ABOUT ME — Patrick Weseman and How I Got in the Classroom

Sometimes it feels that life is so random but it really isn’t. I look back at my life and even things that seemed random are really not. I guess they all are part of the master plan.

I guess I have been thinking about my own shit lately because of the death of my brother. We were not close and we didn’t really talk the last ten years of his life but I did love him.

I look at my life and I have lived an interesting and good life so far at age 52. The funny thing is that I haven’t planned one fucking thing in my life.

I mean I am finishing up my 25th year in the Special Education World. It is fucking amazing, coming out of high school I would be the last person you would thought would be a SPED teacher.

In high school I was a fuck-up. I did a lot of stuff that wasn’t cool. By today’s standards, I would have been expelled if I was I caught. I mean besides smoking a lot of weed, I was also selling milk with Kahlua, Cigarettes (You could smoke on our campus), was also gambling and I used to put my French’s teacher stuffed animals that she had on the window sill in some weird ass sexual positions. I mean I was one of those kids who pissed off all my teachers, my school counselor and the admin. They would sit here and say, this kid is smart but he doesn’t follow the rules and is a non-conformist, i.e., FUCK UP and it would grate them to no end.

I guess I was your classic dead-end kid. I mean after high school, I went to junior college and fucked up there. I guess I was put on double secret probation and after my first two and half years (at a two-year junior college) my GPA was a stellar- 0.5. F territory.

I remember saying way back in the day that I wouldn’t have kids or join the military. Well, sports fans I did both.

Anyway, as I was fucking up in junior college and taking way too much LSD (when interning at different radio stations in the late 80’s, drugs were pretty much a given) I actually had a moment of clarity or an epiphany. That moment was that I needed to change my situation. I was still living at home and it was disintegrating rapidly. My parental unit and I were not getting along. I was not doing well in school but I was working and I was doing way too many drugs and drinking too much.

So I decided to run away and join the Navy.

The Navy basically saved me and I found my career.

How does a person find special education in the U.S. Navy. Well, it is a long story.

I was a Yeoman Third Class (E-4, Petty Officer Third Class) and was waiting for my ship and they had us doing odd jobs around the base. Basically stay the fuck out of sight and not do anything stupid.

One Thursday night many years ago (like 29 years ago), I went out with about five other people who were waiting for the same ship as me. We took the ferry across the Sound and took in a Mariner game and decided to have a drink in every bar we saw between the old Kingdome and the ferry terminal as long as we made it before midnight (that is when the last ferry left). We found out that there are lot bars.

By the time we got to the ferry terminal we were beyond hammered. We sobered up a bunch on the ferry and made it back to the base. Knowing, it was only a half of a work day in a couple of hours. We decided to go back to my room on base and have a couple of cans of Rainer beer.

We stopped drinking about 4:00 am and managed to get our sorry asses together for quarters at 7:30 am. We all looked like we just rolled out of the same garbage can.

Anyway, the Chief Petty Officer in charge of us looked at us and told us that we were to report at noon to the local YMCA and bring our swimming shorts.

He didn’t say much more and we thought it was great. We could go sleep off our drunk and do something that was not to stressful.

Wrongo, turns out we were volunteered to swim with autistic kids. Imagine this, a hung-over Naval sailor who doesn’t know shit about autism or special education swimming with kids.

Anyway, a kid flashed on me and I ended up with swimming and playing with him all afternoon. He was non-verbal and I enjoyed my time with him. We went back to the locker room and I got dressed and he said “Thank You”. One of his teachers said “Wow, he spoke to you and he doesn’t speak to anyone.” They were impressed. I kind of shrugged it off and went about the rest of my day. As I said at that time in my life I was pretty much an idiot and didn’t realized how big of deal this was for the kid.

A couple of weeks later, the place called my ship looking for me. I guess they liked me and asked if I could be “volunteered” again. I forgot what we did but it was something different. I enjoyed it and they liked me and for the next 18 months, every time our ship was in our home port and they needed a volunteer, they called the ship looking for me.

The Navy’s image was in bad shape at that time and their PR rating was horrible.This was right during the whole Tailhook scandal and even though I was a very small fish, someone could say look we do some positive things in the community. So my ship was really happy to “volunteer” me. Plus (I think this deep down inside) I knew I didn’t want to re-list and had started an attitude of that I was just marking time and the powers on the ship knew it also.

I enjoyed what I did with the kids. I didn’t have the education, background or experience to know any better. Hell, I didn’t even know what autism at that time. I was just being me and enjoying being with these kids.

I sometimes think where I would be if I wasn’t drunk that morning. Because I was drunk, I was able to find as the great Steelers Hall of Fame Head Coach Chuck Noll once said “My Life’s Work”