For a number of reasons, which I might write about later, I did not finish my doctorate in anthropology. While I was in Boston in graduate school I did construction on the side. When we moved back to Miami to get married I continued doing that. It was primarily painting. I got a contract to spray an entire single family housing development in Miami. Concrete block houses. I bought a high pressure sprayer and within a very short time the tensing of the muscles in my right shoulder to hold the wand and spray these buildings caused incredible pain.

The orthopedic surgeon at the University of Miami medical school I saw a knew my dad. He said:

“What’s somebody with your background doing blue collar work?”

“I like it!”

“Keep doing it and someday I get to cut open your shoulder and take the ligaments and tendons you’ve stretched out and wrap them around your shoulder and sew it back up again so you can keep hurting yourself!”

I called my father the next day and said I needed a job. He sent me to a Prudential insurance agency which was still using the 100-year-old debit approach. In the 1800s insurance agents went around Friday collecting the premiums from factory workers when they got paid. The other part of the business was referred to as the ordinary where people of better means would actually just get billed for their premiums. Within a year I moved over to The Northwestern Mutual away from the debit business. Years later I asked my father why he sent me to a debit agency to start with. He said:

“I figured if you had to show up in the office twice a week to turn in the premiums and balance your book you might succeed.”

Gee, what a vote of confidence that was, Dad! I still looked like Jerry Garcia as I do in many of the pictures on this site. I figured I needed to trim the beard neatly. When I did and looked in the mirror it was pitch black and reminded me of the cliche of evil people in movies. I decided I wouldn’t buy insurance from somebody with that sinister looking black beard. I shaved it off.

Ever since in my office I’ve had the date I signed my contract with Prudential taped to a bookcase to remind me of the trauma of shaving off my beard and cutting my hair! The picture is below. When Janice got home that day she looked at me and said:

“What did you do with your beard?”

I explained. Her comment:

“Oh.”

Some years later she comes home and had cut off her beautiful straight long brown hair that stretched below her waste and had a shoulder length perm. I looked at her and said:

“What did you do with your hair?”

“Did I say anything when you cut your beard off?”

“Oh.”