Strike One: Two weeks after I turned fourteen, my father pulled me out of school. I was glad to leave. This was the earliest possible time when an Aussie child could leave compulsory education. I have no record of my early schooling. I did not achieve any educational milestone.
Strike Two: At age fifteen I was an apprentice electrician in the employ of the SEC (the State Electricity Commission – Victoria, Australia). At that time a new power station was under construction. There were many apprentices in a variety of different trades. For one day a week, all of the apprentices attended a ’trades’ technical college. At the end of five years, we graduated. However, I was one of the few apprentices who did not graduate with a complete trade qualification. Instead of being an ‘A’ grade electrician, I graduate as a ‘B’ grade electrician. The problem being that although I passed highly in all the theory, I had shown little aptitude for splicing wires together.
Strike Three: At 25 I graduated from a theological college. However, I was passed on ‘personality and ability to communicate’ not based on any academic work. The truth is that I failed all the academic requirements. When I entered the college, after five years working in the power station, I had no idea what an ‘essay’ was. This was a great problem as the college based all their assessments on essays – long essays with huge bibliographies. In my four years in the college, no one explained to me in simple terms the nature of this task. I invented my own definitions of an essay. All of my attempts were wrong. Consequently, at the end of four years I had not satisfactorily completed one essay.
My brother, older by 13 years, noted with despair my three academic failures – primary school, trade school and college. He reached the conclusion that I was dumb. He believed that before I caused more embarrassment to the family, I should be withdrawn from the college. He told me and others that all I was cut out to be, was a farm worker – not a farmer or share milker – these tasks required too much brain power, but a farm worker (labourer) fixing gates and moving stock would be manageable for me. I was inclined to agree.
But despite these three academic failures, I was not withdrawn from the game of life. I did not go farm labouring. In my early 30’s I met an academic who immediately grasped what my problem was. “You can’t spell, and you don’t understand punctuation and referencing. A good typist can fix you. I bet there’s one who lives near you”. He went on to describe how I could find this person. “Probably she is a full-time mother now but her previous profession was ‘typist’. Go find her and pay her by the hour. She is out there in your community”. And she was. That’s how I found Marion and my life changed.
My first essay that Marion fixed up was given an “A” mark. The professor who read the second one Marion typed, said “This should be published”. It wasn’t’. However, it was photocopied hundreds of times.
Marion helped me write many articles, and some of my reports were made into books. I was very thankful that the ‘three strikes and you’re out’ was not applied to my life.
These days ‘Microsoft Word’ does for me what Marion did for me. Now I find there is another communication problem. Young people, and amazingly many adults, find reading very difficult. I’ve seen university qualified individuals stumble reading simple paragraphs. Sadly, for many, reading more than a sentence or two of mobile phone text, has probably contributed to reading becoming a dying art. But, that’s another story.
Now I’m in my 80’s, I think about my life. I can confidently say my brother’s assessment of me was wrong. I am so glad that ‘three strikes and you’re out’ was never applied to me.
I’ve met some people of my age who are not concerned about ‘three strikes and you’re out’. Instead, I hear stories of three strikes and you’re a millionaire. They tell of financial/business/ farming success.
Sometimes they allude to marriages, children, relationships that have not been so successful. Despite their positive strikes, the negatives are still part of their/our lives. Maybe, for all of us overcoming the bad strikes is still possible? There’s a great song which I believe is truthful. “Love Changes Everything”.
