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As I’ve continued my Lenten discipline of giving up silence here on Gardner Writes, I’ve realized all along that I’d need to tell some stories, somehow, about my encounters with third rails. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

• scolding adults for playing with matches in a dormitory during a summer program
• expressing my serious doubts about whether there should include an entry for “God” in The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy (to be sure, a microcosm of many other concerns I had during that project)
• trying to fix an Apple Talk network in a writing center computer lab (no, I wasn’t electrocuted–these are figurative third rails)
• accepting a promotion
• trying to figure out if a non-profit organization was actually chartered or not (multiple times) and trying to figure out why it was hard to get that information from the staff (multiple times)
• trying to encourage a “well-oiled machine” to become more of a site for innovation and program development
• getting a leadership certificate from a program designed for chairs of boards of directors for non-profit organizations
• leading an effort to revise a general education curriculum

There are others.

The point here is not that I’ve been unlucky. I’ve been very lucky, and very unlucky; on balance, the lucky breaks have been far more numerous. But touching the third rail is always a shock, and I seem to have an instinct for it (if “instinct” is defined as “moth-to-flame”). I know better now, but that’s not much use really, though I do try to forgive myself for all my blunders, and above all, for not knowing better at the time. All of that said, the things I tried to do, I believe I tried to do in good faith, and I believe they are things well worth trying to do. If I have grown skeptical about whether, finally, there is anything to be done … well, some days I’m more hopeful than others.

Milton once wrote that not everyone is fit to be a champion for the truth, and Johnny boy, I feel that, yes I do, and I’m not even sure it was the truth, though I tried to be discerning. On the other hand, as Jerry Garcia said, “Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.” So there’s that.