What Makes Each One of Us Different? Why Was I So Successful in School?

We are a crazy, mixed-up bunch of people--all of us. So different that it's hard to believe we are the same species. I guess if you looked down from the moon, we humans might look pretty similar. But I am struck by the differences. These differences are all the more striking within families. I have 3 daughters who are stunningly different, in appearance, in temperament, in so many other ways. My three brothers and my sister are all so different. What follows are a few guesses on why I am different from them.

To begin, I am the first-born kid in the family. I was even the first grandchild on my father's side. I imagine that the first born gets more attention than those that follow. Sometimes the parents and grandparents have more energy and even better health to deal with the first child or grandchild. I wouldn't use the "s-word" (spoiled), but the first-born has some advantages (and a few disadvantages, I might add). The first-born lives under stricter rules (in 3rd grade I had to be in bed by 8 PM during the school year; Jimmy probably went to bed after the Johnny Carson Show!). Sometimes the first-born lives in a family with very little money because the parents are at an early stage in their careers. I had to eat slum-gullion; Jim and Kev were chowing down on steak, those SOB's! Well, maybe I exaggerate a bit.

I know that I possess my parents' DNA, but there is enough shuffling that mother nature does that we brothers and sisters are pretty different. How did Denny get so tall? Mary Ellen so pretty? Why did Jim and Denny keep their hair (in contrast to Kev and me)? Why was Kevin such a fast runner and great football player? And how did he become a Republican, for God's sake!

One big question for me has to do with my success in school. Why did I do so well at all levels of school, from St. William's Grade School to St. Joseph High School, and to three colleges, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Cincinnati, and The Ohio State University? My simple answer is that I am more intelligent than my brothers and sister. But I know them too well to make that claim! I'm not that dumb and I don't want them to beat the crap out of me! We are all intelligent in our own ways. Somehow, my intelligence took me successfully through the American school system up to a doctorate degree.

I think my Dad especially gave me a lot of attention in my early years of schooling. He drilled me all the time on spelling and arithmetic. He took me to various libraries, Euclid Public, St. William's, and Cuyahoga County. And he read the newspaper and books--he was a fairly good model of a reader. He even managed to get hold of a magnificent set of used Collier Encyclopedias, one of the joys of my youth and adolescence.

Also, I really wanted to please my Mom and Dad by getting good grades in school. Later, I wanted to get straight A's because that would allow me to receive 7 pair of free Indians' baseball tickets. That played a huge role in my academic success.

One other strange factor was my sense of self. In first or second or third grade I was put into reading Group 2 at the beginning of the year. I'm guessing placement in that group was based on some sort of test scores. I remember thinking to myself (at age 6, 7,or 8): "I'm not group 2 material. I should be in Group 1, the top reading group." And then I proceeded to work real hard to prove to the teacher that I belonged in the top group. Within a week or so, I was moved to that group. Why did I think I was top-group material? Isn't that strange?

Along with this sense of myself, I was very competitive. I'm guessing that was partly a gift from my Dad and from my Grampa Coughlin--both very competitive athletes. This competitiveness helped me get into the top groups and helped me achieve top grades. It has been a theme through much of my life (occasionally to my detriment).

A couple of events probably shaped my life. When I was 2 going on 3, I was accidentally run over by my mother. The accident happened on Windermere Avenue in Willoughby. I had walked away from home to visit my Gramma and Grampa, who lived a block away on Hayes Avenue. My Mom didn't know where I was, and proceeded to back out our car to go looking for me. Unfortunately, as she was backing out, I was running up behind the car. I was seriously injured and had to be removed from under the car. I was taken by car to Huron Road Hospital in East Cleveland (a good 20 miles away), where they discovered a fractured skull, a concussion, and a broken collarbone, among other minor injuries. I was in the hospital for many days, a week I think. I remember vividly many details of this entire event. And I remember being so lonely in the hospital, without the presence of my Mom and Dad (at least at night). I remember them putting me in a crib-like bed, something I resented, thinking, "Here I am, almost 3 years old, and I'm put in something like a baby crib!" I remember that when I got out of the hospital, my Mom and Dad told me that I had turned 3 years old and that we were moving to a new house in Euclid, Ohio. Somehow, that accident and those days in the hospital shaped me.

Another important event that shaped my personality happened when I was 5-years-old and in Kindergarten. It must have been late winter or early spring of 1954 when I got an illness (measles, chicken pox, or influenza) that developed into pneumonia--very serious pneumonia. I remember going deaf at one point, and having severe vertigo where the room spun around. I had a terrible fever and remember Mom running frantically into the kitchen and putting me under the cold water to cool down the fever. As she turned on the water, spiders and snakes came out of the tap and I screamed. Then she rushed me to the bathroom tub, and did the same thing. Again, spiders and snakes came out of the faucet. The fever must have been very high to trigger hallucinations like that.

A doctor came to our house--this must have been the end of the era of home doctor visits. He prescribed a sulfa drug to treat my pneumonia, but it backfired, causing some sort of damage to my kidneys, as I ended up urinating blood. During this sickness I was stationed in my Mom and Dad's bed. I was totally (and temporarily, it turned out) deaf, had trouble breathing, and constantly coughed up thick mucus. I spent my day's between sleeping, looking at children's books (I couldn't read yet), and playing games with myself ("pick-up sticks" was a favorite). Something changed in me during that month-long sickness, something shaped my life-to-come. I was more interior, more reliant on my self and my imagination. I suffered through tremendous loneliness and isolation, and had survived. One day in early spring I saw my friends Brian Cox, Allen Lane, and Chucky Lintern playing in the yard. I was so sick that I couldn't go out and play with them. I felt a profound loneliness and even a sense of being deprived of life and vitality. I was determined that that would change. And it did.