“Do-less”—a Word That Needs To Be in Your Vocabulary

The Rev. Neil O’Farrell prays that good boys become good men

In my native West Virginia, there is a word used to mean exactly what it sounds like it means. I’ve heard the word used no place else. The word is “do-less” (my spelling because I’ve never seen the word written out; accent falling on the first syllable). A synonym might be shiftless, but shiftless connotes a value judgment, whereas do-less is more neutrally descriptive.

My undergraduate years were a do-less time in my life. I would have benefited greatly had I taken a year or two off after high school to get both some maturity and life experience. The problem was that if you were deemed smart, by definition, you had answers and go to college right away. When I was 18 I had no answers because I’d barely formed questions.

This was also the time I first experienced bouts of periodic depression that have accompanied me since. Being depressed is not a conducive frame of mind to focus on how you might spend the rest of your life. What little energy I had was spent in keeping my grades up, although the second semester of my freshman year still causes me a shudder when I think about it.

After that terrible freshman year, I headed home. I had no notion of what I’d do for the summer months. Working at the Dairy Queen would have demanded more initiative than I had.

In a small town, there are few secrets, so my do-less-ness was noted by, of all people, the school superintendent. The superintendent called my father and asked if I would be interested in being a Head Start teacher. The person the board had lined up had fallen through, and though I didn’t have any teaching experience, I was qualified enough to give a leg up to twenty pre-schoolers.

I said yes—a decision spawned more by my do-less-ness, rather than the product of any real initiative or commitment. The Bible teaches that God tends to find the lost when they’re wandering aimlessly in the desert. One of my lessons from that summer.

So, I faced the kids on my first Monday morning in a classroom full of art supplies, games, a playground, and virtually no guidance. I was amiable, and being the eldest of six, I was used to dealing with youngsters. I could figure out what to do with construction paper, and I wasn’t afraid of getting dirty playing with the kids.

It took me a few days to catch my stride. The kids helped. Their enthusiasms and imaginations somehow put my own brain in gear. I didn’t know about anything as organized as a lesson plan, but I knew every morning what we’d be doing for the day, and I had a pretty good idea what the shape of the week would be like. It was only a six-week program, so I had a fairly constrained bill of fare for the little bit of the summer I would be with the kids.

I can’t avoid talking about class, as in socioeconomic class. I was the namesake son of the town’s dentist. These were 20 children who came from the hollows of a rural part of an extremely poor state. The gulf between us was real. To give you an idea:

One day I decided I’d bring the family’s pet guinea pig to class. A little show and tell, I figured. The kids screamed and ran for the corners of the classroom. They thought I’d brought a big rat to school with me. It took some coaxing and some hands-on experience for the kids to feel comfortable with my gentle, domesticated pet.

I did a little impromptu lesson on rodents and animal families. And I realized they were chasms in experience and world view that I was very naïve about. The kids were more sophisticated than I was. Their survival depended upon it.

I let them tape their arts and crafts projects all over every available surface. The kids learned the alphabet and how to write their names, something that delighted them. Their names were a prominent feature of all of the artwork they did, something they proudly took home with them.

They all were delightful in their own way. As hardscrabble as their lives were, they knew how to have fun, they laughed a lot, the truth didn’t scare them, and friends were golden. This is the point at which I grew to understand that rural poverty has a surprising element of dignity and gentleness—poor, though nonetheless—that is much less stark and dangerous than urban poverty.

The day I remember most was one of those days that the depressive demons caught hold of me. I thought I was hiding it, but these kids had learned to read me in exquisite detail. As I walked across the playground, one little red-haired boy with freckles named Gary came up and took my left hand, and held it as we walked.

Almost immediately, a little black kid name Jon (his was the first African-American hair I’d ever touched), came up and grabbed my right hand. Such innocent empathy! As the three of us walked together, my spirits lifted. Another life lesson learned: When you’re depressed, seek people out and don’t suffer alone in dark hole.

The six-week class ended. I went back to snob knob, and the kids went back to the hollows. I understood how easily one can learn to love almost any child. I learned about some of life’s hard edges, and knew then for the first time that I wanted to spend my life sanding those sharp edges down. I didn’t have a do-less summer after all.

I still remember Gary and Jon, their smiles, and the feel of their hands in my hands, Jon’s curly hair, and the comfort they gave me. They were such good little boys, and I hope and pray that they grew up to be good men.

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–Photo: rodrigomcv/Flickr

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