her tied-up body. For me there was 1) Suffer with it, 2) Hope the guidance counselor dies. Which he never did in those days, but he’s died since. So righteousness, even delayed eventually shows up when it's too late to do any good.

The real answer would've been to tell my mother and she would've made his life hell on earth. That's what I should've done.

He Took The Guidance Counselor Job

Part 1 of 30 - Guidance Counselor series

Welcome, Trauma Fans. Glad you’re here, hope you stick around and see what it was that Once Upon a Time upset me terribly, and even still today makes my blood boil or at least get warm.

My traumas won’t be as bad as some of you have suffered, I’ll just put that up front. So I don’t want to hear you saying, “That’s all you got!? I suffered X, Y, Z, and even now he’s still in the bedroom with a machete!” In your case, please don’t take time to reminisce, but call the proper authorities and get help. My thing isn’t nearly that bad.

Even though it’s not as bad, in my opinion it’s still bad. Because my thought is that adults, especially in the educational field, and particularly in the guidance counseling field, ought to be respectful of the kids they serve, and do their work with only positive interactions toward them. Do I get fed up with kids and their pesky problems? Of course, but I don't have very many interactions with kids. And I’m not a teacher and definitely not a guidance counselor.

OK, here’s the situation, a long time ago... At some point, the guidance counselor had gone into the military. I’m going to say he was in Korea, the war that was going on there. Then he got out and got a college education, apparently involving an education degree, likely with a sports minor. At some point he ended up in my hometown, applying for the job of wrestling coach. I will offer some surmises about wrestling coaches, but not here. When our anti-hero missed out on the coaching job, he accepted instead the guidance counselor position.

Flash forward however many years it would be and I show up at school. Then at home, over a course of weeks, I have a series of seizures. Next, back at school, the boys of my class were required to take a semester of wrestling, in P.E. (Physical Education class.) My mother thought the stress might provoke more seizures in me, so I was excused, only to be placed for that hour weekly with the guidance counselor. Who seriously thought I should be wrestling instead of sitting with him. At this point some of the details of my interactions with him have been mercifully forgotten, but that’s roughly it. He didn’t act like he liked me and I didn’t like him. He made me feel terrible about being there.

OK, on my graphic today why do I have the guidance counselor looking so sad that the wrestling job is gone? Not only because he didn’t get the job, but because I contend that wrestling coaches are in it primarily for other benefits, involving female fans. Which would make my guidance counselor a discouraged lover boy missing out on the extra goodies. See his problem?

And maybe he should’ve been the coach. He hid his disgust of me when anyone else was around, so he was good at keeping secrets. Perhaps he could’ve just as easily hidden his secret life with the ladies as coach. If only he had the opportunity! It’s funny how that was denied him. One can only hope he got his satisfaction somewhere else over the years, and was caught at it. But I never heard anything more about him after graduation.

Except to Google him and see that sometime since me being a kid he died. But please don’t feel sorry for him for that cause. Because everyone eventually dies, the good like me someday, and the bad like him way back when. He was older and statistically that’s when it most often happens, when you’re old. But sometimes when you’re young and stupid. Or young and through no fault of your own, you name the cause.