FanStory.com - Rebirth Times Two or Threeby Reese Turner

In the beginning, I was an only child. I cannot speak for all only children, but, as a result, I've never been much for group-think or collective subordination to the upper strata or anything like that… While being the only child pays off well at Christmas, it scores a deficit in learning to compromise with peers, experience in sharing everything, yet, independence due lots of time alone.

Me? Never very good at school. My mother always laughed as she told of the first grade teacher who called her to report my politeness as I handed back some assignment pages saying, “No, thank you. I don’t care for any more.” I found most college profs similarly boring. Eventually, only my desire for money and a life of travel drove me to my delayed graduation. There were interruptions: a short rock band stint and the reality of the draft…

I owe much to the Navy. While I got through my ‘Nam-era Navy service O.K. but, the Navy was not like the Marines or Army. The Navy is about sailing the seas, keeping the ships afloat, foreign ports of call, shore leave, great food and trying to keep a white uniform clean and neat. Marines and Army are about weapons and such. Lucky me, I was at a place and on an assignment which electronically gathered what we called “intelligence” and we passed it up the chain, knowing full well that the final recipients were likely to have little or none…

So, after the Navy, I returned to college. Having been turned on by my residence in the Philippines and duty visits to Hong Kong and Japan, I changed my major to International Business so I could continue my international travels for life. It began with a corporate sales supporting desk job in New York City… A big corporation is not a happy place for a guy like me. Lots of rules, written and unwritten. Lots of politics. Lots of group think, group grope, group silence to whatever inane idea be coming down from above. I left that company for another one in New Jersey. They transferred me to Texas and I left that company for another and then, another and then, another…

Somehow, I ended up with a corporate sales management position which I held for seven years. I was miserable, but the pay was good and I had a wife and three kids, so I settled in and consoled myself. I played golf – a game seldom played on a team. It is a round of 18 holes in a foursome, with three other guys, but you play alone, against yourself, trying to improve your skills and trying to win some money from others. Today, in my 70’s, golf is still my favorite past-time although I spend more time at the driving range or practice putting green, or watching golf on TV. Alone.

Back to that management job. A customer and friend recognized how unhappy I was. He offered me a job as a traveling salesman. By covering about one-quarter of America, plus a special product line for the Navy, and international sales to mining locations in South America and Australia. Bingo! Just travel and sell. Alone.

Talk about “rebirth”! For the next eighteen years, I sold industrial plastics all around the world. No office politics or crap! I mostly traveled alone. Often up-graded to First Class. Often taking my golf clubs. Playing nice courses in nice places, eating nice meals in nice pubs, sleeping mostly in nice hotels, booking business and commissions working with engineers and managers who had problems for me to solve. Wow, this bad student, a rebellious corporate zombie, this only-child syndrome survivor lived it up, reached twenty-four countries on business, Ireland thrice just for golf, launched three daughters (my wife of forty-seven years, actually takes all that credit, but I paid the bills).

Whoa! When “rebirth” becomes “still born”: When my boss, that owner, sold his company, my life changed; my territory shrank, my income shrank, my international travel stopped. They kept me around for two years of transition (to learn all my contacts and potentials), and then it came to the end. I was sixty-four, but our daughters were all gone, our home was paid off. I could play golf more than even I had interest in playing. One daughter had become a real estate investor and used me, an avid “do-it-yourselfer”, for those fixer-upper projects on her “flips”… Alone.

Rebirth #2, sort-of… Sometimes, we need a re-affirmation that a decision made or an action taken was, in fact, the correct one. Mine came in a painful way. Not being ready to stop charging windmills via the fun of selling, I used my years and contacts in local politics to run for a County Commissioner position. I served four years, but was defeated for re-election. My style was not pleasing to enough voters, so they retired me. As with corporate life, I was never meant to be in a large, organized group.

Today, at the bottom line, at seventy-six, I am at peace with my life as lived. Never got as rich as I dreamed, never got as broke as I dreaded. Never got a big title, a corner office, a limo, but I got most weekends off. No regrets and only one real desire left: a final trip to my beloved Ireland, both Green and Orange, for golf and Guinness (or Belfast Black or Murphy’s, whatever…). Beyond, I am considering asking my daughters to spread some of my ashes along the 18th fairway, right up toward the pub, of my favorite Irish golf course, Old Head at Kinsale, County Cork. Sort of yet another "rebirth" in a way, wouldn't you agree?