Ray Christian - Life Reimagined

 

I remember standing in line at the Social Security office with my mama. I was ten years old. And the line moved ahead slowly, but I could hear the lady at the front of the line saying, "Next. Go to the desk. Next. Fill out the form." My mother and I got to the front of the desk. My mother looked at the form and she started to ask the lady a question. She said, "Excuse me, can I--" And the lady cut her off and said, "Ma'am, take the form, take it to the desk, fill it out and come back. Next." My mother looked at the form again, and she looked at the lady and she started to ask her the question again. She said, "Excuse me, ma'am, can I--" The lady cut her off and said, "Ma'am, we don't have time for this. Take the form to the desk, fill it out and bring it back. Next." 

 

My mother and I walked to the desk. My mother looked at the form, and I could tell that water was starting to well up in her eyes. And I said, "Mama, what's wrong?" And she said, "Baby, mama can't read." I looked at her and I said, "Mom, that first line, it says name." She said, "Can you write that?" I said, "Yeah.” “So, my name is Andy Christian." And I wrote out her name. And the next line said address. I said, "Mama, that's where we live." She told me, I wrote it. We went all the way down the form this way until we got to the last line.

 

It had a word that I was not quite familiar with, it sounded like sig nature. And she said, "What's that?" I said, "Mama, I think that's when you write your name real squiggly like." [audience chuckle] And she said, "I can do that." And she did. She looked at me, and she started to cry, and she hugged me real tight and she said, "You will never know what it's like to be ignorant." Now, I didn't know what she was talking about. I'm 10 years old. All I know is I was doing something to help my mama. And because my mama and my daddy both were illiterate and they wanted to encourage my reading, they decided to go out and buy me all these pretty books that had pretty pictures on them.

 

So, as a 10-year-old, I started to gather up a real big collection of books. I had General Principles of Engineering, [audience chuckle] Ron L. Hubbard's Dianetics, [audience laughter] General Psychopathology, Sex After Sixty [audience laughter] and Green Eggs and Ham. [audience laughter] So, I was ready for the world with that. [audience laughter] But my folks loved me enough that if I had decided to drop out of school and got a job working at the factory and stayed out of trouble with the police, they would have been happy for me. But I wanted more than that out of life. I wanted those things I was reading in those books. 

 

And because I was a marginal student and a marginal athlete, there was little or no chance of me going to college or getting any kind of scholarship at all. But there was one organization that was offering me a job, and that was the United States Army. Now, thinking that the harder the job is, the more money you'd get paid, I said to the recruiter, "Give me the hardest job you got." And they did. I became a paratrooper. I had never been on an airplane before in my life. 

 

Well, at some point, the army went from being my stepping stone in life to my island. And I decided to reenlist. But no amount of toughness or hardness can help you get promoted in the military without education. I remember how I would hear army lawyers talk, and other officers, and just a turn of a phrase or you change a few words and somebody could get promoted or not promoted. You could be found guilty or not guilty. So, I started thinking to myself, you know what? When I get out of the army, I'm going to become a lawyer. So, I started telling everybody that. But most of the time when an officer heard me say something like that, they would just roll their eyes. But I would keep on saying it. 

 

In fact, one officer actually said to me, "Listen, you don't even have a college degree. You need to focus your attention on being a paratrooper. That's your job." Well, from that point forward, I started taking college classes at night. I remember showing up to class dirty, bleeding, hurting, stinky, funky. But seven years from this period and two years after I actually retired from the army, I did earn my bachelor's degree. [audience applause] 

 

Well, the first thing I did after that is I started applying to law schools. But it didn’t take long before those little envelopes started to arrive. Rejection. "We’re sorry." Rejection, rejection, rejection. But one day, a big envelope came in the mail. I was accepted to law school. I am going to law school. I told everybody, "Guess what? I am going to be a lawyer. I am going to be a lawyer. I am going to help the little guy. I am going to help everybody." In fact, one of my friends in the army said to me, "Hey, Ray, you think you could help me sue the army?" [audience laughter] “Hell, yeah, I’m helping everybody. I’m going to be a lawyer for everybody on earth.”

 

Well, when I got to law school, I was not the typical law student. Not at 38 years old, not being a combat vet, not having PTSD and four children. I was different. I mean, law school was hard. It’s hard to help your kids with their algebra homework, but reading 200 pages a night was difficult. I didn’t make friends easily. But there were three older guys in the law school that became friends of mine. They started palling around with me. But almost right away, after the midterm exams were completed, I had failed everyone. And the only chance that I had now to finish law school was I had to ace all the final exams. 

 

It wasn’t long after this period that I got this message that the assistant dean of the law school wanted to speak to me in his office. I went to his office, and I remember he had his back turned to me when he said, "You should withdraw." I said, "I don’t want to withdraw. I’m not going to quit. I spent my whole life thinking about this mostly. I’m not going to quit." He said again, "You should withdraw. And if you should graduate, I’ll eat my head." When I walked out of his office, I started thinking about what my mama had said, "You’ll never know what it’s like to be ignorant." But I did in that moment. 

 

Later, I saw this sign on the wall, it was announcing the Mary Wright closing argument competition. This is the highlight of the law school year. All the top law students and the law professors, they pick out these students they want to mentor and they work on this competition. It is a big deal. The whole law school turns out to see it. This is what I had come to law school for. This was like being a lawyer on TV. This is what I wanted to do. But I also knew that I wasn’t doing well in law school. In fact, when a law professor heard that I was thinking about it, he said to me, "Look, you need to focus your attention on academics and not extracurricular activity." So, at that point, I forgot about it. But my three older friends, they came to me and they say, "Ray, man, you ought to do it anyway. This is what we do. This is what you talk about. Come on, what do you got to lose? Try it. Try it." “Okay, I’m in." But I couldn’t get any law professors to work with me. 

 

A few weeks prior to the competition, I really hadn’t done anything at all. I wrote a few notes on a tissue paper, and that’s all the preparation I had. And the way the competition worked, you’re standing outside and the whole law school is inside. You knock on the door, you go in, people would make their presentation, you’d hear applause. Next person would go in, make their presentation, you’d hear applause. Then my turn came. And when I went in, I knew that I couldn’t talk about any fine points of the law. I couldn’t talk about elements of torts. I couldn’t talk to them about subject matter jurisdiction. But I could tell them a story. I could tell them about right and wrong. I could tell them about justice and injustice. And I close with this line, "And just like the boogeyman that lives under my girl’s bed, made up from dust bunnies, buttons and lost Christmas toys, exposed to the light, the prosecution’s case just isn’t there" and I walked the hell out. [audience laughter] [audience applause] 

 

But I walked out to complete silence. [audience laughter] But soon as the door closed behind me, I heard what sounded like thunder. And that was the sound of the entire law school applauding all at once. I never went back inside, but I couldn’t help but cry. Well, the final exams would come and they would go. And two weeks later, I would find out I won the competition. [audience applause] 

 

But four weeks later, I would find out I was being academically dismissed from law school. I was broken. I never felt so bad in my life. I thought about how embarrassed I was. I thought about all the people I was never going to help, all the things I was never going to do. And it took me a while to think to myself, maybe, just maybe, I did get a feather in my head. Maybe, I did get a gold star. I mean, I beat out some of the smartest people in the law school at their own game. And if I hadn't had this stupid idea of becoming a lawyer, I would have never went to college, I'd have never earned graduate degrees in history and education, I never would have became a college professor. I wouldn't be halfway completed with my dissertation right now. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

So, the journey didn't take me to a place where I could knock out injustice in the courtroom, but the journey did take me to a place where I could combat ignorance in the classroom.