One Trick Pony and the FNG

There’s a thing called position authority. This is the person who doesn’t do anything or go anywhere but is rewarded because they remain.  They are the kid who never passes grade 6 but remains in the class room , a potential big bully.  They undermine leadership because it threatens them.  They talk change but don’t want any change unless it serves their seige mentality place.  

I’ve lived in several countries, different continents, and several cities. Any kid that has moved around schools knows what that’s like.  As an adult I”m ever at risk from the local boy who thinks they’re grand and consider anyone who comes into their little pond a threat.  They have a group of local friends not so different from the adolescent gang. I’m mostly just passing through.  

I was in dance and theatre then the university arts and then university science.  I did medical school and each year was a different rotation. When I graduated and interned and became a member of the College of Family Practice I went out to be country GP.  Everything was new. Every community a challenge.  Every year of education you are the FNG - the ducking new kid.  It’s the same when. I was a flyin doctor in the sub arctic.  All new.  Failures and challenges and constantly people sniping.  They were always few I always had the most amazing people helping me succeed. Unfortunately I have a personality and character which remembers too well those people who wanted me to fail and didn’ want me to steal their dim light by my light. They were arrogant and would rather maintain their place by killing me than to improve their skills and capacity.  I was always an outside.  Ever learning ever moving I excelled as a family physician , then norther doctor and then moved onto the dual speciality of community medicine and psychiatry. Always the FNG .  I graduated psychiatry and became the psychiatrist then I did the American psychiatry exams having had to do the American medicine exam 4 years out of medicine.  I then came to be a prof at a different university and had to deal with the corruption and addition that was rife there.  I fought to stay alive. I defended the lost and made enemies of the crabs at the bottom. But I also met the most wonderful denizens of the deep and rainbow fish and dolphins.  I swam and learned to swim.  I would go on to be a subspecialist and again go through the gauntlet of relearning and learning and being the FNG .I’m at the end of a career and I look back to when I was a GP and literally ‘knew it’.  Today I am leading in my sub speciality and it’s hard in some areas to keep up There’s no support from on high. There has been tremendous support. I’ve always had amazing referral sources and colleagues, the heads of mediocre, neurology , family practice referring to me. Doctors, Olympic Athetes, Multi millionaires, celebrities seeking me out as their doctor. I’ve arrived in a way but not as the entrenched military with it’s ribbons and glory but as a guide out beyond the wire.  

In my personal time I was always failing too , never resting on my laurels , never the guy that new it all like those entrenched in position authorities who haven’t had to learn the new.  They politic. They also are jeaalous of me.  I envy them their safety and certainty. I’d love to hide in a castle and shoot down new knowledge and insist on the old and say it was new.  

Gymnast, volleyball player, martial artist, dancer,Cyclist, runner, climber, sailer, hunter, motor cyclist.  Each of these endeavours I did an rose rapidly in the ranks gaining skills and competing and getting though the gauntlet of the FNG. Always encountering the One Trick Pony. Thank you Paul Simon for that image.

Now they lie and say I was never a doctor. Now they question that I sailed across an ocean. I’m old and all those achievements and accomplishments are not. I’m overwhelmed and ashamed of the divorces.  Decades of intimacy and the rape and abortion. These seem ever to pollute my inner world .  I don’t look at the audience and see the room full of smiling faces . I just see the frown at the back of the room.  I am so afraid. I m so beat up by the bully and his gang and I’m just passing through. I’m just trying to help these people. I’m just trying to do my job 

They kick over my books and punch me and attack and steal and generally want my attention. I’m delivering a baby , I’m convincing a boy it’s good to live. I’ m convincing a mother to stop smoking dope because she forgets her baby. I’m having a myriad of conversations and writing hundreds of things that require me to sign my name and there’s this local bully with his thugs and he’s shouting “I’ll make you respect me”.  

I’ve fought and won so many fights. I’m the FNG. I’m Clint Eastwood and Mel Gibson rolled in one. I’ve fought the ex, the father of the child who kicked his wife in her pregnant belly inducing labour then came into the hospital where I was doctoring the mother going in labour an I fought him off until security arrived. A doctor defending this woman and the unborn baby of this man’s.  Doesn’t any one get it when I say I was in charge of the dangerously insane. I sailed across an ocean in winter through hurricanes.

No he’s lying.

I was held hostage and survived.

I physically fought off five guys kicking two in the heads with elegant jump kicks., I dodged bullets and disarmed a kid with a pistol, then chased a guy with a knife.

I’m fucking insane. 

In rage I was dead and just in motion,

I’ve made my peace with god

I just ant to run away. I am trying to help the sick and lesser and I’ve come into your courts and I’ve even gone into gang houses and confronted the head guy with dozens of his armed guys around and told him his child is freezing outside and he’d better fix this problem or I’d be back. I’ve run with 10 guys chasing me.

I’m the FNG and I’ve done all the gantlets and now I’m old and tired and I hurt and I can’t run and I’m afraid. I’m afraid a lot of the time because I just want to die in my sleep.  I want Jesus and God and the cloud of unknowing to be less crazy. I am living only today but I wake and it’s another 16 hours on the track trying to avoid these guys who say I don’t exist, these liars who are even more scared and see me as a threat.  I want to avoid the showdowns of old. I want to live and let live but I’m working and I’m won so many fights in these knock down all out wars with guys who hurt women and children and want to be somebody but are afraid to leave their security .  Crabs.  Trolls.

I’m too old for this shit and can’t believe my mind won’t just show me the friends and safety and the love but no I have to look at the dark side and see the threat. I’m always scanning tor threat, back to the wall, wondering where the sniper is, wondering what lies have been told.

And I’m nobody. All is vanity.  I’m done. I’m old. I’m done.  

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.  Don’t feed the raccoons.