Note: Bob Conners was a college English and speech professor of mine. He had the outreach to students of "Just call me Bob," and occasionally dropping in on dorms to visit students there.
But ... he wasn't always perfect. And, beneath the surface, years later, I started wondering about his level of investment in some reach-outs, and also how much they were about the students, and how much they were about him.
BETWEEN ME AND BOB CONNERS
Bob, you told us all,
On that spring break road trip,
That in your family, growing up,
Nobody told anybody to “Shut up,”
Because it was considered an insult.
And then you told me to “Shut up,”
More than once, across hundreds of miles.
Did you have fun?
It may have been teasing,
But, decades later, across mnemonic reframing
I don’t recall you qualifying yourself that way.
Certainly, not regularly, and my emotional memory
Says it didn’t feel that way.
Rather, some part of me,
Inner child, inner teen, inner college student,
Says it felt like bullying, not teasing.
It felt like I was the class clown again,
But as the laughed-at, not the laugh-inducing,
As though I were on a negative pedestal
For everybody in dad’s Suburban.
No, it wasn’t all bad. And I don’t
Want to sound like a complainer.
But, to the degree I felt I was getting attention
It did feel like being a class clown at emotional gunpoint.
Later, when I for the first time was graced
By one of your legendary dorm visits
Yes, I appreciated it.
And, your insight of
“There’s no one here for you, Steve,”
Rang true.
But, per Deena
With hindsight,
It also rings vacuous, even if not hurtful.
Who was the “who” that should be for me?
What was your insight beyond your statement?
Did the same surface of openness,
Followed by depths of shields and distance,
Ultimately lead to your divorce?
Is it why Mike thought you a phony,
To read between his lines on campus?
In the short run, your comment
May have eased a small amount of pain,
And even tempted me to a bit of superiority.
In the long run, because the real truth is that
There was no one there for me at home,
It may have left me with more pain, for more years,
Than I wish I would have.
Namaste
For some reason
Just popped into my stream of consciousness
Even though there is no divinity there in that space between
us.
Rather, it felt like
A Hindu “rest in peace,”
As the best I can offer your memory.
