My life as an anvil salesman – Pt 3

Its often said: “Whatcha don’t know can’t hurt you.” That is pretty obvious bullshit.

Like the kid in the car at the intersection next to his buddy’s car about to play “chicken” and race out in front of your car on the highway. It could be life saving to know about that kid trying to out wait his buddy before tearing out in front of your car lest he end up becoming the chicken.. Dammit. Knowing that could have saved the life of my Dad’s student. I still remember how angry my Dad was that his student didn’t make it back to college because he’d ran into the kid who evidently wasn’t the chicken on Highway 169.

Finding out that your fellow boring old white guy politicians call you an “asshole” is not life threatening. Its only disconcerting. It may be the price you pay for selling anvils.

I’m not sure that there is any profit for me facing a possible eighth campaign for the school board… Eight, Can that be true? Let’s see. three unsuccessful runs. Two successful runs followed by filing and then recommending that my challenger be elected and then a 2006 race to stop the Red Plan…Yup. This would be eight. Let me start that sentence again without the exercise in counting.

I’m not sure that there is any profit for me facing a possible eighth campaign for the school board in explaining the circumstances for my getting that shot of penicillin back at Mankato State’s student health center. Candor is just another anvil. But knowing there are stupid kids at the intersection might slow you down. That’s what I was thinking at the beginning of the HIV outbreak in the early 80’s when I was substitute teaching and got paranoid about how little our kids knew about its lethality. I was quite gratified ten years later to learn that one of my improvised lessons on the subject had made an impression on at least one student.

I was at my daughter’s school organizing the Chester Park Carnival as usual. Someone had corralled a bunch of UMD women basketball players to help out and one of them told me she remembered my substituting in her class as Washington Junior High. I was surprised and asked how she could possibly remember my one off appearance and she told me it was because of my illustration about STDs. I introduced it by explaining that HIV was a death sentence which was true back then. Then I drew to figures, an x and an o maybe, on the chalk board and explained that if a boy and a girl had sex and both were virgins they could not share an STD. I then put one more x or o on the board and explained that if that new figure had an std and had sex with either of the other two figures before they had met then all three could get the STD. By the time I was over I had twenty or thirty figures up on the black board I had assigned random numbers of sex partners that each of the figures had had usually one or two at most. Then I put another figure up and said that this one had had 100 partners which got a huge laugh out of the class. That one was a prostitute I explained and I added that her 100 partners had had a thousand partners between them.

The point I was making was the simple one that when you have sex with one person you are having sex, or at least joining the pool, of everyone that they had sex with. Have sex with the wrong persons who had only been with one person it could mean being connected to a hundred or a thousand or more people. I said that in the day and age of death dealing pustule causing HIV that was a big gamble. Apparently it had been a reasonably effective lecture with one student in the class……at least in terms of making a point.

This, of course, is a digression. I probably hauled it out to cloak what I am about to disclose with aura of its being honest and necessary reporting. It probably isn’t. It’s probably just another anvil.

The woman who had put me in contact with her rather extensive chain of sex partners infected with venereal disease was one of my Mother’s best friends. I’d like to write more but its 4:12 Eastern Standard and I should try to catch some ZZZZ’s before daylight. I may save the rest for a memoir. I probably will. If there is anything surprising about the anvil I’ve just tossed out I’d suggest it is this: Things are only unsurprising when you are unprepared for them. Just as you were unprepared for my confession Duluth was unprepared for its Music Man Keith Dixon. I’m just an asshole for being honest about it. Its just tooo bad I couldn’t have given that HIV lecture to Duluth before Johnson Controls got together with Keith. We’ve had to learn the hard way how much pretty buildings and tarted up prostitutes have in common.

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