The Man Still Has            Epilepsy

The man who had epilepsy last week, still has it this week. He is a skilled salesman, and perhaps that’s the reason he’s so successful in handling the subject of epilepsy in his job as a high-school math teacher and track coach. A good salesperson knows when to say what, and how best to say it. His high-school teacher name is Mr. Something, so I will call him Mr. Harris.

Mr. Harris tells all the students in each of his classes about the epilepsy at the start of each year. He designates a student in each class to take over leadership in case he, Mr. Harris, has to bow out without notice. He has a place to lie down whenever his body signals the need for it.

He had his first seizure, he says, when he was "sixteen and a half years old." When somebody talks like that, they’re talking about a day they will never forget. Not that anyone would ever forget a day like that, but Mr. Harris is in his 50’s now, and when someone in their 50’s talks like that, it means something. He had to re-think everything in his life, from that point. He decided that he would never partake of any kind of drugs-for-fun, and has never tasted alcohol or pot or anything else. Epilepsy is enough to handle, without adding intoxicants. That’s his reasoning on the subject. He said that he knows people who drink, and he thinks that’s foolish, though of course, he would never mention that to them unless they asked for his opinion. (Well, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t. We didn’t discuss it.) When he said that he knows people who drink, he meant people with epilepsy. He knows a lot of people who have epilepsy, and recommends knowing a lot of people who have the same situation as yourself.

Mr. Harris took anti-convulsants at first, but he does not take them now. I think he did a lot of research in the early years, and what he found out about the long-term effects of anti-convulsants did not agree with him. He thought there must be a better way, and in his opinion, there is. Bio-rhythms. Bio-rhythms were developed, according to Mr. Harris, specifically for people with epilepsy. First the chemical kind, then the injury kind. The idea seems to be very close attunement with the body, so that you know when a seizure is about to happen, and you can forestall or lessen it by behavior. Mr. Harris rests immediately and completely whenever he feels the need. He still has a seizure occasionally, but most times, he says, he can catch it in time. He must be pretty good at it. He drives.

Mr. Harris told me about a time when he had a seizure in class. Everyone in his classes knows what to do if he (Mr. Harris) has to remove himself suddenly, or has a seizure, and everybody did what they knew to do. Somebody took over leadership of the class, and somebody else went for help. It was a Friday. When he returned to work on Monday, the students thought he was very brave. I think so, too. A seizure is a very undignified thing. You need a lot of guts to keep going after being seen like that by people who should admire you. These people have good reasons to admire this man, and they know it.

That’s the key; they know it. They would have just as much reason to admire Mr. Harris if they didn’t know it, but it wouldn’t do them any good. That’s where those sales techniques come into the picture. Mr. Harris knows that people won’t stand for anything that’s forced upon them, and that everybody loves to partake. He puts everybody in a position to partake.

I haven’t mentioned the coach part yet. Mr. Harris also coaches track, although he says he’s not going to do that anymore after this year. I haven’t known him long enough to know whether or not he says that every year. That’s not important to this story, though. What is important, is what he has to say as a coach. Here’s what he said:

"The difference between clearing a 5’2" hurdle, and clearing a 7’2’ hurdle is not as much about skill, as about believing you can do it. It’s 90% belief, and 10% skill." After he said that, he amended it to say it’s 100% about belief, but he was talking about something else, really. He was talking about sales, and using track as an illustration. I don’t think he really believes that it’s 100% belief, and nothing to do with skill. Not in track, or anything else. If he did, he wouldn’t have bothered himself to learn bio-rhythms, or classroom techniques, or sales techniques. But that’s what he said, and now I think about it yet again, I’m thinking maybe there’s something in the amendment that’s important. It seems like the kind of thing you have to think about for a long time, if you find it worthy to think about at all. I’m thinking you have to believe you’re capable of developing the skill that’s necessary to do something, or you won’t have the drive to develop the skill. I have slaved over skills, because I believed there was a future in it. So maybe, down at the bottom, it is all about belief. See how Mr. Harris inspires a person to listen carefully to what he says? Good teacher. I’ll be thinking about it for years to come.

By the way, I’ve talked with a few people in the past week about that stick. You know, the one you’re supposed to use to prop open the mouth of anyone who’s having a seizure, so they don’t "swallow their tongue." My son has never heard of such a thing, but his girlfriend has. Her thinking on the subject is not the same as mine. She wonders, "if they’re going to swallow their tongue, won’t they swallow the stick, too?" She doesn’t seem to have gotten as far as to wonder where the stick is supposed to come from. Maybe different people just wonder about different things. It never occurred to me that swallowing the stick would be an issue. I thought more along the lines of size and strength of the stick, and what kind of damage it would do to someone’s mouth. Never thought much about what a person who has seizures would be doing the rest of the time, when they were not having a seizure. People like Mr. Harris are able to make dunces like me think about things like that. Like I said, I think the sales skills are an important factor. If you want to educate people, I recommend you study sales techniques. If you want to educate people about epilepsy, you’ve got your work cut out for you.

After this week, I’ll be writing a different column. Don’t laugh. It’s going to be "humor."