MEDIOCRITY

After more than four decades in Brownsville, the time has come to end the mediocrity or at least die in one last futile and fatal attempt to pursue the questions that elude answers.

I'm not bad-mouthing Brownsville. Besides my family and upbringing in California, I owe everything to Brownsville. I came to the border with a head full of book knowledge and the ability to pop twenty-footers. I was 24.

I will depart a writer and a musician. Always true to my athletic roots and my love of sports, I have added tennis to my skill set. Golf I could never master although I love cruising the courses in a cart and watching my sons play. You would think I was an expert with all the advice I impart to them.

Once in while as a result of my Brownsville education I will have a perfect moment when a poem or a song will come to me as I am whacking balls with a sweeping forehand or a cut backhand.

The monotony of my routine for four decades in the BISD has reduced me to a robotic state. I am going through the motions. The students are sweet, but they don't care. Professionally and personally, I am adrift, so why not float with the tide and let it deposit me on a distant beach?

In Little Black Sambo the tigers chase their tails until the beasts turn into butter. In the mediocre state I occupy, the best I could achieve would be margarine.