I suppose I ought to introduce myself before I go much further.
My name is Marcus Aurelius Swartz.
Don’t laugh, it could’ve been worse. See, my father is a professor of classical literature. In other words, he’s spent his whole life becoming an expert in the language and literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans.
When I was born, his first choice for my name was Socrates, his second was Aristophanes, and his third was Plotius. (I can just see that one on the playground: “Hey, Plot, tag, you’re it!”)
Thankfully, Mom talked him down to Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor who is famous for collecting his philosophical thoughts into a book called, appropriately enough, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
That Marcus Aurelius was one of a bunch of philosophers called the stoics. Stoics believe you should just deal with all the crap life throws at you without whining about it.
It’s a noble goal, but in my experience it’s easier said than done.
Dad gave me a copy of Marcus Aurelius’s book for my birthday once. I read it sometimes when I have trouble sleeping. It’s a sure-fire cure for insomnia.
One page and I’m yawning uncontrollably.
Two pages and I’m snoring like a chainsaw.
It occurs to me that you might be getting some wrong ideas about my father the classics professor. If you’re like most people, you’re probably forming a mental image of a serious looking, old guy in a tweed coat smoking a pipe and thoughtfully stroking his beard. You might even be picturing me and my family living in some elegant ivy-covered old house on the edge of some classy university…
Not even close.
I’d best set you straight about Dr. Andrew Swartz.
First, Dad isn’t all that old or frumpy. He’s tall, skinny, clean-shaven, doesn’t smoke, and most of the time he wears jeans and an old baseball jacket. (Boston Red Sox. He’s a life long fan.)
And serious? Hardly.
He jokes constantly. It’s like he can’t turn it off. Most of his jokes are puns in Greek or Latin or twisted versions of ancient quotations, and most of the time, nobody, least of all Mom and I, ever get them.
When his jokes aren’t too obscure, he can be pretty funny, but most of the time, he just gets on my nerves. I mean he's a great guy and all but, Jeez...he can get really annoying.
I suppose most kids say that about their fathers.
You can lose that image of an elegant, ivy-covered house too.
No, my father found that after twelve years of public school, four years of regular college, and six years working on his Ph.D., that there’s just not a lot of demand out there for experts in dead languages that haven’t been spoken for the last 1000 years.
Surprise!
It turns out that most colleges these days are cutting their classical literature programs. Now when one of the old classics professors dies off, the colleges just shift their budgets to some other department: science, computers, something a normal person would study, instead of hiring a new classics prof.
So my dad winds up being what he calls an “academic gypsy”. That means he sends applications to colleges all around the country and every six months to a year somebody hires him “on a temporary contract”.
The pay won’t be that much better than what a person with a high school education could earn in some factory and the ‘elegant brick house’ somehow end up being a small apartment in a student ghetto. For years I’ve longed to live in a place that doesn’t smell like it’s gone through fifty years of frat boy keggers.
Then, one day we’ll be sitting around the table eating dinner and Dad will burst out heartily, “Well I’ve got some news!”
Mom and I will roll our eyes, sigh, and one of us will say, “OK, where are we moving now?”
I don’t even bother to unpack anymore. All my stuff just stays in cardboard boxes.
The weird part is that everyone keeps saying what a great teacher he is. Students are always saying stuff about how cool his classes are, “I never knew Plato could be so fun!” Department heads praise him for the great job he’s doing, how popular he is with the students. That sort of thing.
Then they lay him off.
Dad says things will change once he gets tenure.
Tenure is when a college decides that you’re such a credit to their institution that they’ll sign you up for life. As Dad says, “Once a person gets tenured he can stand in front of a lecture hall buck nekkid playing a sousaphone and they can’t fire him.”
He has this book he’s writing. He says once he gets that published, “The major universities will be beating a path to our door!”
He says.
My mom puts up with all this in a way that would make old Marcus Aurelius proud. She just sighs, packs everything into boxes, and takes her turn at the wheel of a beaten down rental truck as we haul our worldly possessions across the country to the next college town.
Then she finds herself a job as a cashier, waitress, telemarketer, bank teller, you name it, and life goes on.
Fact is, my mom can do anything. She is the practical one in the family. For instance, if something breaks down and needs fixing, you don’t want to call on my dad. Twenty years of education and he can barely handle a screwdriver.
My mom on the other hand could build a space shuttle out of the contents of your kitchen junk drawer.
She’s funny, (when she wants to be), and pretty, for a mom anyway. Or as she puts it, “Yes, I’ve kept my figure…well most of it anyway…I know it’s around here somewhere.”
Of course all this means that I’ve spent my whole childhood as the new-kid-in-school.
I manage it OK, I guess. I can be amusing when I have to be. I’m not especially ugly, and I can dress myself in ways that don’t label me as an obvious loser.
I can play sports without embarrassing myself too badly, not varsity caliber, (or JV either for that matter), but good enough to survive P.E.. Also, I inherited enough of my dad’s school skills that I can come into a new school in the middle of a term and still pull out a ‘B’ average.
It won’t get me into Harvard, I know, but after years of close observation of my father’s career, I’m not all that impressed by prestigious college degrees.
Like I say, I can hold my own as a permanent new-kid, but I keep thinking, someday it would be nice to have a social life.
I know it sounds pathetic, but I’ve never had what you might call a best friend. Sure, I’ll meet people, we’ll have stuff in common, we’ll do things together, but then Dad sits down at the dinner table with his “Well I have some news.” Then it’s “So long. It’s been great knowing you.” And I’m off now to…wherever.
It gets old.
My solution, I suppose, has been to avoid getting too attached to anything or anybody. Be as clever and interesting as I can pull off, learn some names, hang out for awhile and then move on.
And for the most part it’s worked.
You just have to be stoic.