What is the something others may not know about you but you'd like to tell them?
This questioned was posed to Gather members by Susan*. You probably know her as she is one of the Gather Guides. I responded with a comment and when I was finished with the comment I realized, there was something I have been dying to tell. A secret that I have held in my stomach for twenty-six plus years. Something that should never be divulged in respect to the other player involved but for the longest time I wanted to shout it to the world. And I feel it is about time I shouted it out.
As I said, I have kept this secret for twenty-six years now and even here I am going to keep my answer anonymous.
It was 1981, a classmate of mine, one that was kind of above the circle of friends I hung out with, approached me and asked a very personal favor. She was a finalist for a very prestigious scholarship but had to turn in an essay on early American history. She asked me to write it for her. I figured at the time, I was never going to have the opportunities that she was going to experience so why not help her along. She was the daughter of the town manager (we weren't big enough to have a mayor), class valedictorian, head cheerleader and home-coming queen. I was, well, Robert. The funky, all-around basic nice guy who had a penchance for good writing.
So I authored the essay and titled it "The Inevitability of the American Revolution". Out of fifty finalists, my classmate got the scholarship to a full college education at one of our nation's leading universities. We're talking Ivy League.
Now she is a doctor, and I'm still just plain, old, 'nice' Robert who sometimes will write something worth reading. Twenty-Six Years and I have kept this secret and to this very day, I wish that it was my name written under that most endearing essay. It is perhaps the single most powerful thing that I have ever written in my life and it doesn't even have my name on it. You know, I have not heard from that classmate since she left our small hometown for college. On a scholarship that I help provide. I do not begrudge her anything, she had been a doctor whether I existed or not but, folks, that is one essay, one piece of literature I would like to have back.
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Comments: 36
Dancing with my Dream (Vote Round Two)"
Lesson learned, I guess.
Thanks for opening up your heart to us. So sorry that this happened to you! ;(
You have talent, you can write more essays, books, articles, you can do it Robert. I can tell from reading this article you certainly have the talent. Go for it!
SNEAK PEEK!
Why do you think the essay was the most powerful thing you've ever written?..Let me tell you,my friend,it was not.
Remember the poem you wrote "Somebody Prayed For Me'? The one my bro-in-law used as a sermon?....Remember it,Robert?.....There were two souls saved that night. To me,that is a lot more powerful,than some girl going to college .Which is the most important to you?
Guess what Robert? Although she has those magic letters by her name she is not a better person than you are for many reasons. Though in her youth, her absence of thanks could have been written as a "youthful neglect" or "emotional immaturity". Now, 26 years later she does not have that excuse and I would hazard a guess that the memory and knowledge of WHO actually got her those magic letters haunts her on more than one occasion. As well it should.
And when I say you are a better person, I mean you are a person of great ideals and compassion. A man who showed even all these years later, though he had a need to share his story with friends, a sense of duty to a woman who can only dream of the strength of character you have exibited here.
Remember Robert, success is not measured by what you have in your wallet or those magic letters, success is measured in the person you are. And I am proud to say you are a person of integrity and good character. And that my friend cannot be bought at any cost!
God bless and thank you for sharing this part of your life with us. I am proud of you for doing so!
contacts you????naah, it just don't happen in REAL life!!! Still, u r cool,Robert!
even if you DID help a person .....ahem......cheat??
It's called a "Fatal Attraction."
Things that make you go, "Hmmmmmm."
Susan*: Very kind words from a beautiful lady; you're making my eyes water.
Lisa: The woman in question was very bright. She was top in most classes and even as a high schooler, she had a sense of her limitations. She was very capable of writing an inspiring essay. I guess she chose me because of the writing classes we shared and she was witness to a couple of things I wrote, things the teacher shared and this, in her mind, singled me as a better writer and she wanted to improve her odds. But believe me, scholarship or not, I hold no doubt that she would still be a doctor today. My class had voted her the 'female most likely to succeed'.
Michelle: No, I haven't heard from her since graduation. I have not made it to a class reunion but I know she has, so who's fault is it that we have not spoke? I never looked for a reward. It was an immature decision on both our parts; her for asking me to do it and me, for doing it.
Just think, if you wanted you could have those letters after your name. Instead you have chosen the path that has brought you to where you are today. When I read the responses to your articles I wonder how you can keep grounded. You are much admired by the gather community and I venture to guess that you are admired also by
those who know you personally.
When this woman, this top of the class A-list achiever, asked for your help, you were seduced by the social advantage of being able to help someone who you saw as being above you. However, the fact that she would ask indicates that she was not above you, maybe ahead of you in the rat race, but not above. What you did was wrong and what she did was wrong. I would say that she made the bigger mistake by gaining through false pretenses, your actions were more in the arena of "aiding and abetting".
The loss of that essay, no doubt a fairly profound work for the time and place that you wrote it, is the price you paid for your mistake.
This woman, in all likelihood, did one of two things after that moment: she assumed by the conviction of her rightful position in life that she was deserving of the benefits she gained dishonestly and thought no more about it, not even to have or express feelings of gratitude or; she felt too ashamed to ever acknowledge what she had done.
In either case she still carries a psychic and spiritual burden for it, and that is the price she paid.
I think, also, that the quality of that essay has grown in magnitude in your mind over the years, getting more and more seductive like forbidden fruit. However, I doubt that teenaged and inexperienced Robert Burnham could hold a candle to the worldly and mature version of him walking around today. If you took the time to re-write that essay I'm sure you could blow its socks off. Maybe you should try it, it might be therapeutic. Or not.
I can understand how this has bothered you through the years, but I think it is time to exorcise these particular demons.
Good luck and Godspeed.
Two points you can take or leave them.
One, I wrote very well in high school. I have not pursued a writer's career and because of such I believe the my best academic-based writing did come and go with high school; simply because I haven't written that stuff in a very long time. I do take exception to your comment that the essay has grown to an even better work in my mind. I do not engage in such delusional fantasies. The essay was good. It was very good. I fretted over every word, every clause, every sentence. It was my one shot to impress high ranking folks of the academic world - folks sitting on a scholarship board at one of the most reknown univeristies this country has to offer. And they bought it. They gave the girl the scholarship. I don't have to be delusional, the facts tell me it was an excellent essay, excellently written. That fact, has not 'grown' in my mind. You are still my very best friend in this cyber world we call Gather but this time your inference hurts. Just a little. Hell, Philly's playing the Giants by the end of the game I will have moved on.
Secondly, today WAS the exorcism, if you were paying attention.
"There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
Thanks Lisa Frost! (((((((((hugs)))))))))
For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.
They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone. . . .
Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble: I will deliver him and honour him.
With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation [or soteria]."
~taken from Psalm 91
Robert, that was for you, and I am happy to elaborate later. A "work of knowledge."
Susan, how did you know this? Sounds like you may have uncanny knowledge of your own. Please, give up no more of the unknown. That was not -- I don't think to be known.
Rory, oops forgot to mention in my little tirade that you were right; what was done was very wrong and I stand equally guilty.
All; God Bless.
As you have requested, I will let it lie here.
I believe God puts us in the paths of others to help. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. Who is to say that you weren't put there, to write that essay, because of something she needed to do. It could be as simple as she needed to be at that particular school to do something for someone else, or further in her career to save a life. None of us can ever know the mark we are leaving on every life we come into contact with.
You may all think I am crazy, but I do think something good comes from everything, not matter how bad, horendous or negative.