There is a saying that “only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.” I am such a fool who jumps feet first into the most improbable dreams. For example, I have always fantasized of being a world famous pop star, the male Celine Dion if you will. I’ve done it all written songs and taken singing and dancing lessons. Despite my discordant voice, many years ago I decided that the singular barrier to my top 10 chart success was my inability to play the piano.
I went online and found a piano school just a 5 minute walk from my home. I immediately signed up for 3 months of lessons. That same day I bought myself a new piano. You don’t launch a music career without the proper equipment! I had my first lesson on a Saturday at 9am but got there at 8:30, after all, isn’t that what Celine would do? I sat in the reception area enjoying the bright playful décor and basking in the stunning harmonies crooning from behind the private teaching room doors. A few other people of similar age to me came in and introduced themselves. It was so charming, my own music community and fertile ground to begin to cultivate my inevitable fan club.
Then one man asked if my son or daughter was there for a lesson. I thought that was a bizarre question and responded sharply that my musical lifestyle was not compatible with having children. He withdrew with a puzzled look and I thought I would set him straight when we’d go head to head in an upcoming piano recital.
Then at 8:50am the private teaching room doors swung open to an orchestra of toddlers that came drumming into the arms of their loving, encouraging parents. A teenage piano teacher skipped out towards me saying, “Come on in sweetie, your lesson is next!” It had not occurred to me that the Little Music Notes teaching school was a music school for toddlers. I’m not sure if I should blame cheapness or chutzpah but I attended those classes every Saturday for 3 months. They never quite launched my pop star career but I can do a killer “its-bitsy spider” piano number if you’d like to hear it some time.
Despite the demise of my pop star dreams, I am an audacious dreamer. It is the only way I know how to live. It is literally how I have survived. To illustrate this I would like to journey with you back to my teenage school years. Back then I was sentenced to what felt like a lifetime of relentlessly bullying for the offence of being effeminate, and possibly even gay. Bullying did not rehabilitate me, it wrenched its way deep into my psyche until lesions of anxiety, panic and emotional breakdown were undeniably visible. Things got so bad that my school grades atrophied. My teachers suggested that I be held me back as they could not see the vast blue oceans of my dreams. With my parents steadfast advocacy, I continued to jump with both feet and sheer determination, eventually raising my grades and even excelling at school.
Today I work in the field of autism and there is much work to be done to improve outcomes for children and families that struggle like I once did. To help these families, I recently I started my Masters program at Queen’s University. Last week I returned from that program’s intensive boot camp that nearly killed me. It was two full weeks inclusive of weekends that ran from 9am to 9pm everyday.
In my class of 65 students from 17 different countries, with a median age of 26, I was one of the oldest. Like any sane person would I convinced myself that buying a new wardrobe 2 sizes too small would make other people think that I too was 26! After almost losing consciousness from my tight suit jacket on my first day, I gave that battle up. By the second day I had completely stopped trying to match the energy level of the perky twenty something year old former cheerleader sitting next to me who used the word “extra” as an adjective for every conversation. “This program is so extra!” “This coffee is so extra!” When she asked me how old I was and I told her she said, “that is so extra! You are the same age as my parents”. I almost said to her “if you keep this up I will put an extra foot in your mouth!”
While my classmates chatted about technology trends, university life and where they could drink next, I struggled to navigate the online program portal and manage my cholesterol. I thought, Lord did I put myself into the university equivalent of the Little Music Notes school?!?
As per that saying that “only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.” I have jumped with both feet into another blue ocean. It is not shallow and it is tempestuous with anxieties from my embattled youth but I travel with these feet, these two feet that dare not touch the ground.
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