Situational Handicap
This is the title chapter from the
book and writing this chapter I knew, if my work would ever be made into a
book, “Finding Kansas” would be its chapter.
I wrote this chapter late in the
evening of April 30th, 2006 after coming up from race directing and
flagging the Central States Super Series in Carrolton, Missouri. Now Carrolton
isn’t a town most people know of so on the race schedule we put Kansas City.
Why is this relevant? Because my book came real close to being “Finding
Carrolton” as when I started writing this chapter, instead of using a state
name, I used a much smaller place and used a town instead. This, I thought,
made the world way too narrow so while thinking about it I pulled out a sheet I
had in my pocket which was a protest someone submitted earlier in the day (as
race director I handled protests and this protest was protesting me. I denied
the protest) and on the flip side was the series schedule and once again I saw
Kansas City so I deleted the town name and put Kansas City, but again that was
too small of a place. I wanted a place that was large and that anyone could
relate to so I dropped the City and made it a state. What was the inspiration
for this chapter, you ask? That answer was a couple weeks in the making.
I was still at a point wondering if
my work had any relevancy despite the one doctor whom had wrote the endorsement
earlier in this series I shared saying so. My dad then sent my writings up to
this point to another doctor out of New York City, and she would write the 2nd
endorsement of my book, and she was intrigued in all that I had done and said
my work was, “highly valid.” This gave me slightly more confidence that what I
was doing was worth it. Worth it, you ask? Writing, while it came naturally,
was a difficult thing. Yes, I wanted to express myself but I was now 14 months
from the first time I had started to write and expressing so many emotions was
tiring. However, the day of April 30th made me realize that I had
something to offer the world.
It’s a shame I didn’t use the
inspiration story behind this chapter in the actual chapter. What had happened
was this; during the race day I was in my “Alias” (we’ll get to that chapter later)
and I had no problem making decisions and having conversations with those
around me. Yes, I may have been protested that day (I was protested for not
cutting laps with impending rain, but that’s what rain tires are for!) but
during the lunch break two drivers came up to me and I was in a jovial mood and
had no problems conversing. We talked about flags, the history of flags,
karting, races from years ago, and it was just a good ole fun conversation. I
allude to this conversation by saying, “if you met me just in Kansas you would
assume nothing was wrong” or something along those lines. However, if you saw
me outside the borders of Kansas then that’s when you would see it and at the
end of the day, after I had been protested (the rains never came) and after the
time period that I was the race director had come and gone, those same two
drivers tried to talk to me and they got a much different person. Gone was the enthusiastic
historian of races of yesteryear replaced by a person who could barely make,
well, let’s forget eye contact and say in eye gaze in the general vicinity of
these two guys. They asked me questions and I said, “I don’t know” to most of
it. Several minutes of this came and went and one the drivers, and they weren’t
trying to be a jerk (I hope) said, “Are you sure we are talking to the same
person we were talking to earlier?”
Imagine hearing that question.
Imagine having limited times where socializing is possible and after having no
problems imagine being asked this. It’s no wonder I left it out of this chapter
because at the time it was too raw and it was from this pain I knew the world
needed to know this.
As I read this chapter I can
remember the thoughts I had with each paragraph as if I was still in the midst
of writing this chapter. It was a lonely night when I wrote this as I didn’t
remember the successful race weekend I had put on, or the six hour drive home
with Greg, whom I’d eventually work for, and the adventure with the flat tire
in Kingdom City, Missouri, or the fact that I had just been named race director
for another series as well. Nope, none of that mattered. What mattered was
someone called me out on not being normal. Again, they weren’t trying to be
mean and I use this example, without naming it, when I say in presentations, “It
had to be so confusing for those to see me in Kansas and then see me out of
Kansas.”
The first bit of a true hope
statement comes at the end of this chapter as I realized all was not loss. When
I first started writing this chapter I had a depressed tone, but as I
progressed through it I didn’t focus on all the other 49 states, or North
Dakota as I refer to it in my presentations, instead I looked at Kansas itself
and my final sentence may very well have been my very first mission statement.
At the time I didn’t know what this meant, exactly, but I knew it had a significance
that I didn’t quite understand at the time. The statement holds true though,
and maybe I should incorporate this into my presentation because, “when I’m in
Kansas I don’t just run, I fly” and little did I know just how much Kansas
would allow to me soar.
Music
My first reaction to this chapter
was that I’m 99% sure I’ll offend any music teacher out there when I say that
my music theory isn’t as boring as talking about half-notes and treble
clefs. So to all you music teachers out
there, I’m sorry.
Anyway, apologies aside, I was
certainly onto something on this chapter, but compared to what I know now about
this subject it is much deeper than when I first wrote this. This could be
because music is easier to have now. When I wrote this chapter YouTube was
something that wasn’t widely known, and I never had any device capable of
playing music outside of a portable CD player in my car. It wasn’t until 2011
that I got an iPhone that could actually play music and since music has taken
on a larger role in my life.
I’m still protective of my music
choices because I was right in this chapter that music is a pathway to the
associative memory system. If I admit that I like a song it’s like letting you
in on all the memories associated with that song so for instance if I said I
like song X then you’ll know song X equals airport Y when I was going to race Z
and then you’ll know every thought, word, and action from that trip and it’s
not like anything odd, weird, or wacky happened on that trip, but in my mind,
being all or nothing, there’s no end to the amount of knowledge you’ll have
about me.
With the advent of the 32GB phone I
now have 1,152 songs on my phone and many of them are, well, to take a phrase
from the previous paragraph, “odd, weird, and wacky.” The oddest selection I
have on my phone is a 10 minute remix of the McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish ad. You
know the one, the fish is on the wall singing, “give me back that Filet-O-Fish,
give me that fish…” To anyone that has heard it you’ll know 10 seconds is too
much, but try 10 minutes! FUN! Anyway, funny story about that song, just over a
year ago I was in southwest Missouri and I was riding with the southwest
director of Easter Seals Midwest to a presentation and this director loves
giving me a hard time. It’s all in good fun so I thought I’d return the favor
by slyly starting that song on my phone without warning. I did so and she was unfazed
by it. She simply gave a half smile and said, “Aaron, if that song isn’t
silenced within a few seconds I’m dropping you off on highway 60 right here and
you can find your own way to your presentation. If you don’t make it I’ve seen
your presentation enough that I can do it. Got it?” I did, and I believed her! Then
she asked me, because she knows about this associative memory system, “Aaron,
what on earth does that song represent and right there the defenses went up
and I uttered a half-believable, “I don’t know” because again, if I give just
one percent of the story she’s going to know the whole story and then some.
This chapter may seem small, or
almost irrelevant, but what it represents is much larger than music itself and
maybe someday I’ll give a full rewrite to this chapter to give it the impact it
deserves.