I have a litany of idiosyncrasies. One is that when I call Michelle, my daughter, we will chat. Interestingly, in a few moments, I will find myself in a Rogerian counseling session. In these psychotherapy sessions, I am both the client and the counselor. This happens every call, it seems. The other day I called to wish her a happy birthday. I mentioned that in a previous call that we had talked about the psychological term, projection.

The concept has a myriad of aspects and theories on projection. I had said something about Trump projecting his problems onto others. Trump criticizes Clinton for keeping classified documents.

However, Trump kept countless boxes of classified documents in his bedroom, bathroom, and a stage at Mar-a-Lago. Actually, anything negative that Trump utters is really a projection of his psyche.

Projection is often considered a negative term. However, I wanted Michelle's response to an awareness that I finally grasped after nearly a lifetime of it being right in front of me, and I didn’t see it. In my situation, I see it as a positive item in my life. But, first, a backstory.

In my journey down my yellow brick road of life, there have been two traumatizing events in my life: my family's moving to Mt. Lebanon and my two dances with death. Do you grasp that I mean feeling traumatized? I went from an above-average student in Pennsauken, NJ, a nice middle-class community in South Jersey, to Mt. Lebanon, PA. My dad was transferred to the insurance company’s home office in Pittsburgh, PA.

When looking for a home, my dad asked a real estate agent which area had the best school system. He wanted his boys to be prepared for college. Due to WWII, he lost his opportunity to go to college. The real estate agent told my dad that Mt. Lebanon is the best. Therefore, we moved to Mt. Lebanon. What the agent didn’t tell him was that it was the 19^th-best school system in the country and the wealthiest community in Western Pennsylvania.

So, what did I learn in that golden ghetto of Mt. Lebanon? I learned that I was dumb and poor. For example, Mrs. Davis was my homeroom teacher while in high school. She was also my English teacher. In English class, everyone had to memorize 100 lines of poetry or prose each semester. I dreaded having to memorize parts of famous writers each semester. To be honest, I hated it.

However, six decades later, I can still recite parts that I recited for Mrs. Davis, and often almost verbatim. If you were in my graduating class in 1961, I’d be willing to bet any classmates that I could recite more lines than you can. This is one example from Silas Marner, a novella written by George Eliot, Mary Ann Evans’ pen name.

It is fascinating to me that one assignment, which I detested, is the thing that I remembered the most while in high school. I recall many parts of poetry and prose to this day.

Enter Nancy Nuernberg. She was in my homeroom class. I don’t recall any of the names of the other students in my homeroom. Nonetheless, I recall where I sat, near the front of the class, next to the windows, and she sat relatively in the same seat next to the other wall.

I often walked Nancy home after school. Additionally, I also took Nancy to our senior prom.

There are two things that you need to know about Nancy. She was brilliant. During her senior year, she took college-level courses and was the valedictorian of our class.

Additionally, she lived in Virginia Manor, which was the wealthiest part of the golden ghetto that was Mt. Lebanon. Nancy had it all, educationally and financially.

During my Rogerian psychotherapy session, Michelle heard all this. I told her that until my eureka moment recently, I’d mused for decades about Nancy and me being polar opposites. She was brilliant and rich, and I was dumb and poor.

Then the question came to me, as a bolt of lightning, what’s with Nancy and me? We weren’t dating. She had a boyfriend who had graduated from Mt. Lebanon a year prior and was in college.

This is my theory. Nancy had more than brains and money. She was very pleasant and caring. However, what attracted me to her? My projection. I wanted to be like Nancy and to discard the label of being dumb and poor. For over six decades, I thought that it was just funny that we were so different when it came to IQ and money.

This is where the paragraph from Silas Marner enters the picture. I told Michelle that I had finally understood what I had memorized for Eliot’s novella: “We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction: a hand is put into theirs, which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land....” Nancy’s hand led me to a better place, but I wasn’t aware of it until recently.

Enter Ti Ti. A dozen years ago, I became my version of Nancy when I reached out to assist her educationally.

I have become Silas Marner to Ti Ti.

Ti Ti and me

Ti Ti, her sisters, and parents are my family.

It is important to remember my mantra: “It is in giving that we get.” When we reach out to others, we benefit as much as the recipient. Nancy benefited from assisting me, and I benefited from assisting Ti Ti and my family. While that sounds like an oxymoron, it isn’t.