A Boo Radley Moment
People do not get to choose who they are. They simply are who they are and they live with it. Some are lucky and fall into the range of normal. They work and play, succeed and fail, get happy and get sad, all within a band that raises no eyebrows. Unfortunately, nature is not always so kind, in fact, sometimes it is downright cruel.
Joe was one of the best looking guys on campus. That’s more or less an objective comment that I feel confident would win over a 90% agreement rating from any random observers. Not so obvious was that his mild-mannered way and startling intelligence also made Joe one of the smartest and most popular. Just to add insult to injury for the rest of the mere mortals on campus, Joe was athletic and let’s just say, never embarrassed in the locker room. He had it all, including one of the cutest girlfriends on campus. She was so cute that she was chosen to be in the most selective group around, which was the team that managed the front desk of the main student union. There was nothing special about the job itself, but no one worked that desk that wasn’t a Ralph Lauren model. And Sandy was all Joe’s.
Joe and Sandy were high school sweethearts. His father was a retired West Point career military man and her’s was a local judge. They were the prom king and queen and were voted most likely to succeed (surely a bad omen in most stories). They were both accomplished enough to get into the same top college and while he was on a clear business CEO quest, she wanted to become a science teacher.
I met Joe freshman year at a fraternity we both pledged. I was an awkward, uncertain wanderer through college and he was totally wired in. I met Sandy shortly thereafter and it all seemed to fit. They were the perfect couple. Everyone said it. Everyone liked them both. Everyone probably envied them both. They continued to win most likely to succeed as time passed. No contest.
Unlike most students of the era, Joe was determined to get married as soon as possible. He had a strong will in his mild way, so he prevailed over Sandy, he prevailed over his parents, and he prevailed over the judge. So after sophomore year (I think that made them nineteen years old), Joe and Sandy got married at the non-sectarian chapel on campus and had a modest reception at the fraternity house. For most of us it was our first wedding. Joe and Sandy took a honeymoon in the Caribbean and set up house when they returned in a rented apartment that was very un-student-like. We used to say the perfect couple was playing house.
Meanwhile the rest of us were either grunging our way through fraternity life or living together in multi-student housing arrangements. While I was very noncommittal about my vocational direction for most of college, after I left engineering for the dark science of economics, I found myself in more than a few courses with Joe. It was intimidating to say the least. He was smart and confident. I was reasonably smart and completely devoid of any confidence. The result was that Joe beat me by at least a half a grade in every course we ever took. It was fun to have a study friend who was also helping me define my direction in life. Even his knowledge of what he didn’t want to pursue was valuable to me since it all helped me formulate my areas of focus. Joe convinced me to shoot for business school. He was already accepted to the five-year program, which was very elite and in keeping with all things Joe.
So when graduation came and went, Joe, Sandy and I stuck around for the added year to get our masters degrees. Joe and I got our MBA’s and Sandy got a Masters in education. We were the three musketeers. We did everything together.
When graduation rolled around I went the traditional route of heading for New York for a job in banking. Joe was light years ahead of that curve and got a job with Xerox in sales in the DC area. Sandy got a teaching gig in the DC area. Everything was on track for the fulfillment of the most likely to succeed prognostications.
Then in the late Spring the world changed. Joe and Sandy hit a wall. Just as it was all set up, they finally had their youth catch up with them and the marriage went off the rails. It was a shock to all of us, but especially to me since I was there to see it all unfold in lightning speed over one weekend, with Joe staying with me in my studio apartment.
So off Joe went to Xerox, without Sandy, but with all the other attributes that made him Joe the conqueror. Sure enough, Xerox was implementing lease versus buy analysis in its sales area. As the only MBA in Xerox sales, Joe hit the ball out of the park. He won every sales award Xerox had. He was driving a BMW and buying a townhouse in Virginia in no time. None of us were surprised. He was destined for great success.
I don’t want to chronicle the rest of Joe’s professional life so I’ll just say that everything changed after that first year. Joe developed and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He stayed with Xerox for 20+ years, but the disorder and his attendant manner severely curtailed his success. It didn’t do much for his personal life either. He went through two more marriages and just couldn’t find that happiness that we all seek. Instead of most likely to succeed, Joe became the classmate or fraternity brother most likely to skip a reunion so that he didn’t have to stare at everyone else’s success and his lack thereof.
Today Joe lives in a small house owned by a girlfriend with a kind heart. Age has tempered his amazing good looks. Illness has curtailed anything resembling athleticism. And as for work, well, he got fired from a call center job for being too slow and he got fired from a Brooks Brothers sales job for being too quirky. Basically, life has robbed Joe of any chance at success. His physical/mental illness has made anything like a normal life impossible. He is lucky to be able to get up and function on any given day. He has probably spent 3-4 years of his life unable to get out of bed for long periods of time. It doesn’t get more debilitating than that.
I look back at all this and I wonder. How can someone so destined for greatness fall so short and have so much trouble just having a normal functioning life? I have no answers other than to say that life is not fair and no one ever said it would be. Be happy with who you are and be thankful you are not as bad off as others. And remember Joe, who had it all. And remember the importance of staying humble. I just watched To Kill a Mockingbird and watched the kindness shown to Boo Radley by Atticus, Scout and the Sheriff. Any one of us can turn out to be Boo Radley and we still need kindness in our lives.