THE PARABLE OF THE TALENTS - Chapter Three
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Etching by Lucas van Doetechum
I was recruited for the unpaid position of Sunday school teacher at St. Giles Episcopal Church during my sophomore year in high school. The rector of the church, Reverend Fell, believed I was a responsible person capable of doing the job. In reality, he knew very little about me, my learning difficulties and any commitments I had to the tenets held by the Episcopal church.
The initial class entrusted to me was a small group of five fifth grade girls. I was only fifteen at the time, but it seemed to mostly all in charge, including the parents of those who I would teach, that I was a worthy candidate. As was explained to me, I would work from sanctioned study guides, lessons learned in Sunday classes, and the Bible stories I’d been taught at home or learned on my own as I was growing up.
I completed two years without incident, so I was promoted to a mixed class of middle school students who I tried to keep on track, but they didn’t much care about learning about their faith and God. They were more interested in what it was like to be a high school student.
By the time I turned twenty, I was given charge of the senior class, or high school students nearly my age, but who were more experienced in life than I was.
Over the years, Edie and I had become good friends. She was smarter than I was and far more popular. She was on the high school Hi-Q Team, earned better grades than I did, and hung out with students who were on a track to attend a recognized college or university.
My closest friends were kids I grew up with from my old neighborhood in Stonehurst Hills, many of whom were from broken homes or lived like me, with parents struggling to pay their rent or mortgage on a two or three bedroom row home. Our apartment was tiny, and I slept in a double bed with my mother until I was past the age of thirteen, while my father slept on the sofa in the living room. When two of my mother’s aunts died and left us furniture plus $500, my mother and father separated and she and I moved into a top-floor apartment in a twin home on Richfield Road, one street over from 69th Street, a shopping district in Upper Darby.
The apartment had two bedrooms and a living room split to accommodate a kitchen in what was once a master bedroom.
Edie’s parents weren’t wealthy, but her father had a steady job, so she was able to dress nicely and fit in with kids whose parents had good jobs and higher incomes. Since we moved to Upper Darby when I was nine, I spent a lot of my afternoons, evenings and weekends walking the railroad tracks with my Stonehurst buddies, avoiding the wrath of tough kids, of whom there were many, playing stick ball, tag, and catch, and trolling the basements, garages and alleyways of the Villa d’Este Apartments where we earned spending money from the resale of soda pop bottles to any grocery store that would accept what we brought to them.
At church I was someone different than the boy who lived on the streets. I served casseroles and salads at covered dish suppers, volunteered to lead the decorating team for the 14 to 18-foot evergreen installed each December in the parish house, and rotated between taking charge of the games of chance and the spin-art booth at the annual strawberry festival. In my later teens I joined the church choir and The Playmakers.
At sixteen I inherited my grandfather’s worn and dented 1952 Plymouth, a former cream-colored cab with more than 100,000 miles on its odometer. To pay for the insurance, gas and upkeep, I washed cars, cut lawns and traded labor for auto parts and tools with the less than honest salesmen at the local Pep Boys store.
Edie’s family didn’t own a car, so I volunteered to pick her up and take her home from fellowship meetings, choir and play rehearsals.
In The Sound of Music, Rolf sings a duet with Liesl, and pledges to protect and take care of her because he cares for her and is a year older than she. He knows that the Nazis are spying on her family. At the end of the song “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” the script calls for Rolf to kiss Liesl on the lips, which the adults in the group believed should only be done during the performances, and not in the rehearsals.
There were three boys who had tried out for the part. I was one, the second one was the son of the musical director, and the father of the final one was on the church’s vestry. Of the three, I knew I wasn’t the best, but we each got a chance to participate. I also knew that I also wasn’t the worst. That distinction went to the vestryman’s son, who fumbled through his lines stiffly during each rehearsal.
I hadn’t kissed a girl on the lips since I was seven, so my first real post-puberty kiss would be with Edie, my friend, my buddy...and, as if I had just awaken from a sleep, had become the most beautiful girl in the church...and perhaps... in the whole world.
I was thrilled about the prospect of kissing Edie on stage, but also had become extremely jealous of the other Rolfs. Edie, however, took it all in stride. During rehearsals I had to watch the other Rolfs woo Edie with their versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein words and melody, and nearly always almost forgot my lines when I stood watching her sing to me.
I couldn’t stop worrying about which of us Rolfs she might like the best, since she seemed genuinely enthused with each of us. But when not acting in the play, I discovered that she was seeing a boy from our high school who borrowed his father’s new Chevy convertible to take her out on dates.
She never mentioned him to me, but I became obsessed, constantly wondering whether they made out on those dates, a thought that caused me unimaginable anxiety.
On Friday and Saturday nights I would cruise past Edie’s house to see if the Chevy might be parked in her driveway, and then would sit under a tree a block from her house and wait to see if she showed up in the passenger seat of the nameless boy’s convertible. Despite never having seen her with him, or in a car resembling his, I wondered what went on during those dates and became angry at them both.
Prior to being selected for our parts in The Sound of Music, I thought of Edie only as my friend, but as soon as I realized that I was one of three Rolfs, with another boy off-stage who might have already been kissing her, I became unexpectedly madly in love with her.
Though I never saw myself as particularly smart, I soon realized how foolish and juvenile I must have seemed to Edie, especially when driving her home from church in my banged up taxi cab. I still preferred comic books to literature, and Edie always had a novel with her. I asked her one evening after rehearsal about the book she was currently reading. She said it was The Group, by Mary McCarthy. She explained that it was a story about the lives of eight girls in the 1930s who had just graduated from Vassar College. It focused on their relationships with the men in their lives, including their fathers, employers and lovers.
She also told me that she’d never read anything like it, since McCarthy was very frank about their sexual activities.
The last book I read that wasn’t required reading was The Red Car, by Don Stanford, a tale about a teenage boy who finds a beat-up MG TC sports car, restores it and learns the joys of driving it from his home town mechanic.
In what seemed like an instant, I began seeing myself through Edie’s eyes and gained a perspective of myself that I didn’t like, as I realized that in her world, I didn’t fit in.
I would only later in life understand how falling in love can often be a catalyst for an introspection and a change of direction and purpose in a young man or woman. And so it was with me that I began to examine who I was, and attempted to change the version that Edie saw through her eyes.
My journey began at the library, a place that I had found to be unfriendly, confusing, musty and overwhelming. At that point in time, I didn’t have a library card, but I signed up for one, after which I was able to activate it immediately. Fortunately,I didn’t need to search through the card catalogue, but found what I was looking for in a stack of books that had just been returned to the front desk. I filled out the card in the back and, after arriving home, began to read The Group.
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The book begins in June of 1933, one week after the Vassar College commencement. My mother graduated from the Philadelphia School of Design in 1935 and was escorted to her graduation dance by my father, who was introduced to her by a girlfriend in her class. During my childhood, I listened to her stories of the girls with whom she attended art school, and we even had a large still life by one of her friends, Peggy Lane, who had given it to her brother, my uncle, who she had begun to date. My uncle later moved the painting to my great aunt’s house before marrying another woman.
The Group was an early study in feminism, and through each girl, it related how women of that era ultimately became defined by their relationship with men, rather than by their own aspirations. It was also the first novel I read that mentioned sexual behavior and intimacy beyond kissing, and my thoughts strayed to just how far Edie might be experimenting with her newly-found boyfriend.
I was seventeen and still not sure how my apparatus functioned except for occasional erections and wet dreams of which I had no control. Most of us knew that there were girls who got pregnant and left their classes for a time to have a baby, which they usually put up for adoption. We also heard stories from other boys, more mature than we were, about their exploits with girls. So The Group was a troubling book for me as well as an enlightening introduction into the issues young women faced during my mother’s era, and perhaps still did, even at the time of my reading, thirty years later.
My musings on life extended into my role as a Sunday school teacher of fifth grade girls, who would often bring up topics that were on their mind in class. One Sunday, I asked the girls what they thought their greatest assets were. Judy, a girl with lively eyes and a curly head of orange hair, said, “I know how to get my own way with my parents.”
I asked her what she meant and she said, “If I want something real badly, I would start to bring it up way before I hope to get it, and over time keep mentioning how important it is for me to have it. At some time, I usually get what I wanted, but I also realize that it can’t be anything impossible to get.”
Sally said her assets were her blue eyes and her thick eyelashes.
I said to the class that physical assets weren’t talents,and that I was thinking more of a subject, like math, science, sports or art.
Lannie raised her hand and told me she was a good speller. Dorothy said she played the piano and sang. Lizzie said that she could draw portraits of her friends that her teachers praised, and Marcy said she was pretty good at softball...for a girl.
Judy then asked me what I was good at, other than being a “great teacher.”
I thought about it and said. “I’m pretty good at art, and I enjoy writing. I was fair at baseball as a kid, and awful at most other sports... and then after a pause I said that I liked to do nice things for people... and I like teaching all of you.”
Lannie raised her hand, and said, “I like to help people, too!”
We discussed this for the remainder of the class, and then, throughout the week, I thought more about my talents. While doing so, I was reminded of the Parable of the Talents taught to me in Miss Wilson’s fifth grade class.
As I recalled the story, it was about a wealthy master who was leaving on a journey, and entrusted ten talents, or coins in biblical terms, to three servants based on their abilities. Upon his return, he found that the servant who had been given five coins and the one who had been given three had both taken some risks and invested their talents. Fortunately for them, their worth had double. The servant who had been given only one talent buried his, in fear that he would lose it or spend it wastefully, so when the master returned from his journey, and he was asked what he had done with his coin, he said proudly, “I was afraid I’d lose it, so I buried it in the ground behind my hut.”
The master praised the first two servants for their initiative and rewarded them according, while the fearful servant was condemned by the master for his inaction, and his single talent was taken away from him and given to the servant who had doubled his money and now had ten.
It was pointed out by Miss Wilson that the story about the talents was what was called a metaphor, or a word or phrase that tells a story in a way that might be more easily understood than the concept, which could be too difficult to explain.
She then explained that the master represented God and the coins represented abilities and opportunities given to man that he should use, or else they are wasted. When man is given a gift of an ability and he doesn’t use it in a positive way, he has shown an indifference to God.
Once again, Edie challenged the story by rephrasing it. “Let me get this straight,” said Edie. “The servant who got five coins could have invested three and played it safe with two so he wouldn’t lose it all. Even the servant who got three coins might have invested only one or two, but would still have some money put aside if the investment of his other coins didn’t work out. The poor servant who got only one coin couldn’t afford to take a risk, because then he’d have nothing. That sounds responsible to me.”
“That may be true, Edie,“ said Miss Wilson. “It may not seem fair, but the story reminds us that life isn’t always fair, and we have to use whatever skills, talents or abilities we have in order to achieve anything in this life.”
“So once again, Miss Wilson, God doesn’t seem be caring about us at all. Some people are born without arms or legs, or are the children of slaves, while others are born strong and able, and have parents that are rich. Shouldn’t there be some consideration made by God towards those who start off with less?”
Miss Wilson answered, “It’s not God’s job to fix things up that go wrong in the world or in nature. Poor people’s trailers are ripped off their wheels by storms and tornadoes. Young, strong and wealthy people can all drop dead from brain hemorrhages, cancers and war. Both poor and rich people win and lose at lotteries, and that’s how life goes.”
“Then what does God do?” asked Edie.
Miss Wilson attempted to answer Edie’s question. “God can give us the strength to endure the worst parts of our lives, and to enjoy the best parts. He can provide us with abilities and opportunities to succeed, but he can’t make us use them. He can help guide us to decisions but leaves us to make our own choices, and even then our journey through life can be swift and smooth or lead us down a path that’s fraught with sorrow and pain. Ultimately he allows us to get through our lives using our on own ‘will’ to make the most of what we’ve got.”
Just as in Miss Wilson’s telling of the story of Job, her answer didn’t provide a lot of comfort to Edie, nor did it make much sense.
Knowing that Miss Wilson was a wise woman, I thought that maybe she was just unable to present the story in a way our class could understand, so looking back on my fifth-grade self, I thought that I would try to update the story and share it with my own class of fifth graders.
When I concluded the story, I found that their questions were the same as Edie’s and mine at their age, and I was left with the catch-all phrase at the end, “God works in mysterious ways,” a conclusion that many believers provide when perplexed by good and bad outcomes that make no sense, When the class was over, Judy, one of my more curious students, asked me, “Do you believe in God?”
Until that moment, I hadn’t really questioned my belief, in the same way I hadn’t realized the intensity of the feelings I had for Edie. Although the bible stories didn’t always make sense, I had never thought to evaluate my commitment to my faith. The church was a major part of my life. I had carried the cross, and served the wine and wafers to Reverend Fell on the altar. I taught Sunday school classes and sang in the choir. I enjoyed the ceremonies.
And then, as I looked down at Judy and she looked up at me, I said, “Honestly, Judy, I don’t know.”
“Me either,” she said brightly. “But I like our class with you.” At which point she ran off with the other girls.
I knew I had a lot to think about that night as I immersed myself in the lives of the young Vassar graduates. I wanted to talk to Edie about the book and my doubts about God. I knew she had doubts, too, but they didn’t seem to have the same effect on her as they had on me.
I didn’t want to call her in case she was out. It made me angry just to think about Edie with a boy or man other than me. I was jealous and had no way to combat my feelings. As I read through the pages, reflecting on the words of Mary McCarthy, I found that they related to me more personally than ones I had ever had gleaned from the Bible. The youths in The Group were real people facing problems similar to mine. One stated:
“I understand what you are feeling,” he said. “As Socrates showed, love cannot be anything else but the love of the good. But to find the good is very rare. That is why love is rare, in spite of what people think. It happens to one in a thousand, and to that one it is a revelation. No wonder he cannot communicate with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine.”
“It came to her that he was going to leave without making love to her. This would mean they had made love for the last time this morning. But that did not count: this morning they did not know it was for the last time. When the door shut behind him, she still could not believe it. “It can’t end like this,” she said to herself over and over, drumming with her knuckles on her mouth to keep from screaming.”
“You have to live without love, learn not to need it in order to live with it.”
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