Ain't Necessarily So...

You're working the door as a ticket-taker/bouncer at a function your organization is putting on to honor some of its own, nervously shifting your weight back and forth, making a clapping sound made popular by the Three Stooges and counting the minutes until you can abandon your post and join the others inside for the banquet meal that always accompanies these type of functions. It's a cool fall evening and you're smartly dressed in a dark suit and very presidential looking tie, even if you're passing the time doing the Curly Shuffle. The nearly floor length overcoat that you are wearing is more for effect than anything as, after all, this is fall in Southern California, so its probably 63 degrees, and you ARE standing halfway in the doorway. Most of the gala's attendees have arrived and being a doorkeeper is getting to be pretty slow. In the distance you see a figure approaching with an interesting gait. As it nears, you cringe as you discover it's a nattily-dressed, disheveled middle-aged man heading toward you. You're mama taught you better than to be judgemental and that you're not better than anybody, but this man's stench makes you want to turn your back and slam the door tightly behind you. Luckily, your catholic school upbringing kicks in and you put on your smile and reciprocate his "good evening, friend...." After he prys and prods about what has so many nice-looking, handsomely-dressed young black people out on this fine evening, you explain that yours is a professional organization whose aim is to increase the number of culturally responsible Black Engineers who excel academically, succeed professionally and positively impact the community. At this, he suddenly launches into some technical talk of his own. Just as you're about to dismiss this blabbering as nothing but the mindless dribble of an old homeless drunk, you recognize that he's musing about Gauss, Leibniz, Faraday and Newton, names that have haunted you in your Physics and Electromagnetic theory classes. You throw him a bone and engage in some deeper discussion on this subject and others when it occurs to you that this man must not have always pushed a cart along Wilshire Boulevard stashing his belongings in the park where he retired each evening. You realize that 30 years ago he could've been you. Shoot, he probably was you, and save for a tough break here, some hardship there, and maybe a brush with a glass ceiling, or if such an organization had been available for him, he might be the keynote speaker at your banquet instead of a guy trying to soak up some of the heat that escaped the doorway on this fall evening in Southern California.

Now you're visiting a church in the Bay Area, where outside in the parking lot, all of the finest automobiles that money can buy are represented. You're impressed by how ornately the women are dressed, how distinguished all of the men are in their Sunday best, and how cherubic the well behaved children are. The choir makes a joyful noise that seems to have rained down from nowhere if not Heaven. The preacher brings the Good Word with all of the fire and zeal of the Deep South, the organist helping him bring it home at its climax. The ushers have seated you next to a very well groomed and pleasant gentleman holding a braille edition of the King James Version of the Bible in his lap, that helps the preacher along at appropriate intervals in his sermon calling out, "C'mon, Pastor! Tell it! AMEN! Hallelujah." You enjoy the whole scene, the antics and friendly disposition of this sightless man of God, and the sermon is right on time. Afterward you learn from the friend that invited you that this man is a registered sex offender.

You see a mountain of a man walking through the park with two young children, them the apple of his eyes, and he of theirs. He moves effortlessly as if gliding, with a bounce to his step befitting the park's beautifully landscaped,rolling hills of lush green grass set against a clear blue sky at the horizon. Women swoon as he passes, commenting to one another about how attractive it is to see a man so at ease with his children, lamenting that "...there aren't anymore good ones like him out there...." Quietly envious, you too wish that you could have his life for a day, and experience the bliss that must be his everyday life. But it ain't necessarily so. Superdad battles a depression so intense that he will try to take his own life later that evening.

Life at the surface is never quite as interesting as what a seeker shall find along the way should they endeavor to encounter an experience or two.