Never Walked In High Heels

My Dear Friend,

Last night you asked me how I could claim to be a capitalist and state that all men and created equal. You asked me how I could ever reconcile my political views with my faith without claiming hypocrisy. I wasn’t very impressed with my own answer. I don’t think you were either. You are right – On the surface these two will never mesh.  But my life is full of what seems to be contradictions. I invite you to check your premises, starting with the fact that all capitalists are “greedy.” Beware of such absolutes, it only takes one oddball to prove you wrong.

One of the things I so love about you is your fierceness in protecting your own freedoms. Here is something that you and I stand together on, for I would rather die than lose my independence. I have seen you give up the predictable comforts which come from having a “safe life” in order to have the life you want to lead. I have seen you  defend my freedoms to those who cling dogmatically to their prejudicious. And I have seen you demand from others that they rise up and assume the responsibility that comes from freedom.

So why are you shackling yourself with your own economic theory?

It disturbs me to see you claim that everyone should have the same amount of money, assets, or capital. What this will turn you into is someone who sees others with one of two lenses. The man who has even just a little bit more than you, you can only resent. Whatever he has should be rightfully yours. The person that has a little more than you is terrifying. What you have should be his. If he cannot have it, then you are the source of injustice. You only have two options for relating to people, fear and hate. Both put chains around your ankles. Neither will give you the freedom you yearn for. 

But people should work regardless of payment, you told me. Maybe they should, but they won’t. You know that. Why should you work that extra hour at the office if it’s only going into the pocket book of someone else? Why not work two hours more then? Or four? How can you even bother to go home, as doing so only takes food out of society’s mouth?

Don’t say that this is an extreme example. It isn’t. It has happened to every system which has attempted economic equality. If a system does not hold true within extreme examples, how will it ever hold up under the strain of reality?  

This is where I believe charity and service do come in. I’m not saying if someone can’t help themselves ‘that’s just too bad.’ But give it to the efforts and people you value, the ones who you want to see helped in the world, the causes that no one else is fighting for. You earned that money, you have a right to decide exactly where it goes and who it helps.

I believe God made all men equal. I believe that God made man to be free. I believe that God made man to work. These are not contradictory, they are self evident. But these three tenants do not promise anything, be it wealth or safety. They don’t promise an easy ride, or that you’ll be born where opportunity simply rolls out in front of you. All they give you is the right to exist with the knowledge that you have the same innate value as every other person who will ever exist and it is not based on your bank account. After that, it is up to you to remain free. 

I hope you keep your freedom. 

It’s three AM on a Saturday morning in London. The light of the outside metropolis shines into my flat like some surrogate moon unsuccessfully trying to lull me into a slumber. And even though I have shut the curtains, turned the other direction, and taken a sleeping pill, sleep is nowhere to be found.
Most people in my situation have been more than acquainted with the night. A Chicago native now calling Las Vegas home and London my workplace, I am currently living as a nocturnal creature to say the least. Add to that the fact that the stage is my office and my networking consists after show drinks with actors and I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise I’m up at this hour. After all, I just came back from a show tonight called Bent.

Bent was first preformed in 1979 and latter turned into a movie in 1997. Max a promiscuous gay man is taken to a Nazi concentration camp with his partner Rudy. While Rudy is beaten to death on the train, Max quickly discovers that he will be treated slightly better by denying the fact that he is gay and convinces the Nazi officers that he is Jewish. When it was first produced, Bent helped paved the way for historical research on the horrific treatment of homosexuals in the holocaust. 

Small wonder I can’t sleep.

Many people forget that before the Nazis went after the Jews, they rounded up others, namely the homosexuals and the disabled. This group was how Hitler perfected his methods of mechanically, often by trial and error. Overall, these deaths were the slowest, most gruesome, and least humane out of any during the regime. Largely forgotten about in history books, it is yet another example of how people can’t stand what they refuse to understand. 

As a disabled woman I have learned that there are two things that most humans want to be absolutely clear on: physical ability and sexuality.  Yes, there are other factors as well, but nothing globally labels you as second-class status faster than these two issues. Even in a world so hell bent on making things easy, painless, and accessible, few dignities are granted to those of us who have no homeland to begin with. There is no country of queers anymore than there is a kingdom of cripples. Those of us who were made to challenge categories and classifications are constant wayfarers. Which is why, I suppose, I have always felt a tremendous kinship with many gay men. Many of them, like me, refuse to apologize for their non-conformity. It would be easy to say we camp it up, make differences sexy and glamorous but that would be simplifying a very difficult struggle which continues today as much as it ever has. 

Throughout history it has been those that weren’t privileged which have reshaped the world. Much of American history has been the redefining of the phrase “all men are created equal” to include what those in power originally hoped to exclude.  The days that homosexuality was a social taboo exactly what was allowed the Nazis to take citizens into the concentration camps. And so, those of us who have public battles at the very least ensure that such silence does not happen again. Better to be in the middle of controversy than taken away in silence. At least with the commotion we force the world to slowly propel itself forward. 

It is a little later and the black sky has grown silver. Even the light outside of my window has now gone off. But I still cannot sleep.  This is pointless. I get out of bed and put feet on the ground. I walk to my front door and check the lock before I go to the couch. Still no sleep. 

I open the newspaper to an article about fetal testing to avoid possible ‘’problems’’ as a child. As always, there is much discussion as to what these ‘’problems’’ are. Where do we draw the line when it comes to avoiding problems? Genetic defects? Disability? Race? Homosexuality? Sound familiar?

My phone rings and I jump from the start. It’s from a mate across the city calling to tell me about his date with his new boyfriend. Neither of us were expecting me to be up at this hour. He talks and I listen to the sound of his deep voice, feeling instantly relaxed. Even though he takes longer than I do to get ready to go out, tonight I am thankful for his confidence, something that I often miss from straight men. Sometimes, I’m in awe of his masculinity. He invites himself over to make an early morning cup of tea. As soon as I hang up the phone I look out my window, the sky is bright red. 

We are everywhere, the others. We are the ones who turn the wheel of history, ensuring that no one is comfortable until everyone has the same dignities given to them. Progress is not made by the actions of those who are sitting in their leather armchairs, it is made by those of us who fight for things that never should have to be a fight in the first place. We have no homeland, but the strength we have ensures that things will change and we will gain the rights that should be ours. Until then, I am reminded of what a more contemporary gay playwright says what an ideal world ought to be. “Everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion… Race, taste and history finally overcome.”

Good luck in your own fight to make that happen.

The problem with human rights is that people don’t realize how important those rights are until their own have been violated. I was trying to get on a train with Paige the other day up in Scotland, and she sat down a full cup of coffee and a full cup of hot chocolate so that she might get a ramp for me. Then, a moment later, I saw a cleaner start to get on the train and, realizing what was about to happen, I grabbed him and said,

“There are two cups of hot coffee on the train. They are mine. I’m waiting for a ramp. Please do not throw them away.”

“Right,” he said, looking at me blankly and extremely confused.

The next thing I knew, the coffee cups were gone. I was livid. First of all, no one comes between me and my coffee, particularly at 8:30 on a Scottish morning when the weather is miserable. Doing so is the equivalent of putting one’s hand in a piranha tank. It is truly, in a matter of speaking, taking your life into your own hands. When he got off the train, I confronted him.

“Why did you throw away our coffee when I specifically told you not to?”

“You want to get a on you say?” he asked me, avoiding eye contact. I could see this was going nowhere, and so I grabbed a hold of his arm and repeated the question. Within another moment, Paige arrived. 

“What’s wrong?” she said, ignoring the man complaining about my grip.

“He threw away our coffee when I specifically told him not to.”

Within the next fraction of a second, Paige was asking the janitor questions and making him feel extremely uncomfortable, I’m sure. 

In times like these, I can’t help but wonder whether or not we are too hard on people. I mean, really. It was his job to clean up the train, and people at the lowest part of the ladder usually have the most miserable jobs and are more than a bit snippy to let everyone else know that they are unhappy. People don’t think, as a mentor of mine once reminded me. It’s not that they’re malicious so much as they don’t realize the ramifications that their actions have on their fellow human beings. For example, if he thought about it, the member of staff would probably question, ‘why am I throwing away two completely full coffee cups? Maybe they are meant to be here.’

To make matters worse, in addition to people not thinking, they also don’t want to have to claim responsibility for things that are likely to go wrong. Most people don’t want to get in trouble, and the man who threw away our coffee realized that if he left rubbish from the previous train journey on the train, he would not be doing his job, and it would be more likely that someone would complain. Simple enough, and for that he is commended. Not many people I know would be willing to do this job of cleaning a train so thoroughly.

But the fact is, I did specifically told him not to clear away our coffee cups, and the fact is, he looked at me blankly, did not bother to clarify what I had said when it was unclear, and ignored my request. In these points, I don’t think my assistant nor I were too harsh in challenging him and his actions.

I said very little on the train ride back to Glasgow. I was frustrated as one can imagine. Who ever thought that two cups of coffee could cause so much frustration and disappointment? I have long since stopped being frustrated with the member of the cleaning staff. After all, he was just doing his job. But I started being enraged with the bigger problem that at the moment seems unfixable. Why is it that we even needed a ramp to get onto the train? Why couldn’t some brilliant engineer just make the train platform level with the train? Why wasn’t there an appointed train car, at the very least, that didn’t require a ramp to get on and off? Why was this world built for able-bodied people when able-bodied people ultimately have their perfectly able-bodies commit treason against them with age, aches, and illness? Who was the idiot who came up with the notion of stairs anyway? Probably some ancient Roman governor who wanted to make sure that his mother couldn’t bother him in his room. 

I lost my appetite for a while and stewed in my own little microcosm of social change. Before reaching Glasgow to go home, it was a miserable evening outside. The rain was still coming down at that annoying rate of not being hard enough to stop you from your responsibilities but being a bit too hard so that you would inevitably get soaked if you were out more than seven minutes. I stopped by a coffee kiosk with Paige, and we ordered another two hot coffees to go. And this time, we were prepared to guard them with our lives. I was still in my own little world, making my way back to my Glasgow flat in the cold rain. 

As a disabled woman, very often I am considered to be invisible, even by the most liberally minded people, and inevitably I have to ask why. Sometimes the system doesn’t work, and you have to ask why it didn’t. Sometimes the classes you need to go to are in a building that is completely inaccessible. Even to the most able-bodied of people it presents a challenge, and then you ask, ‘Whose brilliant idea was this?’ 

But whatever you do, and whoever she is, do not come in between a young professional woman and her coffee. 

I wear the top button of my jeans unbuttoned at all times. For most women this would make me a slut, but in my case it just makes me pathetic. Today, I have funky red hair, I’m 5’ 2”, one hundred pounds, a 34-C, Banana Republic size zero. I have blue eyes, eyelashes so long I can’t wear sunglasses, lovely skin, and a smile that never stops. I’ve been schooled in classics, theology, philosophy, Spanish, Arabic, ballet, athletics, kinesiology, theater, Karate, and politics. I’ve traveled to 14 counties, broken 5 international track and field records, and taught school in Mexico.

Like what you’re reading? I’ll go on. I’ve got a cute butt, an absurdly long tongue for cocktail party tricks, a set of wheels custom made for me, and a great sense of humor. I’m an hour glass figure, a la Marylyn Monroe, very flexible, and ready to embrace the true meaning of freedom. 

All of this and I’ve never been asked out on a date. 

Which doesn’t mean I don’t any action. Every time I go to the airport I get pulled out of line and patted down by some security guard, their gloved hands running up and down my most intimate areas. The last time I was in Boston one hefty, uniformed individual whispered into my ear “this is my favorite part about my job. I’m so good at it,” as she rubbed her hand up the inside of my leg.

Come fly the “ friendly” skies.

After nearly twenty-one years of living with a disability, I am still constantly amazed by how sexually frustrated young disabled women are. I’ve seen girls with all types of disabilities burst into tears and held them time and again as they sobbed “but I’ll never have a boyfriend.” Often it seems as if perceived asexuality is the greatest disappointment from disability as I watch young women yearn to feel beautiful, desire a man’s touch, wish to have the freedom and confidence to invite him back to their room for the night. Just like all women, we too crave to feel cherished. 

It is particularly difficult to watch idealized images of love, even though my brains knows that these ideals will falter, fall flat on their faces, and cause more heartache that I can ever imagine. I remember coming home after a bridal shower for both of my hall counselors last year and sobbing in the shower “I want to be loved like that. I want to be held like he holds her. I want to be someone’s sexual dream. I want so badly to be given dishtowels by my best friend and be excited about them.”

Perceived asexuality does have a wonderful advantage though. I may cry every time I see Cyrano de Bergerac, but I am able to take the time many girls primp and throw themselves ruthlessly at guys to truly excel at everything I wish to do. And I know I have be given desire that only certain guys are man enough to fill. True, pure, hunger is made to be satisfied.

Unlike many of my disabled peers, I know my inactive romantic life is actually not my fault. Indeed, it’s amazing how guys who do not know about the disability will give me complements without hesitation. (It is important to note I use the term “guys” here, because males this shallow are not men.) On the way back from church today I looked out the car window to see the car full of guys whopping and yelling at my eye contact and wagging their tongues at me. In Switzerland this summer, during a particularly hard evening, I opened my third story window and stood alone watching the sunset on the balcony. Within a few moments a Swiss walked by, stopping to stare at me. He yelled up, first in French, then Italian, then German. After all attempts failed he tried English. “You are the most beautiful vision I have even seen. I wish I had a camera to make your picture. May I came up to see you?” Unaccustomed to such attention I always smile and back away, knowing that mystery is more romantic than exposure. 

I am beautiful. I am sexy. I will be cherished by a man someday. I don’t need to waste my time with false lovers, for I know I have these characteristics, even if no one else suspects it.

Not long ago, I found myself in a pedestrian gridlock that was enough to make any urban dweller revolt. All of the sidewalks, streets, and secret allyways of London’s Trafalgar Square were blocked by formidable officers on horseback to absolutely ensure we were going nowhere. Used to such hoopla, I asked an officer what the occasion was. Turns out, on this perfect Sunday, Bush was going through London on his farewell tour. And so, despite opinions and beliefs, facts and rumors, I found myself doing the popular thing. I too was waiting in patient expectation to see George W. Bush’s limo pass the streets of London.

Truth be told, I can’t dismiss the Bush family as easily as most. There, I said it. You can stop reading whenever you want. But as I grew up in Chicago during the 1990’s, the first president Bush had a profound effect on my life. I remember sitting in front of the television, my six year old knees scraped as always, while Bush Sr. picked up his pen and signed the Americans with Disabilities Act. It was the first time in America that it was illegal to discriminate against me. As I went to school the teachers had to teach me. Doors opened, quite literally, so I could go to university, and now that I am an adult, I should be able to have the same dignities and respect as anyone else in society. It was this law that served as a model for other counties, such as Britain, to restore rights to their own people with disabilities. Asking me to hate the Bush family is like asking a newly freed slave to despise Abraham Lincoln. 

The limo passes in a flurry of camera phone flashes and finger-pointing. For being  such an unpopular president, Bush sure does seem to attract a lot of popularity from people who happen to be in the right place at the right time. I look at my phone and I can’t help but chuckle. It’s The President of the Untied States on my phone… and frankly it looks like any other car with tinted windows. I turn to leave. The barriers are now down and inconvenienced Londoners breathe a collective sigh of relief. 

“Finally. All I was trying to do is get to Charing Cross station,” a woman jokes to me. She says she’s going to visit her grandchildren for the week, and she’s hoping that tonight there’ll be time to bake bread with them. I smile at her, she smiles at me, and there is an instant connection. I say that I’m headed to the same place to catch the train home, hoping for an easy night.

“Oh, isn’t it sweet of them to let you take the train? It must be so nice to hold the rest of us up so you can get onboard.”

I swallow hard. For the rest of the conversation I stare dead ahead answering in one word syllables, resisting the urge to reach up and disable the woman myself to teach her a lesson in empathy. I keep telling myself to breathe and remember that she is older, so soon she’s going to fall, break a hip and learn her lesson. Or maybe she’ll go blind. Or…

I purposely lose her in the crowd. Doing so makes me feel a little more control of my life. I don’t know if I’m aggravated more at the woman or at myself for not saying anything. “Nice?” It’s the law. It’s my right to ride that train, and the fact that I can’t ride the train without giving at least 48 hours notice proves we have a long way to go before we can even talk about being “nice.” Every time the platform manager harasses me because he doesn’t want to get the ramp out, or when I have to ride an extra hour to the end of the line because no one was at my stop to help me get off, I’m reminded that freedom, while granted by law, takes awhile to trickle into actuality. 

It is easy for us to assume that because something changes legally, the problem is completely fixed.  In reality, getting a law in the books is only the first step to evolution. After that, the responsibility rests on the citizen’s shoulders. Oddly enough, it is at this point that society claims the problems as one that can be dismissed because it is remedied. We argue for legislation and for papers to be signed but after Congress is cleared and the legislators leave for home, the reformation of society still is entirely dependent on ordinary people. It is what we do on the subway, while buying jeans, the absent minded comments we make while passing each other on the street which define the rights of the individual more than any statesman would ever dream of.

At home I fix myself an obligatory cup of tea and watch the Thames from my balcony, Canary Warf looking like the land of Oz in the distance. The warmth of my home reminds me that while the outside world can turn hostile within a second, the places where I belong value me for the woman I am and for the things I have accomplished. To them, any slight allowances in time and adaptions are well worth it.

In a culture when special interest groups and campaigns seem to dominate our understanding of value, people confuse the importance of disability rights, putting it on par with the save the Australian ostrich movement. It seems to my friends that issues, such as environmentalism, are somehow more important simply because its actually seen as an issue on CNN. So when I start talking about how it isn’t fair that I can’t get in to a pub, and my friends roll their eyes and tell me to come back when the campaign has a colored ribbon. 

I fight for disability rights by default, not because I have nothing better to do. Actually, I fight for my own rights first, and if that happens to help others behind me, so be it. It would be a lie to say I want to make the world better for all because I know that in paving the road for myself as an artist and businesswoman, I can do more to expand opportunity for others than if I just focused on disability rights. This is why I will never be a lobbyist or activist. I fight for my rights only for my own advancement. It is up to everyone else to take advantage of that progress.

However, the issue of disability rights is one worth plowing a new road for in my mind. It is not a stand alone topic that attempts to rescue a certain group, often at the expense of others. It is a good old battleground in a war that should have never needed to be fought in the first place. Like the Women’s Suffrage movement and Abolition, this is an issue which, in 200 years time, people will look back at and wonder how such a large majority could be so barbaric. 

When I look for equal treatment, I’m not looking for special treatment… as some  have accused me of in the past. I’m not even looking for my dignity as some activists shout about. My dignity can only be given to me by myself. My freedom is mine only because I fight to protect it, not because anybody else chose to give it to me. But when I am looking for is the willingness to improve the world which you will soon inherit. The world needs to be changed not just for me, but for you. Your body will soon break down and fail you and the standards of living you allow for me are the ones you will have to deal with in your aged years. It is only then that you may see the misconceived assumptions of the able-bodied world.

Here’s hoping my friends will catch on before it’s too late for them. 

“Hello, remember Gandhi? When are folks gonna realize that kicking young people off trains is a bad idea? It can only lead to trouble.”  - Athena Stevens

“Sorry, we can’t get you this one either,” he says to me for the third time in a row. It’s rush hour in London, a time that can only be classified as every man for himself. It’s a phenomenon which I can’t even complain about as, during the hours of seven to ten in the morning, I’m as savage as any of my ablie-bodied peers and nearly twice as fast. The past three years have given me a post doctorate degree in defensive driving. I weave in and out of bodies better than most footballers looking for a breakaway. Morning rush hour leaves no excuse to be late as the best thing you can do is pick up your feet and keep moving, 

Unless you are reliant on public transit. 

“Why not?” I contest back to the rail worker. “Seems to me there’s enough room to get on.”

“No, no. We need to wait for the next train. People like you really shouldn’t be out  and about during this hour anyway.”

There it is. I was wondering when I was going to find the arrogant chink in his seemingly paternal armor. I wasn’t supposed to be going to work with half the city of London. What possible appointment could I have at this time of day which would be of any importance? Why would I have a schedule to keep so tight that I actually spent my own money to buy a more expensive ticket to travel during the peak periods of the day? What could it even matter if I was late for work? 

Transit is a very strange business to be in. The things that can go awry while going from point A to point B is almost infinite once you add the Human Element. The idea is simple enough,  but in the process of trying to get everyone where they want to go, transportation has become the battleground which nearly always precedes the war of social justice. When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus, she challenged the whole of the American racial hierarchy. When Gandhi was thrown off a South African train, it caused one man to shift his entire world view, thereby shifting the world. And in the 1970’s the disability rights movement began by people chaining themselves to London busses in order to demand equal access. Clearly, we’re still in the trenches on that one.  

History should have taught us by now, refusal to give people reliable transport is a surefire way to start trouble. 

“Put me on this train now, please,” I slowly say between clinched teeth desperately trying to rail in my temper.   “I need to get to work.” He doesn’t move. The train passes. I am now officially late. 

The movement towards civilization has been founded on the movement of people  getting to where they want to go. Without the rails, roads, the very veins of the city our opportunities are limited to what’s just past our front door. For many, this limitation continues to be unmoved. In a world where we assume that just because there’s a little wheelchair symbol on the map means that everything is accessible, we forget that attitudes often stand more immovable than any concrete barrier. 

“So where do you work sweetie?” He’s trying to get on my good side. I’m now trying to call my boss. 

“I’m a consultant for the transit system here in town.” The truth slipped out so easily that it almost sounded sarcastic. 

“I bet we can get you on the next train.”

Yeah, funny how that works. 

As the next train rolled up he put down the ramp with a smile, and I thanked him by name. The outside began to flash past in an ever increasing cadence. I was on my way and almost on time. I thought about how far this world had to go in learning to accept the frailty of the human condition. It is a place that no motor will take us, save the drive that comes from knowing that all men are made equal;  the ones who have refused to forget that, even while simply commuting, have done a great deal to change the world. 

In the list of the few teachers I didn’t get along with, there has been one name that has come back to my mind in recent months. He was loud, obnoxious, and arrogant, always interrupting students the second we got off course. He used to strut, yes strut, in front of a classroom full of seventeen year-olds, waiting to write the next discussion point on the board. Looking back, he was the only teacher I remember from high school who dared to grade papers in red pen. I’m sure I had more teachers like him, but this Economics teacher was fiercely Capitalist, supremely self-righteous, and made Ayn Rand look like a soccer mom. 

These days, I wish he taught kindergarden. 

Why do we insist on not teaching our children the basics of Economics? In between the Maths, Sciences, and Phonics, all the building blocks which are supposed lead to a full functioning member of society, there is no time to learn about the basic bedrock of what holds society together: money. The word problems in arithmetic class aren’t enough. “Sally sells seashells at seventy cents” only serves to teach young people the value of numbers, not the value of money. We give them no concept about how taxes work or how money stabilizes a society until they a practically full fledged members themselves, and even then the value of money is rarely discussed. In the affluent public schools we teach that charity is done by giving money away, not by acting on the problem. We teach to give to the poor without question, rather than teaching that even alms can be an investment. And in doing all this we teach that the best way to solve a problem is by throwing more money at it, rather than seeing where the money is already going.

This form of financial education only serves to create a bigger schism between classes. We divide the world into haves and have nots, keeping the latter dependent on the former. Resentment naturally becomes a two way street.

There is a common thought, I suppose, that often leads young people astray in the first place: “Let kids be kids,” we say, rightfully protecting the innocence of youth.  But there comes a point where a chick has to battle with his own strength against the reality of the shell protecting him. If you break the egg for him, the chick never develops his own strength and dies in a relatively short  time. To intentionally keep a child ignorant about the basics of life represents a grave failure as a parent.

If you think I’m overreacting, I’ll make it concrete. I recently spoke with a young woman who is currently getting her masters. She graduated from one of the top liberal arts colleges a few years ago at the top of her class. And she was horrified to learn that when she makes a deposit in the bank, the actual cash doesn’t just sit there until she is ready to take it out. She didn’t understand what it meant to be FDIC insured and had never heard of some stocks going up in a recession.

How is it this student went to some of the best schools in the world and managed to miss this information not only in Economics class but also in History, Math, Government, Art History…

We should be teaching the basic principals of saving, credit, and interest from the day children are able to understand that money exists. We should be teaching teenagers how to follow investments in a mock stock exchange competition. And nobody should be allowed to graduate high school without knowing how to do taxes, set up a long term savings account, and handle APR. Failure to do so creates a system that combines two of the most crippling elements in the world: fear and guilt. Fear, from not knowing how to handle money, and guilt from having it in the first place. 

My teacher was a man who, sadly, didn’t have many of the qualities a good teacher has. I’m sure he drove the school administration nuts. (More power to him for that!) But he understood the fact that if people didn’t appreciate and even respect the value of money from a young age, economic chaos was certain. 

As I remember this teacher’s behavior whenever a student finally conceded that he was right, I hope we don’t give him a chance to strut during this modern economic period.