Everything Counts

The night before my first-ever speaking engagement (to an audience of Suffolk County, N.Y. librarians), I was a guest at a dinner party hosted by a business writer. During the preliminary liturgies, he introduced me to Robin Calitri, a young neighbor of his and a teacher in Rockville Centre, N.Y., now the retired principal of the high school there. The name rang a chord, and I asked Robin if he were related to a Jim or James Calitri, a professor of education at Hofstra University.

Jim Calitri was his father.

While working as a provisionally certified, junior high school English teacher in 1967 and ’68, I had taken graduate courses in education at Hofstra University, in Hempstead, N.Y., then called Hofstra College. Jim Calitri was one of my more engaging professors, even exciting, as hard as that might be to imagine for anyone who has ever taken a course in education.

The family connection launched Robin and me into a conversation about teaching. I told my stories. Before long, the entire dinner party was guffawing in unison at tales of various disasters I suffered—and perpetrated—as a student teacher in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and later, as an English teacher in Lindenhurst Junior High School. The stories were true, outlandish, and sufficiently entertaining that when the laughter finally subsided, I decided I would recount them the next night for the one-hundred-fifty librarians and their dates.

I did, and the librarians gave me my first, standing ovation. They invited me back the following year, insisting that I tell the same stories, again. I did that, and they invited me back for a third year, this time requesting that I tell a different tale. By that time, thanks to their enthusiasm, I had received invitations to address other associations of librarians, and then associations of English teachers, literature department chairs, reading councils, professional educator organizations, teacher unions and local, literary clubs.

Subsequent years brought more invitations. Additional performances gave me greater confidence and resulted in a constant polishing of the act, or presentation. Now, I have seventy-three school district Superintendent’s Conference Day keynote addresses under my belt. Some years, I have addressed as many as fifty different organizations of every size and stripe. I’ve performed for a roster of esoteric audiences as diverse as the National Association of Marine Bankers, the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors of America, plus dozens of local and regional associations of accountants, chief financial officers, lawyers, dentists, chambers of commerce and national sales teams.

In the long run, telling my own story has illustrated to me how important was every minute of my life; every gesture, every decision; every thought, reaction, daydream, longing, wound, triumph, sarcasm, kindness, memory, joke, glance, gift, gain loss; every outburst and every hesitation, every adherence to plan and every departure from it.

In more recent years, I have added to the stories a subtle conclusion, in attempting to explain some of my more impetuous actions and gestures (all of which had consequences, good and bad).

I think we consist of two selves, simultaneously: the conscious self and the subconscious self. The conscious self is a jerk; the subconscious self, a genius.

The daily, simultaneous operation of all of the involuntary physiological systems represents an intellectual miracle that the conscious self never could replicate. The subconscious does it even under anesthesia. I couldn’t possibly stand in front of an audience and speak, if, simultaneously, I had to concentrate on my alternating systolic and diastolic pressure, while maintaining the regularity and rate of my heartbeat and consciously remembering to inhale and then to exhale at appropriate points during and between sentences, fighting invading bacteria all the while with my immunological stystem.

My subconscious self likely knows better than its boneheaded counterpart exactly where I want to be and what I want to have and do. My subconscious self probably makes ten thousand decisions day toward those ends, from getting out of bed, to shaving, to slapping up the directional signal for the benefit of the motorist behind me, to responding respectfully (or flippantly) to the police officer who pulled me over for failing to do so.

It has been making decisions for years, on how to respond non-verbally to romantic glances, threatening gazes, fleeting dangers and involuntary sensory responses to attractive distractions.

That would suggest that if I wanted to know where my smarter self wanted to be, my genius self, I would have only to look down at my feet. My genius self had made a million decisions over more than half a century to put me in this place at this time. If I wanted to know what wealth my genius self considered appropriate for me to have achieved, saved and successfully invested, I would have only to look in my pockets and review my savings account. My genius self had accepted and rejected thousands of offers, opportunities and risks, while my conscious self tagged along behind, dopey and slothful and, ultimately, pretty reasonably happy with the consequences, and unhappy enough to keep me moving on.

So, do you want to know where your smarter self wants to be and what your brilliant subconscious wants to be doing?

You’re there, and you're doing it.

Because I always was more interested in the entertainment component of the stories I told (and, naturally, the thrill of the laughter and applause), some years passed before I accepted that the performance might also have real value. Another, consistent theme ran through the stories. I learned it, first, from a response that came straight from my subconscious and, years later, from an encounter with a former seventh grade student I had taught thirty years before.

I had received another invitation from a school district to serve as the keynote speaker for their superintendent’s conference day. The administrator who invited me seemed delighted when I said I had the date free. She said she had heard from other districts how audiences of teachers, administrators, custodians and support staff had howled with laughter at my stories. I thanked her profusely and agreed to do the keynote.

“Now,” she said abruptly, “what is the title of your presentation?”

Her relaxed, complimentary, conversational tone had spun around one-hundred-eighty degrees to her anal-rententive, administrative attitude.

I had no title. We had talked about this. I had said, as usual, with my recovering Irish Catholic (and probably false) humility, that I would speak to the faculty and staff as long as the administration knew that I had no information to offer. I was neither a motivator nor an educational consultant. I was more of an entertainer. I just told stories.

“I must have a title,” she said. “I have to print up a brochure and a program, and I have to have a title. What is the title of your presentation?”

I wanted to argue the point. I wanted to say, “But this wasn’t the deal. I don’t want to be packaged as somebody from whom these people should expect something of value. I just want to be funny. Don’t try to make my stuff sound important. It’s not important.”

Instead, I gave her a title.

“Everything counts,” I suddenly heard myself declaring. It came straight from my subconscious, which, I now believe, did not want to get involved in an argument about my bogus humility.

"What?” the administrator said, a little surprised, now, at my abruptness.

“‘Everything Counts.’ That’s the title of my presentation.”

She wrote it down.

“I like that,” she said, reverting to her more affable tone.

“So do I,” I said, surprised at the fit.

Everything does count.


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