The Birth Order Book (22 page)

A little pat on the head, a slap on the back, and a “Go get ’em—we’re counting on you” is enough to keep a lastborn going for hours, if not weeks.

That was certainly the case when I was the mascot for the high school team. One of my most legendary feats involved a sneak attack on another school’s mascot. Amherst Central High School was our mortal enemy in athletics, and their cheerleading squad included two guys who dressed up in a tiger suit and danced around on the sidelines during the basketball and football games. One night, as I watched from our side of the gym, a fantasy formed. What if I could sneak up on the tiger, yank off its tail, and run as fast as my 8-year-old legs could carry me back to our bench before anyone could stop me? Well, I did just that, and I made the high school paper with the banner headline Demon Leman Defeats Amherst Tiger in Halftime Bout.

With that kind of clipping, a lastborn barely needs food. He’s living on praise.

But it’s hard for a leopard (or a billy goat) to change its spots. Once I started getting all that reinforcement as a kid, I went on to develop clowning (as well as being a problem child) into a fine art. By the time I hit high school (literally), I was a master of sorts at getting laughs while driving teachers crazy.

I did all the dumb tricks: crawling out of class on my hands and knees, setting wastebaskets on fire, getting everyone in school to bring alarm clocks set for 2:00 p.m. and put them in their lockers. Today principals and teachers would shake their heads and go back to worrying about the newest dope pusher or gang member seen on campus. But in the 1960s, wastebasket arson was a big deal, and that kind of caper got me all kinds of laughs. It got so the other kids would come into a class on the first day of the term, see me, and start nudging each other and smiling. Yes, this class was going to be a blast. Leman was in it!

By the time I hit high school (literally), I was a master of sorts at getting laughs while driving teachers crazy.

No Joy to Have in Class

When some birth order charts talk about a lastborn’s charm, they mention that he or she can be “a joy to have in a group or a class.” Not for my teachers I wasn’t. Not only was I a constant disruption, I refused to learn anything either.

As a high school senior I took a course called consumer math, a fancy term for bonehead arithmetic. They stuck me in there because it was the last term of the year and they didn’t know what else to do with me.

The first six weeks I got a C, and the second six weeks I pulled a D. During the third six weeks, I was getting an F and was thrown out, but not before I had driven the teacher out as well. And I didn’t just drive the teacher out of class; I drove her out of teaching. She quit and didn’t come back!

The poor woman just didn’t know how to handle powerful attention getters like Leman. She thought I was out to get her. Not really—I was out to get laughs, admiration from my schoolmates, and the limelight. Very few of my teachers understood this, but one exception was an English instructor who kept me in line quite easily. He was so direct and businesslike that I knew my clowning would never work. As far as he was concerned, it was “shape up or you’re out of here!” I shaped up. How can you get attention if you’re not even there?

I didn’t just drive the teacher out of class; I drove her out of teaching. She quit and didn’t come back!

That instructor probably had never heard the term, but he was an expert in
reality discipline
, which is what I really wanted all the time, even more than the laughs and the attention. Lastborns especially want and need reality discipline, which deals directly and swiftly with their problem and/or attitude and demands that they be accountable for their actions.

Miss Wilson Saw through My Facade

I should have been a much better student—I had the ability—but the schools I grew up in did not hold me accountable. They just pushed me through. They wanted to get rid of guys like Leman—and the sooner the better. Very few of my teachers saw through my lastborn charade. I have mentioned the no-nonsense English instructor. There was also a math teacher who wasn’t fooled. As I came down to my last semester in high school, Miss Wilson pulled me aside, looked me in the eyes, and asked, “Kevin, when are you going to stop playing your game?”
5

“What game is that, Teach?” I asked. (Yes, I actually did call her “Teach.” After all, this was 1961 and we were “cool.”)

“The game that you play the best.” She smiled. “Being the worst!”

I laughed and tried to act as if I didn’t care, but she had me. Her words began to turn my life around, and they are still with me today. Years later I talked with Miss Wilson and thanked her again for sounding the challenge that woke me up. She smiled and said, “Oh, I did very little, Kevin. You did it yourself. You were a challenge all right, but I knew what you could do if you wanted to!”

What a beautiful, unselfish lady. And rather modest too. She didn’t even mention how she had tutored me at her home during those final weeks when I was making a last desperate attempt to graduate.

“College? I Couldn’t Get You into Reform School!”

When Miss Wilson blew my cover, so to speak, I went to the high school counselor and said, “I’ve been doing some heavy thinking, and I want to go to college.”

The counselor, Mr. Masino, looked up at me over the top of his glasses and without hesitation replied, “Leman, with your record, I couldn’t get you admitted to reform school!”
6

His response was, you might say, a bit discouraging, but I could understand where he was coming from. I ranked fourth in my class—fourth from the bottom—going into my final semester.

“Okay, I’ll show you,” I muttered as I was leaving his office. “I’ll get into college on my own!”

In those days there were no community colleges, so either you went to a four-year college or you went to work. I had a real aversion to the latter, so I chose school—
any
school. But because I didn’t know quite how to begin, I turned to the college admissions center at Evanston, Illinois, a commercial firm that for twenty-five dollars would submit a student’s “credentials” to 160 different institutions of higher learning.

My application went to schools of all kinds—ones with outrageous tuition fees and ones no one had ever heard of. Someone in the registrar’s office at Upper Iowa University wrote back and told me he couldn’t get me into UIU, but he had a brother-in-law who ran a refrigerator repair school, and would I be interested?

The bottom line is that my counselor was right. All 160 colleges and universities turned me down, even the one connected to our church denomination, North Park University in Chicago.

But I wouldn’t give up. I decided to focus in on North Park, hoping that church ties might overcome my puny grade point average. I kept writing back to North Park and called in reinforcements to bombard the school with their letters too. My brother, Jack, who had attended North Park for two years and later graduated from another college, sent a letter extolling my change of heart and determination to make it in college if given a chance. With my mother’s help, I persuaded my pastor to write a letter, then added my own final argument: the Bible verse on the virtues of forgiving a wrongdoer seventy times seven times.

All 160 colleges and universities turned me down. But I wouldn’t give up.

Nine days before the semester started, North Park relented and let me in on probation, with the understanding that I carry a twelve-unit load. My dad cashed in some life insurance policies to pay for room, board, and tuition, and I was on my way to college!

During the first year, the “fear factor” (fear of having to go to work) kept me going. Despite woefully weak preparation in high school, I eked out a C average. But then I ran out of gas. I guess I thought I didn’t have anything left to prove. In my sophomore year I fell behind and started failing fast.

I also failed in areas other than academic. Reverting to my high school habits, I sought attention by teaming with my roommate to rip off the ice cream conscience fund (established because of a faulty machine in our dorm that dispensed free ice cream) and buy pizza for our entire floor. We saw our crime as more of a prank than anything else. In fact, we made sure we told everyone we had done it. How can you get attention if you don’t advertise?

Two days later I attracted the kind of attention I didn’t want. The dean called me in and asked if I knew anything about the theft of the conscience money. In true lastborn fashion, I manipulated things a bit and said, “Yes, sir, I have heard that unfortunately some inconsiderate person has stolen the conscience-fund box.”

Well, the dean knew I was lying through my teeth, and he had no choice. He suggested that I’d had a hard year and I needed a rest—permanently—from North Park. I thought about his offer, and it seemed like an appropriate time to leave. I was failing my courses, and the dean had completely failed to see any humor in the conscience-fund caper. Besides, spring weather is always nasty in Chicago, and my parents had just moved to Tucson, Arizona, where it was nice and warm.

I Struck Gold Selling Magazines—for a While

So I left school and went home to Tucson, where I spent the summer trying to find a job, but to no avail. That fall I enrolled in a night course at the University of Arizona and continued trying to find work. Jobs remained scarce; the minimum wage was about $1.10 an hour, but then I saw the ad in the paper: Earn $90 a Week, Guaranteed.

I answered the ad and found myself applying for a job selling magazines door-to-door. I got the job, but selling magazines door-to-door was something I had never done, so the company gave me an “intensive” training course that lasted all of one afternoon. I learned a basic pitch that involved getting the customer to believe he or she was subscribing to three magazines and getting four additional ones free. The customer had to put $7 down and then pay $2.95 a month— for 26 months.

Even a Consumer Math flunky like me could figure out that this would amount to a final total of $83.70 (including the original $7 down). Obviously customers weren’t paying for three magazines and “getting four free.” They were paying what amounted to $12 a year for each of seven magazines. But my bosses taught me to count on the very basic human desire to “get a good deal” and buy on impulse.

Training completed, I reported back the next morning. I was driven out to a middle-class Tucson neighborhood, dumped on a corner, and told, “Okay, see what you can do and be back right here at 1:00 p.m. sharp.”

With real eagerness, I started knocking on doors, giving the pitch, taking orders, and collecting the seven dollars up front. The morning flew by, and I looked at my watch just in time to get back to my pickup corner by 1:00. Back at the office, I handed my sheaf of orders to my immediate supervisor. I thought I had done fairly well and was anxious to see what she’d say. Joyce looked at all the papers in her hand and said, “What are
these
?”

“Well, they’re my orders,” I stammered, thinking that somehow I had really blown it and that my sales career was over.

“You mean you got
all
these orders this morning?” she said with disbelief in her tone.

“Yep,” I said with a sheepish smile.

“You better come with me,” Joyce directed, and we walked back to the manager’s office. She waved the orders in his face and said, “Larry, look! Look at what Calvin did!”

I was feeling so good that I didn’t even bother to correct her on my name. She was holding
twenty-seven orders
for magazines, a new one-morning record for Tucson, if not the entire nation, as far as that company was concerned.

And what was my big secret to magazine-selling success? Well, it didn’t hurt to be wearing a University of Arizona T-shirt. And all those stay-at-home moms felt sorry for me as I stood hot and sweaty on their doorstep. Occasionally I’d be invited in and handed a lemonade, and then my baby-of-the-family personality just took over. I never was pushy or hard sell. I used the soft-sell approach—what I call “bringin’ your dancin’ shoes”—and I usually left with an order.

With some money coming in, I continued my night course at the University of Arizona and sold magazines by day. While I had excellent intentions, the double load proved too much, and I started falling behind in my schoolwork. That bothered me, but something bothered me even more. For a young kid, I was making really decent money selling magazines, but I kept having a gnawing feeling about what I was doing.

I kept having a gnawing feeling about what I was doing.

It wasn’t really robbing people, but it was all just a little bit too slick. I talked to my supervisor, Joyce, about quitting, and she couldn’t believe it. “Why would you want to do that?” she asked. “You’re the best salesman we’ve got. You’re doing very well and you’re just a kid.”

I thanked Joyce for the compliment and said I still thought I’d better quit. Getting people to spend money on magazines they didn’t necessarily need or want was starting to bother me.

“Sorry to lose you, Kevin,” she said with a shrug. “You’re a naturalborn salesman if I ever saw one.”

As I left the dingy apartment that served as the magazine sales office, I was glad that I had discovered that I was a “naturalborn salesman” and that Joyce had even finally gotten my name right. At the same time, was I just going to waste my talent and never amount to anything? Where was I going to find a job that would pay as well as selling magazines?

Deep down, however, my conscience told me I had done the right thing. I had decided to use my abilities to serve people, not slicker them. I have never been sorry. Eventually I went on to get degrees that led me into my present, very people-centered profession—counseling and teaching.