A Fork In the Road

Perhaps you are familiar with the old Yogi Berra (no, that’s not Yogi the Bear, idiot!) quote: “When you arrive at a fork in the road, take it.” Well, back in 1979, I did take the proverbial fork in the road, and it altered everything that followed- in a very good fashion. But not right away.

I was working in an operating room as an Operating Room Technician, specifically a scrub tech. Every day, I scrubbed in on surgical cases, prepared and handed out sterile instruments and sutures, held retractors, and generally assisted the surgeons as requested. It was work I had done years before going to undergraduate studies at Boston University. It was the sort of work I had never thought I’d return to. But my p.hD graduate program in anthropology had run into terminal problems and I wound up leaving the program short of the doctorate. So there I was passing instruments, holding retractors on abdominal cases, and furiously typing resumes for any job I thought was or could be interpreted to be related to anthropology.

It took two years, but eventually I landed the key interviews that led to a job that would allow me to incorporate elements of anthropology into running a community library while doing community social outreach. I was given a beat-up old brick building, a working-class multiethnic community the City had ignored for decades, and two helpers. Oh, yes, the budget was tiny. It worked out that the setting, the budget, and the help were a blessing.

The key to making this all work was that the two helpers were enthusiastic, and the community members wanted the rebranded Heritage Center to work. Within the first six months, the team – the community members, my helpers, and I had taken the fork in the road and taken the Heritage Center from expected failure to hot-key success. Budget? We fueled most of the programs with charitable donations from members of the community who also prominently helped run the programs. My contribution? Ideas, suggestions that came from my anthropological background.

Truly, the whole thing came from the people of the community. They were asked what sort of programs they would like in the Heritage Center, and then they, the staff, and I helped create them.

The staff: a young woman with a library background and a high school student getting ready for college. When I was hired, I was told to just let them do the library end of things. But the programs were “all hands-on-deck” sort of things. This meant that I spent a lot of time with the young woman. After a while, I began to notice that the young woman was fun to be around, attractive, and very intelligent. I could see that the attraction was mutual, but I felt that, since she was a subordinate, I should not pursue a relationship. She was also young, and I was older.

Temptation. She was truly pleasant to be around and seemed to enjoy my company. But I was her boss, and not so much of an egotist that I felt I was irresistible. So I hesitated. Then she announced her forthcoming birthday. I offered to take the staff out to celebrate. I was taking the entire staff after all; it wasn’t really a date. Was it?

The birthday celebration was a great success, but I didn’t follow up quickly. Then there was the Memorial Day cookout at the place where I lived with my two roommates. I had invited both of my staff members. Well, she walked in with her older sister, and she was, shall I say, enticing? At the end of the cookout, one of my roommates asked if I was dating her because he was interested, and I simply stated that she was mine.

In the next week or two, it turned out that we were each other’s. We rapidly fell into a loving relationship, which has deepened and grown over the years. And while I am thinking about it, I’ll sneak upstairs to give her a kiss while she is napping.