If I say the great Ted Williams, you think baseball player, right? Okay, I skewed your reaction by throwing “the great” in front of his name, so if I just say, Ted Williams, it is just as likely that you will think about the roller coaster story that began a couple of weeks ago. Ted “The Voice” Williams, discovered on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, looking worse for the wear, got another shot at life, because a videographer stopped at a light to give a dollar to a homeless guy. I say another shot, because as the story has unfolded Ted has had many chances with the help of family and friends, to fight off his demons, though one can’t be certain he has ever been properly treated.
The story of Ted Williams was really the first story of the new year concerning mental health, not that anyone paid any further attention after the second story, the Tucson shooting, overwhelmed Williams’ story. Ted Williams had trained in radio and, at 71, still possesses the holy grail of broadcasting, the great voice. Ted, according to his story, had been in radio but fallen on hard times through addiction and “other things”, which turned out to be a criminal record. Ted’s is another of those moments that speak to the best and the worst of us. Worse than that, it speaks to our indifference. Andy Warhol’s promise of 15 minutes of fame for everyone did not exclude the promise of the nightmare of fame.
There are, of course, many reasons for homelessness. Loss of employment, victim of domestic violence, home fire, mental illness and addiction are just a few of the problems that precede homelessness. In my years as a legal aid housing lawyer I came into contact with hundreds, if not thousands of homeless and at-risk people, each one with a unique set of facts that resulted in losing a home. Some folks were just unfortunate, others were reckless, self-destructive or non-compliant with a treatment program.
One of my clients lost not only a home, but an infant child, in a fire in their mobile home. The fire also destroyed the family’s only car, which eventually resulted in the dad losing his job and all of the bad credit that followed. Depression and substance abuse followed. They were young and torn apart by the loss. They felt guilty when they were offered housing when all they really wanted was their baby. It took over two years to start to put their lives back together.
Another client, an obsessive-compulsive, fixated on junk piles waiting for bulk trash pickup in front of houses in his neighborhood. He could not resist the urge to pick up items he considered useful and bringing them to his rented house in old East Dallas. He filled the 2200 square feet to the ceilings in almost every room. Lamps, tables, chairs, books, appliances, clothing, desks, cookware, toys – it was unending. Small pathways wound through the house, leading to a dead end of refuse, 8 feet high. I kept him from getting evicted with his agreement to get some help – three times. Three times he was non-compliant. His family had money and he had support, though their patience had worn out over the years. Finally, I had to deny him services due to his failure to live up to past agreements. I still occasionally see him on the streets. I stop and talk to him and sometimes he has home, more often he is homeless.
The real face of homelessness, however, for most of us, is the face of a man like Ted Williams, downtrodden, holding a cardboard sign or pushing a shopping cart living in squalor just off a highway, under a bridge, behind a building, or in a homeless village in an urban forest, a park or undeveloped area. The cardboard sign asks for any help or a job, or food but often the real motive is money to buy liquor or drugs.
When I first saw the viral video of Ted Williams, I said to myself, “Wow. There is a man with a big talent and an ugly story.” When I heard him say in that first video that he had been sober two years, I had my doubts. No one “two years sober” as Ted claimed, could possible continue living in a tent by the highway, as revealed in the video. When I heard that job offers were flooding in from the Cleveland Cavaliers and Kraft, etc., I hoped for the best. Even with my experience, there was a moment, when I said to myself, oh look, it’s going to work out for this guy. It may still but certainly not like the fairy tale beginning to Ted’s saga had suggested.
Ted, had been asking for “any help”. He got way more than he bargained for. He appeared on the “Today” show and received offers from Kraft, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and others, before heading west for a round of talk shows and radio spots. I am sure there was a part of Ted that just wanted to remain a median strip carnival act, entertaining people at the stop light in exchange for a enough money to buy a little food, a lot to drink, and to be left alone. But something in Ted decided to try to go a different way. Maybe he thought it would just be some quick cash and he could return to his tent on the highway. I think, however, he saw people wondering at and appreciating his talent and he had the fire to live again. The internet video exploded and brought a flood of attention. Suddenly, millions of people cared and wanted to know his story and help. People who had driven past Ted, and all of the other Ted’s of the world a thousand times, suddenly cared. Ted cared, too. It had been a long time since he had been responsible and the low self-esteem of the addict was whispering in his hear that he did not deserve this.
A couple of days into his west coast stay, there was a loud altercation at the hotel where Ted was staying with family members. His mother, a wife and grown children - who he reunited with after his rediscovery in Columbus, have mustered the emotional energy to support Ted’s next attempt at sobriety. It may be his best and last chance. Dr. Phil is on the scene and has Ted in rehab. Ted has not had, despite his original claims, any significant period of sobriety and he has admitted as much. He apparently has a girlfriend who was arrested sometime back for drugs while Ted was riding with her in her car. Ted’s family worries he will fall back in with his old life and friends and blow this amazing opportunity. Ted may not even be his own worst enemy in this. Where there is money there is an opportunity for exploitation.
So, if we never hear of Ted Williams again, we’ll know why. The rehab just didn’t work out and Dr. Phil, the Cavaliers, Kraft, all, rightfully, dropped him like a hot potato. If that happens we’ll know where we can find him. There’s a little tent off I-71 in Columbus. Hopefully, though, this is the rare story of grace and salvation. We all want to get those chills and shed a tear from seeing a man pick himself up, when almost everyone else has given up on him, and lean on his angels to deliver him the peace in his life where he can use his beautiful talent. Godspeed, Ted Williams.
Our minds are so fragile. I read a study somewhere about dissociation, a term that includes out-of-body experiences, the feeling situations are unreal, and so on. It turns out that if you ask people (on a questionnaire) if they've had any of these experiences in the last 90 days, about 30% of us say yes. If people are under a lot of stress, hungry or fatigued or afraid, the proportion goes up. How do we ever get anything done? How do we put things in order, with all the various addictive molecules around us and our own fragile brain chemistry? How do we ever concentrate on anything? How in God's name can we do mathematics or yoga or anything requiring precision? It's a wonder we aren't all like Ted Williams, or worse.
ReplyDeleteI was once the night supervisor of a college dormitory. Once I found someone sleeping in the lobby, obviously not a student. I woke him up and asked him why he was there. I asked that question because of the possibility I might be dealing with a medical problem, insulin shock, a drug overdose, whatever. I couldn't just make assumptions and shove people out the door; you never know what's really happening.
He looked at me and thought it over. "It all started when I left California," he began. And that was so close to normal thinking it took my breath away. It was almost normal thinking, with some important steps left out.
Later I read an article about schizophrenia. Schizophrenics lack the small-scale sense of time that most of us have, the ability to differentiate one moment from the next. That's why schizophrenics don't have a sense of humor---because humor depends on carrying context from one moment to the next, until some contradiction or surprise disrupts the context and expectations: the punch line or the moment that makes us laugh. It's not that schizophrenics can't form memories, they do if their symptoms aren't too severe. But that moment-to-moment thing is a blur for them. I don't know if the guy who was asleep in the lobby was a schizophrenic or not, but he didn't have the same sense of time as most of us.
It is so difficult to get perspective on our own state of mind. We get trapped in illusions all the time, just ordinary mistakes that stick around for some reason and become problems. The distinction between that experience and a mental illness seems pretty academic sometimes.