This is more a memory than a story. It has no lesson, no display of wisdom. It’s merely something that occurred during my medical school years at an outdoor party thrown by the med school faculty.
To set the memory up, I need to remind you of an old adage: it ain’t bragging if you can do it. Now I’m not saying I was so fast I could out-run a dog, or was better looking than a movie star. What I am saying is I was strong; physically. Now, not world-class strong, but a pretty stout lad.
In those days, I did power lifting: squats, military presses and clean and jerks. For those of you who may not understand, for a military press, you pushed weight over your head using only your arms, clean and jerk, again, weights above your head, but you could use your whole body [legs and back.] Finally, the bench press required you to push a dead weight off your supine body. There was a day I could do these things quite capably but that time is long past.
My back and right shoulder, being chronically painful, advise me daily that those years might have been more profitably – or at least less harmfully – spent writing poetry or fishing. But, no, I had to show off.
The party was held at a farm; I was walking around with some friends. I had drunk just enough to banish modesty and invite display. One of my buddies stopped me with a forearm, and pointed to a full-sized blue, Ford farm tractor , squatty and heavy, with large tires spread far enough apart to impeded roll-over.
“You think you can lift that tractor, hotshot?”
“The whole thing?!”
“Naw, just the front end.”
Well that was challenge enough; that machine was a brute. I approached it knowing I may well fail in front of my friends, but to my surprise, the tires came up with but a modest exertion on my part. Terminally cocky, I asked a 300# classmate to sit on the front end. He did; I lifted, and up it came; the front tires showing plenty of daylight beneath.
I was much feted and bragged about that day, back in those days when I needed those adulations, I hastened feverishly to gather the crumbs of compliments of others.
Back at school two days later, I happened into the surgeon who had hosted the picnic at his farm, and told him what I had done, no doubt expecting more crumbs. He arched an eyebrow skeptically and announced, “You did not lift of the front end of my tractor!” He hadn’t even been in the area when I had done it, but he staunchly refused to believe my tale despite the number of witnesses present to verify my claim.
Oh well, it was not the first time – nor will it be the last – that I encounter folks who summarize their conclusions wrapped around their unspoken mantra “My mind’s made up; don’t confuse me with the facts!”
So much in me has changed over the years [I feel it’s more the process of aging than it is maturity which truly deserves this credit.) In my youth, it so mattered to me what others thought. Now, with the exception of a few souls, the opinions of others mean little to me. Believe it: It’s a far easier, more rewarding life – having achieved some measure of maturity – to seek self-approval than to chase after the whimsy of others. Time wore down my lingering vanity, and in so doing, allowed me to get out of my own way, so to speak; to live for my own crumbs, not those of others.
I’ve mowed both sides of that lawn. I much prefer now to then.
– Lucky Garvin
