Branding

Branded at birth, Toastmasters, I think that’s what we are.  A man labeled us with his surname as if we belonged to him.  That man and his wife gave us first names that had something to do with their thinking, their time, their preference.  I’m named, first and last, after a person who abandoned me at birth. I look at my birth certificate: My father’s occupation, his surname, my mother’s maiden name, where they lived, our race….my background branding me on the very proof of my birth.   I’ve carried the sounds they labeled me for my entire life.  I’ve heard the name spoken so many times I’ve come to believe that it is who I am. 

All that we’ve accomplished, Toastmasters, all that we’ve failed to accomplish, all the mistakes we’ve made, all the take-aways we’ve gained.  All part of our brand name.  I look at my birth certificate. Our behavior in life, that struggle between who we really are and what we have been conditioned to do, either sears the brand deeper into our flesh or heals the impression so it fades.

Let me give you an example of that.  You remember your high school year book? You brought it with you to all your classes those last few weeks of your senior year in high school. You gave it to those you called friends to sign near their favorite picture of themselves.  Your classmates who thought you were a friend or who thought you were worth remembering gave you theirs to sign.

A buddy of mine, not my best friend, but someone I liked, gave me his to sign.  I didn’t take time to think about him though.  My mind was consumed at that moment with the reaction I had to his mother.  She was a substitute teacher, in one of my favorite classes for weeks as our favorite teacher recovered from surgery.  The substitute made the class a misery for us. When I say us, I am sure for me….and why wouldn’t it have been for all of us…I was an achiever and was ace-ing that class.  She was a disciplinarian, humorless, clueless about the subject matter; hair in a tight bun, in thick high heels that stunned the floor, her voice as sharp as the tip of a fountain pen. I write on my buddy’s yearbook, first his name, then, “The son of a substitute teacher who hates all students. Good luck, Vince.”  I think nothing of it!  That was my brand—thoughtless about the impact of my words.

A week or so later, our favorite teacher has returned.  One morning she handed me an envelope.  A handwritten note from the substitute letting me know how much she was offended and hurt by my yearbook statement because she loves teaching. She wrote that I ruined what should have been a great graduation celebration for her son and that I ruined the yearbook he should have cherished.  I remember crumbling the note in my fist and tossing it immediately in the waste paper basket by the teacher’s desk.  I also remember apologizing to my buddy saying that I didn’t seriously mean anything by what I wrote--to which he just nodded and dismissed the situation with a brush of his hand.  Did the mother buy him a new year book and have him go around to everyone but me to get it signed and restored?  Did she work meticulously to disappear my words with ink eradicator?  I don’t know.  It must have been hell for her to go to her son’s graduation and hear me orate for twenty minutes as the class speaker.  I hope she didn’t carry my image with her through summer vacation.

I had branded her…inadvertently, holding up a mirror to her that in a truly or falsely reflected that she was failing at the very vocation she thought of as her calling. Never, Toastmasters, hold up the mirror to someone who hasn’t asked you to….even then…… I had discarded her note, but had read it and held it in my hand long enough for it to have nicked a part of my conscience, that place called memory where guilt resides and holds experiences in place.  I could I have escaped branding myself?

Such a small thing, Vince, and so long ago….you make too much of a callow youth’s flippant, off-hand, cast-away one-liner. 

Well, what does a man have to be to feel a significant effect of conscience? What sort of disasters do I have to leave in my wake?  Do I have to take the role of an ignominious dictator (ignominious, from the Latin meaning No Name, not worthy of a name) with control so absolute that I can order the invasion of a sovereign country, the consequences of which are 7,000 civilian deaths, 10,000 more injured, the deaths of 60,000 of my own men and 15,000 deaths of men barely distinguishable from my own. And the displacement of over 6 million civilians internally, and the exile of another 7 million refugees from their homeland.  Can we measure the disruption to those lives?  Think of being exiled from America….losing loved ones, losing livelihood, losing the daily bond that is part of what is sacred in belonging to a family.  Think of losing your home and all that you own….except what you can carry.  All the relationships and lives and homeplaces that can never be repaired…the time of your lives, taken from you….to be branded less than worthy of a life.

I cannot make amends to the substitute teacher for shattering her self-image, unless she awaits me in an afterworld of retribution.  There is no way the unnameable monster who has ravaged millions of people will ever be branded deeply enough to make amends, even if there were a way to change what is real and make those people whole again.   I am glad that I was so small I could only harm one family.  Physicians are told, “At least do no harm.”  That counsel is an admirable goal, Toastmasters In the meantime, try to be very, very small.