This website is now & forevermore
�

Today's Featured Biography

 
Richard Collier

After getting thrown out of UNH, I drove a school bus for three weeks, then got fired for union activity (I objected to the efforts at unionization, and a pro-union guy cleverly reported to the owner that I was vehemently pro-union. Served him right to fire me.) Working at Richardson's, I had a tiff with the boss, whom I considered slow to recognize the pervasive merit of my plans to completely revamp his entire store. It was clear I needed greater vistas to conquer, so I joined the Coast Guard. Since I approached college on the 14-year plan, this lacuna fit in quite nicely. Upon returning to college after discharge, and finally, belatedly graduating (2 years after my class, due to Vietnam protests by students which closed down my school and left me with an incomplete intro course), as is my nature, I felt compelled to battle the injustice of the administration, and spent two fruitless years arguing that my accomplishments merited the award of a degree. I finally capitulated, completed the paper they demanded, and realized that I enjoyed my summer job (ferry captain), and my winter trade (silversmithing) much more than the education. So I immediately took a job utilizing none of the skills I had thus far acquired. I worked at Mass College of Art. That's where I found out that I have no artistic ability whatsoever, but a great appreciation for female artists. I also enjoyed graduate school, paid for by the generous employee benefits plan of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But when one of my profs offered me a position in his clinical family practice (psych), I had to consider carefully if I really wanted to spend the rest of my life cloistered indoors, pretending to help very unhappy people while awaiting the discovery of useful clinical tools to actually be of assistance. So I gave up grad school, left my job, and became an electrician, plumber, carpenter, rigger, electronics technician, snowplower, woodsplitter wholesaler, ice cream dipper, and lunch truck operator. Not all at the same time.

While living between my house in Kittery and in my Rambler Classic throughout the rest of northern New England, I met this spellbinding woman. She managed to distract me from my obsession with my first date, the girl in junior high school whom I took to a movie, a girl (excuse the dated and seemingly insensitive term) so spellbinding that I never dated again for many years. This new flame was just as gorgeous as my first infatuation, but I was no longer as fearful of women, a good thing, as it turned out. Probably. But Olga lived in Chicago, so she was a challenge - and who doesn't love a challenge? Olga was visiting her college roommate in Boston when she and I danced together for 12 hours the first day we met at an MIT marathon folk dance. That was so intimate an experience that I had to marry her. But first I had to convince her to leave her job, her family, and her boyfriend and move East. That took months of correspondence and melancholy phone conversations, but it all worked out in the end. We've been happily married ever since - 50% of the time.

After three kids and a few more job changes, I was slowly losing my mind in the retail optical business, trapped in 9 - 5. Since I found myself running out of careers, I talked my wife into moving to Israel, where our kids discovered that there is more to life than McDonalds, and I discovered that I couldn't learn foreign languages any better than I could in Ms. What's-her-name's French class. I can still sing her Christmas carols in French, even all these years later, but I could never understand anything said to me in French, despite her best efforts. Even when I ran a boat into Quebec, I could babble away in French, but if anyone responded with anything other than "oui", I was dead. Hebrew turned out to be more of same.

After a few years of struggling to read and speak backwards in a Biblical tongue, my father got sick. We all returned to the States to take care of him. Soon it will be my kids' turn to do the same for me, and then 25 years later for my wife. But we have three good kids, and despite their having inherited some of my genes, I'm sure they'll all be up to the task.

I just ran into someone who took Kate Flanagan's position at Portsmouth High. She brought back some great memories of the good old days. Let's see. I was thrown out of Miss Flanagan's English Class, Miss Saunder's Trig, Miss Blinn had it in for me even though I liked her fine. Funny how these memories come flowing back. I must have had a positive experience or two, but I only remember the traumas. Who can tell me the good things that happened?

VIEW ALL BIOGRAPHIES