HAVE YOU EVER MET…?

By Edwin Cooney

I know you’ve done a lot of things in your life, been a lot of places, owned some interesting and valuable stuff, learned much, forgotten more than you remember and so on  -- me, too!  I wonder, however, as you think about whom you’ve  met and what meeting and knowing them has done for you, what do you conclude about their significance?

The first blind man I ever met was an old codger whom people called "Titty-tote."   He had a dog named Dagwood (not a guide dog), walked with a long white cane which I recall was made of wood, and talked like he was missing most of his teeth.  I didn’t really want to grow up like him, but he was a pleasant man -- or at least seemed to be so.  After meeting Titty-tote at about age four, I didn’t come across a blind man using a cane until I was forced to do so by cane travel professionals in the early 1960s when I was about age 15.

While attending summer camp in 1957, I met Alan who was then about my age -- I was eleven going on twelve, Alan, who suffered from Muscular Dystrophy, was in a wheelchair.  The general prognosis of Alan’s disease back then was that he probably wouldn’t (and probably didn’t) live to be much older than twenty-one.  Although it was natural to wonder how much Alan knew about his condition, of course, I never asked him.  I’ve since wondered if he knew of the likelihood that his life span would be short and wondered further what he thought and felt about it all.  I’ll never know, but surely he must have known!

Over the years, I’ve known a number of talented musicians, people with prodigious memories, people who fought in World War I, World War II, the Korean “police action,” and the Vietnam conflict.  I’ve met people of different races and ethnic groups.  I know lefthanders and right-handers. I’ve even met a man who lost both of his hands as well as his sight in an adolescent accident.

I’ve met winners and losers, the generous and the stingy, the mean and the sunny-natured, the wise and the foolish, the smart and the dumb, the sincere and the insincere, the handsome, the beautiful and the homely.

The celebrities I’ve met include former Yankee catcher Elston Howard, five time Yankee Manager Billy Martin, and Jack Kemp (who quarterbacked for the Buffalo Bills in the mid to late 1960s, served in Congress and in President George H. W. Bush’s cabinet, and was the GOP vice presidential candidate in 1996). I also met Richard Nixon during the 1968 presidential campaign, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York in May 1978, New York Congressman Barber B. Conable, former New York Mayor John V. Lindsay, and former President and First Lady Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter.  Meeting celebrities was thrilling, but rather impersonal for the most part.

Meeting people isn’t easy for many as it can be emotionally intrusive.  America’s thirtieth president, Calvin Coolidge, was so shy as a youth that he’d remain in the barn or in the field if he heard strange voices in his parents’ house.  Young Coolidge mastered his fear of strangers enough to eventually be elected to the City Council and to be Mayor of Northampton, Massachusetts, to the Massachusetts Legislature, to the Lieutenant governorship and governorship of Massachusetts, as Vice President and ultimately as President of the United States of America.

Every memory, clear or dim, good or bad, is invariably connected to someone we’ve met.  Still, the key question remains: How can we evaluate and ultimately measure how much value we bring into any relationship?

Winston Churchill countered the inevitable question asked of the elderly ("are you ready to meet your maker?”) with a statement of his own: “The question isn’t whether or not I’m ready to meet my maker; the question is whether or not my maker is ready to meet me!”

Therein lies my question to you and to me: what do you suppose it would be like to meet yourself?

If your response is something like, “Well, that depends upon my mood or circumstances," then surely that has to tell you something about your self-perception. If you're confident that you’d enjoy meeting yourself, it may be because you’ve never really been very self analytical or perhaps because you're rightfully self-confident.

As for me, I’m always a little surprised whenever someone reveals his or her reaction to something I’ve done or said or the way I’ve done or said it.  Although I’ve done so with limited success over the years, I’ve tried to live by the golden rule.  I’ve tried to modify my least attractive tendencies so as to limit their effect on others and their inevitable consequences upon me.  Still, I know I possess both negative and positive characteristics like everyone else.  Nevertheless, there remains a suspicion on my part that if I were to meet the Edwin Cooney that everyone else has met since November 28^th, 1945, I’d perceive myself very differently than I ever have.

Of all the people you’ve ever met, have you ever really and truly wondered what it would be like to meet you?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY