Hear Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/5f-cP0TO33Y

or read his transcript below:

ACTING KIND, PRETENDING TO BE KIND, MAKES ME KIND

Time for a journey to the past for a couple of minutes. Time to ruminate about where I have been and what motivates me to keep on keeping on, to this day.

I’m compliantly sitting on a hard wooden chair in grammar school, looking as straight toward the ceiling as I can, mouth agape, while a visiting dentist hovers over me and draws near.

This is the first time a doctor has looked at my teeth. His eye-glassed face comes close to mine, he pokes me with sharp metal. His breath underwhelms me with the stale odor of tobacco. His grimaced-revealed teeth are yellow and crooked. And is that the smell of rubbing alcohol or drinking alcohol?

No wonder I hesitate going to the dentist to this day, even though I have the best practitioner/diagnostician you can possibly hope for, name of Patrick Odum.

But this little glimpse of childhood is about the 1940s, so I am still back there in spirit.

I comply with this terrifying examination because I know that Sadie will comfort me should I panic.

Like many second-graders in the 1940s post WWII era, I am warmly tutored by a disciplined and kindly teacher whose face and name remain with me to this very moment. Sadie Logan ignited my love of books and ideas, and I owe so much to her.

Sadie made me feel that she was paying particular attention solely to me each time I required respite or guidance.

I’m still inspired by Sadie’s concern, compassion, scholarship, her unwavering attention to me as an introverted and directionless post-war child.

Because of people like Sadie, I became who I am today, an introverted and directionless post-war child who finds ways to cope and persevere and achieve…ways to hide all signs of darkness and simply act my way into thinking past the gremlins.

Ways to act myself into new and better and more worthwhile endeavors.

The dental moment might have traumatized me, but with Sadie Logan in charge, I knew that somehow I could get through any situation safely. Second grade was a blessing.

I am jolly and alert and stimulated and loving because I learned from Sadie that what you do all day every day is how you will be remembered, how I am regarded today