Yo Adrian! I Did It!

A scene in Rocky II – the scene if you ask me. Adrian, played by Talia Shire, awakens from her coma – a condition brought on by giving birth. No oxygen mask, no IV. That’s the way comas went in 1979, I guess. Not the point. Rocky couldn’t prepare for a heavyweight fight with a spouse who was comatose to think about. But when she wakes up and tells him there is something she wants him to do for her, Rocky is all ears. Then she says it. Win. I want you to win.

On April 25th, Talia Shire a.k.a. Adrian will turn 80.

Cue the orchestra. Time for the Rocky theme song.

Fiction can be so inspiring. Real life can be so…not. At some point, we are all a version of Rocky looking for our Adrian. But hold on – this one is not about finding the love of your life who happens to be in a coma, then comes out of it to convince you to become the heavyweight champion of the world. It’s much simpler than that. Just a person who believes in you, supports you, pushes you, makes you want to do more…be more. A relationship that need not involve kisses.

I prepared to write this post by taking a few days to move about the world, focusing on two things, and two things only. Who inspires me? Who does the opposite? If you are thinking about doing this for yourself, don’t. I realized not too far into the endeavor that it was a bad idea. You’ll realize some things you might not want to know. A person you liked might not be likable at all. Or you realize there’s someone you ought to be paying more attention to.

Then, the biggest finding of my mini research project. On the continuum that goes from discouraging to encouraging, most people are just in between. Zero praise. Zero deflation. Just there.

I knew this wild dude back home when I lived in Western, NY. He’d drink a shit ton of Johnny Walker Black, then disappear to take insulin – because he was diabetic. Come back to the bar and order another Johnny Walker Black. I was a brand-new teacher, just trying to find my way. He was a doctor, of sorts. Chiropractors are doctors. Licensed to crack your bones – but no prescription pad for the pain if it hurts. But that was the situation. A 23-year-old teacher rolling with a 40-something-year-old bone cracker.

He had a few offices and plenty of employees. He drove a brand-new BMW, and his wife had the SUV with enough room for all three kids and could probably squeeze the BMW in there if she had to. He lived in Youngstown – the place Niagara Falls kids don’t get to live, for the most part.

We’d meet up to play racquetball a couple of times a week. Once, while I was there, I complained about the interest rate on one of my credit cards. The doctor asked me how much I owed. It was like $4 grand. The next time we met to play, he handed me a check for $4 grand. He told me to pay the bill. It was a 0% loan. I paid him back. Every cent.

The inspiring part was that the guy grew up a few blocks from where I did. He even went to vocational school to become a welder. He wound up in chiropractic, some old guy in town helped him out, and then he was out there just trying to do the same. Knowing where he came from and what he pulled off made me wonder. Could this be me someday, too?

The guy was charismatic. Funny. Loud. Great at racquetball. And for no reason whatsoever, he’d go out of his way to tell me what I was capable of. What I could do. At some point, he gave me this set of cassette tapes – The Psychology of Success by Brian Tracy. I’d listen to them. He’d talk to me about them. Challenge me to do more. To be more.

“Never is heard a discouraging word,” he’d say. And, “If not you, then who?”

Two lines he’d deliver with a Johnny Black in one hand, and a Keno ticket in the other. One Niagara Falls kid to another. He meant it.

Look, the guy wasn’t a motivational poster like I’m making him sound. When I say he meant it, I’m saying he was issuing a challenge. That’s what lived in the space between encouragement and discouragement with him. It wasn’t blind support. It wasn’t empty noise. It was belief – with fangs.

That was decades ago. I saw him as an anomaly. A contradiction. Built like a linebacker. Drinking, disappearing, coming back, telling me I was going to be something – all in the same night. Now I see it differently.

He was an Adrian.

Not soft spoken. No coma. No hospital bed. Just a dude who saw something good and said it out loud. He didn’t see me as competition. He saw me as potential. Potential from his city. And if I pulled anything off, I’d do it carrying a part of him with me.

It dawned on me this week that people don’t do that. Not many, anyway.

Most people aren’t going to hurt you, but they also aren’t going to help. Neither rooting against you, nor in your corner. They’re just…there. Watching. Living their own lives. And that’s fine. That’s human.

If you can be an Adrian, do it. If you find an Adrian, love it. Don’t be the opposite – and run from the opposite as soon as you know it’s there.

Otherwise, you are like everyone else. Just in between.