Welcome to the Wheel of Fortune! La Rota Fortuna
Where game show contestants (human beings in the game of life) compete to see who wins and who loses - except they don’t really compete, they just think they do.
Because they are subject to the random acts of one finicky woman - the Goddess Fortuna. Move over Vanna White.
According to wiki, The Wheel of Fortune was a concept begun in medieval and ancient philosophy referring to the capricious nature of Fate.
The wheel belongs to the Roman goddess Fortuna, who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel whenever she feels like it - some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. Even the Christian philosopher Boethius wrote about it in a famous text stating:
I know how Fortune is ever most friendly and alluring to those whom she strives to deceive, until she overwhelms them with grief beyond bearing, by deserting them when least expected …
... and then he goes on to explain how there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it - and only idiots try to control it.
Here’s how a tempestuous Fortuna played with our lives over the next year...
Indiana State wanted Ryan for track starting in January.
The wheel goes up.
But they had no scholarship money left. He had to pay for the semester himself if he wanted to attend - to the tune of over $6,000.
The wheel goes down.
But if Ryan joins the track team (especially the long jump event because he went to state for that), they promise him a full scholarship for the following year.
The wheel goes up.
Although he was working, he was still short by half and can’t get a loan because he’s not an American. I can’t get a loan because I’m in law school full-time.
The wheel goes down.
Then when all hope seems lost, he is informed that anonymous donors from his church are prepared to cover the rest. (Bless their hearts).
The wheel goes up.
I finish my first semester of law school stressed to the nines and exhausted from worry, school and work. With final exams comprising 100% of my grade, the only thing I’m positive of is that I will finish this semester below the average I need to keep my scholarship. But I don’t care - I’ll have another term to pull up my grades.
All I want to know right now is that my kid will be in school this January and will finally get his shot.
The day after my last final, we take the drive down to Indiana State.
They show us around campus. We meet the track coach and the academic advisor. They promise Ryan a job so he can make a little pocket money. They sign him up for classes. It’s all good.
Then we happen to walk by the football coach’s office where we pop in to say hi. The advisor is about to introduce Ryan when the coach looks up with a look of sudden recognition and says:
“You’re Ryan Fics.”
“Yes sir, I am” Ryan replies and shakes his hand.
“Ryan is going to join our track team” says the advisor to the coach.
“Is that right?” replies the coach and smiles, while looking at Ryan.
Ryan just smiles back at him.
“Well, that’s great.” He says, while adding, “You had a helluva year in football.”
“Thank-you sir.”
They both knew the deal.
Ryan would indeed be running track - or whatever else it is they wanted him to do - but as sure as I’m writing this blog, that kid had every intention of walking onto that football field and blowing them away by showing them what he could do.
He was going to try out and was determined to be their first string RB by the end of the season if it killed him. He had never stopped training for it.
It was going down.
The Wheel of Fortune is still up.
We drove home on Cloud 9.
There are no words to describe the satisfaction (and relief) we felt, knowing with perseverance, after 3 years, things were finally falling into place.
And then one hour into the drive home, I got the phone call.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but... we made a mistake. Because Ryan is not an American citizen, his tuition is 18,000 not 6,000.”
Say what???
I turned to look at Ryan and he knew instantly something was terribly wrong. I turned my attention back to the phone.
“But he graduated from a high school in Indiana. The policy says that in-state tuition fees apply.”
“I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do.”
.....
Turning to Ryan and telling him, was one of the hardest things I have ever done.
The Wheel of Fortune went down. And it was staying there.
The first time I saw Ryan fall apart was when we had nowhere to live and no idea how we were going to survive but he decided to come back and give it a shot anyway.
The second time I saw him fall apart was after the North-South All star game because he never got a chance to prove himself when it counted most.
The third time was in that car.
I have never, ever, sworn so much in my life, nor taken the Lord’s name in vain with such vehemence and unrelenting anger as I did at that moment.
But Ryan was silent.
He was silent because he was busy crying in a stream of tears that never seemed to end, as I am doing now while reliving the god damn memory of it all once again.
He was silent because in that moment, the efforts of the last three and a half years came crashing down around him like a glass house in an earthquake.
It had finally all proved to be too much.
To this day, there was not a single, solitary thing either of us could think of that we might have done differently to secure a different result.
We had left no stone unturned in the process over three and a half years.
He never slacked once in his effort to make it, and I never slacked once in my efforts to keep us there and alive long enough for him to get what he truly deserved.
Not a single thing.
After I had gotten a healthy dose of swearing out of my system, the true sadness of the situation began to sink in. When Ryan finally spoke, his words cut like a knife, yet I knew he had no alternative...
“I’m going home.”
NEXT - PART VI - post script and lessons learned....
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