There are few certainties that a man can count on in his life. Few things that, when asked about, he can stand firmly, feet anchored to the ground steadfast as an oak, shoulders back, head tilted slightly toward the heavens as if he is daring God himself to challenge his convictions and say, “Yes. This is true.” The fact that I am currently enrolled in an online Psychology class is most certainly one of them. What is less certain, however, is how I came to be in this position, and subsequently how I will fare now that I am here. Since the latter can only be revealed in time, and I am the only one here that can offer any information on the former, I will fulfill my duty, and give the version of my story that makes me look the best.
I was Sooner born and Sooner bred in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Son of a Pediatrician and an aspiring teacher, I was no stranger to intellectual pursuits. I gravitated quickly to the subjects of science, and found great satisfaction in learning and understanding how and why things work the way they do. Aside from helping me to understand general relativity, my father also introduced me to The Beatles when I was 11. This led to a love of music, an interest in playing drums, and set into motion events that would eventually turn me into an expatriate living in Texas, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
At the dawn of the new century, I packed my bags and headed out on a 4 year pilgrimage straight to the heart of the promised land, the Mecca of all Sooner country, that golden garden of Eden – Norman, Oklahoma. While a student at the University of Oklahoma, I began to pursue a degree in chemistry, and I believe I managed to pick up a minor in football as well, with weekly lab sessions at Owen Field led by our fearless sergeant at arms, Bob Stoops. Yes, life was simple then, and full of simple truths. The speed of light was constant. I was a chemistry student. The Sooners were the best in the country. This was when I joined a band because of Burger King.
After dining at one of their fine establishments one night located in the bottom floor of Adams tower, a yellow flyer caught my eye. “Drummer Wanted” is what it said, so I pulled of a tab from the bottom of the flyer that had a phone number, and that yellow tab would proceed to dictate the course of my life for the next 7 years. I called the number, joined the band, and we quickly began weekend travels all around the area, spreading our rock and roll ideology to anyone who would lend an ear, and many that wouldn’t.
It wasn’t always easy pursuing a degree in chemistry while playing and traveling in a rock band, but it wasn’t always hard either. When stress from school would start to weigh on me, I could always rely on sweating out my problems for an hour in some strange, foreign bar somewhere in the Midwest to realign my Chi in a kind of intellectual-primal symbiosis. Oklahoma City, Norman, Shreveport, Little Rock, Monroe, Kansas City, Austin, St. Louis, these were all my weekend spas, bathing in sweat and stale cigarette smoke, and somehow coming out cleaner and revitalized.
I never worried that the music would interfere with my education. Keep in mind, this was a different time. This was the early oughts – a time of unparalleled pride and patriotism, where freedom flowed like fine wine from the mouths of every GOP with visions of sugarplums and WMDs dancing in their heads. Long before every gadget and piece of technology worth owning was prefaced with a lowercase i. A time when what mattered to us was iDentity, and it didn’t come plastered with that insidious pome, the symbol of worship to our great new Orwellian overlord. If ever there were a time where a chemist could be a rock drummer, this was it, and I plunged in head first.
The summer of ’04 was a time of change. At that point, I had completed my degree, and the band had built up a strong following in the area, playing shows in Dallas, Texas, and showcasing at the Viper Room in Los Angeles. There was no question that the band was what I would pursue at that point. We were on the slow track to success, and I had all my life to be a chemist, but rock and roll has a considerably shorter shelf life. Denton was the right place to be for us at that time, with its proximity to Dallas, and we continued to expand our realm, spending more time on the road than ever. I supplemented my income when I was in town by being a babysitter(substitute teacher) for high school kids, and eventually got a job working as a chemist.
The next 3 years were a classic story. We traveled to all 4 corners of this grand country, showcased for countless major labels, made a lot of people happy, made no money, got trampled by the industry machine, signed to a independent label, exhausted all our resources, and resigned to being regular people. After 7 long years of repeatedly doing back flips and crashing to the ground as the Record Industry Lucy whisked the Fame Football out from in front of us, we finally went home, and took our ball with us.
At this point, after successfully avoiding the issue for 7 years, I was finally exposed to the bitter, biting wind of the “real world,” and had to make the age old decision: What am I going to do with my life? I decided, after much contemplation, suggestions form friends and family, and feedback from the same, to attend Optometry school, and this very class is one of the prerequisites that I managed to not take during my tenure at OU. So basically, here I am…going back to school…in order to go back to school.
It is a strange and sordid tale, indeed, our love affair with Jim Beam and the American Dream, but it all makes sense if you look at it. After following my father’s love of The Beatles, I will now follow him into the medical field. I have no doubt that by the end of this semester, this decision will make even more sense than it already does.
Note: Owen wrote the above blog for extra credit in PSYSC 2010, his internet Pyschology class. He is attending a local community college, so that he can enter optometry school in the near future.
Owen is wearing my glasses. I'm wearing his. Yet you can barely tell.
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