Prelude to Day 13

Day 13 was a bad day. Perhaps, as I drive across the country and arrive at my appointments, some retailers think of me as a sales rep. They treat me as a sales rep or probably worse because I don’t have the shiny slick veneer that can tolerate insults with a smile. I am too passionately involved in what I do. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I am easily humiliated. I think I am not cut out to be a sales rep, even if I wanted to be one.

So far, I haven’t asked anyone to place orders. This trip is more like a series of mini social visits. After fifteen years of writing these educational songs, and a lifetime of studying music, I really want to meet the people who are selling my materials. I want to visit their offices, exchange some pleasantries, look at their catalogs, give away free product samples and maybe pick up a few ideas in the process.

People often ask me how I ever became a publisher of educational songs. When I first graduated from University of North Texas, I felt I was destined to be a pit orchestra player and a film composer. One of my first (and last) pit orchestra gigs was backing up "The King of Insult", comedian Don Rickles. Little did I know that I would become the butt of some of his jokes: "It’s a union regulation, One Hooker in Every Band", he quipped.

Without thinking, I flew into ‘stage rage’, giving him the finger accompanied by the requisite vocal expletive. The scenario received newspaper coverage and word traveled in musicians circles across the country. My career as a pit musician was short lived. I became known as the female sax player prone to stage rage. The following week, I made the decision to become a full time educator. Knowing well that my pit band work might be limited, I settled into the security of a fulltime teaching position. My raging persona indirectly took up a new cause: combating illiteracy.

My first long term position was at an inner-city school, teaching illiterate Jamaican kids how to play steel drums. The scariest thing was, while most of these recent immigrants exhibited above average intelligence, the system had deemed them ‘educable retarded’. It was during this period that I started experimenting, providing my students with music tracks and encouraging them to write their own lyrics, which they would then perform ‘rap’ style. The results were encouraging.

Totally illiterate adolescents were spending hours trying to write and then read their own lyrics. Encouraged, I composed and produced my first album of 12 educational songs. I was determined to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of my charges. Today, while I am no longer a classroom teacher, every song I write, and every resource we create, is still done with the end result in mind, an educated kid.

So, now you know where I am coming from.

On day 13, when I arrived at my final destination after four hours behind the wheel, I didn’t receive a welcome at all. The buyer didn’t even emerge from the back room but told the sales clerk to ‘look after me’. Feeling sad and insulted, I imagined myself going into ‘store rage’, flinging audio kits at the head of the poor woman behind the counter. Luckily I contained myself, remembering what happened after my ‘stage rage’. Susan, my logistics assistant at the office, laughed, saying "At least store rage is better than road rage." I started laughing too. It felt good to be able to laugh. At this time of my life I don’t need a reputation for road rage, stage rage or store rage. I merely want to help eradicate illiteracy. The world is a better place when a kid, through acquired literacy and skills, decides to hold down a job rather than hold up the corner store.