Samuel T. Gladding - Becoming a Counselor

I had mixed feelings walking home. I was pleased I had the support I had been seeking, but I was perturbed it had taken me so long to get it. The important point is that my need had been met. However, had I been more assertive, life would have been better. Regardless, I slept well that night.

Because I was not big enough to play football or basketball and was a klutz at baseball, I decided to try sports where I had a chance of success. One of my first choices was swimming. My parents had provided my siblings and me with Red Cross swimming lessons when we were growing up, so I felt confident in a pool, especially doing the breaststroke. There were no tryouts for the swim team because not many guys signed up for it. Decatur High did not have a pool, and I had no access to a pool, except in summer. Thus, I practiced my strokes on smooth surfaces, like the floor, and in the air. Neither did much good. Another factor complicating my career as a swimmer was that I did not like the sound of the starter pistol. Nevertheless, I stayed on the team my freshman and sophomore years, and I was mediocre at best. My sophomore year I lettered, though, because of a fluke. Here is how it happened.

The Georgia High School Boys Championship Swim Meet was being held at Emory University that year. Although I was not one of the boys on our medley relay team, one of the guys on the team got sick the morning of the meet. Soon thereafter I received a call from the team captain asking if I was available. I had not practiced with the team and had little idea of what to do, but I agreed. My mother took me over to the Emory pool, and there I became a part of the team. I swam the third leg of the relay—50 yards. The good news is that I made it. The bad news is that our team came in last. Still, we were officially the sixth best relay team in the State of Georgia, and we received ribbons.

A friend of mine, Joe, heard of our triumph. Shortly thereafter, when I was at his house, he tried to give me a rather skimpy blue Speedo swimsuit. I was horrified and politely but firmly said “You shouldn’t have,” which in the Southern speech of the day meant “You really should not have even thought about this!” I wanted to say more directly “I couldn’t possibly accept such a terrible gift,” but I was too polite, and as a Southerner I had been taught to be deferential. Frustrated, I finally made my refusal official by telling Joe I was finishing my swimming career “on top.” I knew I would never finish as high as I had on that fateful morning when I was a substitute swimmer. I hope Joe took the Speedo back to the store, but only the swim gods know if he did.

There were several ways to show a girl in my high school that you liked her. Probably the best way was just to tell her. However, for those of us with few social skills, there was an alternative. It was to put a real estate sign in her front yard. If you really liked the girl, a couple of signs were better yet, and the word would get around that you were “signing on” to an interest in her.

One girl I liked went beyond the two signs limit. I am not sure why I thought this young woman was so special, but if I could get back into my 16-year-old brain, I am sure I could figure it out. Whatever the reason, with the help of some friends I gathered five real estate signs and around 11 p.m. put the signs in her front lawn. We had to be as quiet as mice, but we managed.

Smug and satisfied, I started to drive my coconspirators home. Just a block from the scene of our Saturday night adventure, blue lights flashed, and a siren came from the car behind me. It was the City of Decatur police. I was nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs but showed the officer my driver’s license and car registration. He looked suspiciously at my three friends and me. He followed his look with a rather stern voice: “Better get home boys. I have been watching you drive around this neighborhood a lot tonight.” What he did not say was “And I saw you put those real estate signs in a yard.” Minutes later we were all home.

My mother was in the living room reading her Sunday School lesson when I walked in. She just nodded and asked how my evening had been. I said “fine,” careful not to say the word “sign.” I thought to myself “Thank God” I was not caught signing or I would have been in serious trouble—not so much with the police but with my mother.

Every year students who took a science course at Decatur High had to do a science project. Those of us not gifted with scientific minds always scrambled to come up with a project that would not hurt our fragile grades. I took chemistry my junior year and was determined to get ahead on my project before the science fair came around in February. But I knew nothing about how to experiment with chemicals, so I dropped back to biology. Charles Darwin fascinated me, and I decided to do something on mutations. I needed an organism that reproduced quickly and I could easily handle. The answer: fruit flies.

I sent off to a lab for several jars of fruit flies. When they arrived, I bought bananas and set up new colonies from the pupae that came in the original jars. The life cycle of the flies was a few weeks, and they were active breeders. I wondered what would happen if the flies were exposed to radiation while still in a cocoon state. My hypothesis was that they might come out with more than two eyes, or the color of their eyes might change. Fortunately, a friend’s dad was a dentist, and he offered to expose my flies to the X-ray machine in his office.

I did not win a prize for my work, but my grade did not suffer. Happily, the fruit flies were no worse for the wear either—none of their eyes or wings changed. The only negative in the experiment was that some of the subjects escaped and made themselves at home in our house. We had fruit flies around for several weeks longer than my project. My parents thought we could outlast the inconvenience and did not call an exterminator. My mother simply did not buy bananas until the last of the flies buzzed off. Patience paid off.

My junior and senior years in high school were filled with extracurricular activities. I was a section editor of the yearbook, a class officer, on student council, a football manager, captain of the tennis team, and much more. Likewise, church activities were numerous. However, one of my favorite activities had nothing to do with high school or church. It was taking a walk with my good friend, Chris, who was a personable introvert and had a vocabulary that would put a dictionary to shame. He was editor of the school newspaper and smarter than a tree full of owls. As we walked, we ate carrots. The reason we chomped on carrots instead of apples is that when Chris raided his refrigerator for our first walk, the only organic edible he found was carrots. At the end of our walks, we would bury the tops of our carrots in the front yard of Christina, a girl we both liked and who had a sense of humor.

The walks were relaxing. Chris and I would talk about schoolwork, girls, and most important our impressions and reflections on what was happening in our worlds and the world at large. Occasionally we would speculate about what we wanted to be in life. He was going to be a dentist like his father. I was going to be a minister like my grandfather. It was an exciting and anticipatory time. The memories are still good, although the carrots are forever gone and I did not become a minister.

When I was in high school, semester exams were given during a time when other classes were suspended. There was a 3-hour block in the morning from 9 a.m. to noon and a 3-hour block in the afternoon from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. On January 20, 1961, at the midpoint of my junior year, I had a rather easy exam on a Friday morning. I finished early, and rather than hang around school I walked home to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before returning for the rest of the day. The distance from Decatur High School to the Gladding house was a little over a mile, and even at a leisurely pace I made it home in about 20 minutes.