A Tortuous Decision: Taking the Plunge
“Action is the real measure of intelligence.” Napoleon Hill, author
Deciding whether to go back to school became a 24/7 obsession. My “negative list” of why I could never succeed in college or should not risk the burden it would place on family life and finances. These negatives became my mantra: playing over and over, like a bad song stuck in my head. There was no relief. I heard it clearly above the ringing and pounding of my tinnitus.
I wanted the better things in life: better employment, decent non-restaurant hours, and a single shift, instead of seven days a week at double and triple shifts. Looking back over my career, I realized that at one job, I worked five years without a day off and, at another, slaved seven years in a row interrupted only by hospital visits for ulcers, high blood pressure, panic attacks, and the like. I wanted off this hamster wheel and I was willing to do anything to achieve that...well, almost anything.
Sometimes I pictured myself in a surreal vignette, going through life like I’m in a cafeteria, at the end of the line near the cashier. It’s easy to choose what you want and to select the order in which you want it.
In life, as in making choices in the cafeteria line, the least of my concerns has been balance. After perusing all the food sections and making my selections, I’d sometimes get to the end of the line, look at my tray, and realize that my meal wasn’t balanced. I’d look back and see what I should have gotten. So, I’d exchange the items or, worse, hand my tray to the cashier and start over.
As I contemplated returning to school, it seemed like each major decision in my life was a dish on my tray and, from the beginning, I had not made wise choices at each stage. Now, the cashier of life was upon me and it was too late to change my mind. I couldn’t go back; I had to go forward with what I had on my plate. My only option was to make the next choice wiser than the last. This insight marked another turning point because everything was coming to a head and I could feel it.
Next came an unexpected event that pushed me closer to resolving the should-I-go-to-college decision. Gloria’s cousin was diagnosed and died from brain cancer in a matter of months. Dr. Alvis McConnell was just a few years older than I and served in a ’Nam the year before I arrived. We missed meeting each other overseas by a matter of days, if not hours.
One sleepless night not long after Alvis’ death, I stumbled on an infomercial by Anthony Robbins preaching how he and his course could change my life. I’d heard this hype from others countless times and even took several self-help courses, with little or no results. But this looked different and I decided to try. I was always chasing goals that didn’t end in success or the kind I wanted. Tony’s course was definitely different and made sense. It was a thirty-day course which I finished in about half the time.
While listening to one of his Personal Power II cassettes, Tony told me to do something, right that instant, toward a goal that I was contemplating. Something. Anything. Just do it now! He added that if I was driving, I was supposed to pull over and do it! So, I pulled over to call from a phone booth (my cell phone had been cut off again and I had no change). I doggedly dug under my car seats and found a quarter on the floor.
That 25 cents changed my life forever.
I used that quarter to call the University of Houston registrar’s office to fulfill my commitment to Tony to take action. But just like in the cafeteria line, the way I approached it also allowed me to change my mind or back out easily. I got a nice-sounding man who genuinely wanted me to register. When he explained that official registration had ended the prior week, I was ready to hang up. But then he added that late registration was ongoing for another two days. He asked my name so we could set a time to come in and register.
When I told him my name, he surprised me by saying cheerily, “Claude! This is George, George Nolan. I know you from Nanny’s, the restaurant across the street. I’m sorry it had to close. I know you remember me and my wife, Phyllis. We used to come in a couple times a week. You were always so gracious and bought us an appetizer or dessert on occasion. OK, now it’s my turn to buy you lunch. Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow and be sure to bring all your papers. We’ll get you all set up.”
I was stunned, shocked, totally off guard. When he asked me for my phone number, I acquiesced. He told me to meet him at Barron’s Restaurant at the Hilton Hotel on the UH campus.
I hung up the phone not once, but twice. Even harder the second time and mumbled, “Why didn’t I hang up earlier? Why did I make such a foolish commitment? Now that he has my home phone number, I can’t back out. If I meet with him, he’ll see my terrible academic track record.” I felt like such a phony. How could I have put myself in this no-exit situation? No matter which way I went, this was heading to inevitable embarrassment and disappointment.
TIP: Dare yourself to take the first step.
After a second sleepless night, I met George, who was glad he could return the favor from the past. After some chitchat about our wives, family, and the vacillating Houston weather, he got around to the reason we were there. He asked me if I had brought any transcripts, diplomas, and the like. I had to be upfront and tell him the sordid details of my past education. I told him I’d gotten kicked out and been asked to leave St. Thomas in ninth grade, had never graduated high school, and had not taken the SAT exam. I almost gave up.
I wanted to tell him that I really couldn’t do this, but thanks for lunch. Instead, George reassured me and suggested that I take just a couple of classes the first semester and step-by-step, together, we’d overcome the hurdles. I never saw this coming: George’s offer of help marked a major educational turning point in my life.
One of George’s assistants looked over my humiliating academic records. My transcript from San Jacinto Junior college was just enough to squeak in. That transcript had been untouched for almost thirty years, so it met the “sealed tight” requirement for the veteran’s GI bill. The courses I took amounted to a lot of Ds, Fs, Incompletes, and Withdrawals. Ironically and luckily for me, the three hours that finally got me in were from a mandatory flame-throwing class I had taken in the military. (In truth, it had been a class for military flame tanks, not for “Tableside Cooking,” as the assistant recorded it.) George and this assistant were only two of many people who helped me in these initial steps toward earning a college degree.
When I thanked George before leaving, I asked why he had never lit the cigar that always appeared in his mouth after he lunching at my restaurant. He always guillotined the end with great care, savored the aroma when fresh out of its glass tube, but he never lit up, even though his regular table at Nanny’s was in the smoking section. George said that he was waiting for a special occasion and surprised me by adding, “I’ll tell you what. When you walk [at graduation], I will personally come to the ceremony and light it up to toast the occasion.”
I smiled in tenuous agreement and thanked him. Then, shrugging my shoulders and raising a doubting eyebrow, I said, “If I do and you do, I’ll light it with a fitting gold Dunhill lighter.”
Within a few hours, I was registered at the University of Houston, had picked hotel and restaurant management (HRM) at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Restaurant Management as my major, and selected political science and English for my first two classes. I felt like Robert Redford at the end of the movie, The Candidate, when he won a senate seat in a long-shot election and, as reality set in, looked at his advisors and asked something like, “Now what do we do?”
After closing my fouth restaurant (three of them mine), enduring Alvis’ passing, and getting a push from both Gloria and George Nolan, I took the plunge into college. This time, there would be no turning back.
