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Book One:
A SIMPLE ACT
OF
KINDNESS
INTRODUCTION
Written by Rick Archer
©
2015, Richard Archer
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My name is Rick Archer.
In case you don't know much about me, I live in Houston, Texas.
I have been married to Marla Archer since 2004 and I have one
daughter, Samantha.
At age 60, I decided to
sell SSQQ, my dance studio. After my retirement
in 2010, my mind returned to a mystery that has bothered me for my
entire life. I decided the time had come to tell an important story.
I had
more or less finished writing the rough draft of the memoir
detailing the key events of the seven year period that led to the
creation of my dance studio.
One day as Marla and I
took a long walk through the woods, she asked me to give her some of the
highlights. About twenty minutes into the story, Marla stopped
me in mid-sentence.
"Rick, no one is going
to ever understand your story unless you tell them what happened to
you when you were a kid. If you want people to grasp the
enormity of just how lost and confused you were, you have to start
this story back in childhood."
I groaned. Marla
was absolutely right, but this meant starting over. For the
strange saga of my dance studio to make a bit of sense, I had no
choice but to explain my childhood first.
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Book One: A Simple
Act of Kindness tells the story of my childhood and sets the
scene at the start of my dance career.
Book Two: Destiny
tells the story of how my dance career began.
As they say, to
appreciate the conclusion, one must first understand the beginning.
I have written these two
books for an important reason... I am firmly convinced there has
been an unseen hand that has guided my progress every step of the
way.
Thanks to my
philosophical nature, I have spent my life wondering about the
existence of God.
I am well aware that
many religious leaders are absolutely convinced of God's existence,
but that isn't good enough for me. A lot of men whose opinions
I respect are just as convinced that God doesn't exist.
I am a person completely
incapable of Blind Faith. I refuse to take any preacher's word
on anything. That said, I have trust in my own mind, so it has
been my lifelong passion to look for signs of God's existence.
Strangely enough,
a great mystery in my
own life has given me
a very promising set of clues.
I won't insult the
intelligence of the reader by saying these clues are absolute proof.
Yet these clues offer a tantalizing indication that something very
difficult to explain just might be taking place behind the curtain
of what we call 'Reality'.
I call these clues
"Coincidences".
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So what exactly is the
Great Mystery?
In short, I was lucky.
In fact, I was so lucky that for the rest of my life I have been
suspicious about my own accomplishment.
In my personal opinion,
I had no business succeeding like I did. However, I was given
a break time and time again that allowed me to continue to stumble
forward.
Starting in
1977, I oversaw the
the creation of an amazing dance studio known as
SSQQ, short-hand for Slow Slow Quick Quick.
I believe there was an
intangible quality to SSQQ that made it special.
A lot of people agreed with me because at one point
SSQQ was likely the largest dance studio in America.
In my opinion,
SSQQ was more than 'just a dance studio'. There was a
spirit that infused our activities that made the studio remarkable.
SSQQ occupied different roles to different people.
To some, it was "just a dance studio". To others it took a role something akin to a
favorite playground, or a
sanctuary where the problems of the world could disappear, or even a
romantic garden where Cupid could ply his charms. Dancing,
fun, safety, and flirting all rolled into one... what more could a
person ask for?
Except that I had a
problem with all this success.
In my self-appraisal, I
had no business creating something this wonderful.
And that was Marla's
point... Unless the reader knew my full story, they would not
understand why Rick Archer was the last person someone would expect
capable of
creating a place like SSQQ.
My childhood had been an
ordeal reminiscent of a Greek myth.
The Myth of
Sisyphus told the story of a deceitful man whose punishment
consisted of pushing a giant rock up the hill.
Whenever he neared the
top, he would lose his strength and the giant boulder would roll
back down to the valley.
Although I am not a
deceitful person, I would say that much of my early life resembled
the fate of Sisyphus.
I would reach a point
where I believed I had finally overcome my problems only to see my
feet knocked back out from under me.
And then - like Sisyphus
- I would be forced to start over.
I did not escape my
childhood unscathed. Due to my difficult childhood, I would
struggle mightily throughout my Twenties.
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At age 24, the second
great crisis of my life fell upon me.
I was in graduate school
trying to become a psychotherapist.
To my dismay, two months
into the school year the chairman of the department pulled me into
his office and proceeded to say I had the 'wrong type' of
personality to become a therapist.
What he really meant to say was that my people skills were so utterly mediocre
that he intended to toss me from graduate school at the end of the
year.
There was another
dimension to my crisis. My experience with women was so
limited that my girlfriend - the chairman's private secretary no less -
had completely played me for a fool.
Shortly after our love
affair began, the woman's previous boyfriend decided to re-enter the
picture. Now she began seeing both of us and telling lies to
deceive me. There were signs everywhere that she was
two-timing me, yet I was too woefully ignorant about "love" to
understand what was going on.
When the truth finally
came out, I was totally blind-sided. I became so fearful of
getting hurt again I could not work up the courage to approach an
attractive woman to save my soul.
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Following my dismissal
from graduate school, I returned to Houston feeling totally
defeated.
After a few months of
feeling sorry for myself, I decided dance lessons might be the
answer to my new-found phobia towards women. Now came the
final insult. I discovered I had absolutely no talent for
dance. I was beyond pathetic.
So here I was, age 24,
lacking
charisma, social skills, confidence around women plus any semblance
of dance talent. And yet three years from this point, I would
start my climb.
My story of how the
studio started is fascinating. Please forgive my lack of
modesty, but I am serious. The reader has no idea of all the
crazy twists and turns I encountered... treachery, blind luck,
narrow escapes, blackmail, adultery, and improbable coincidences.
Starting in 1977, over a
four year period, I plummeted from one disaster to the next.
Then suddenly one day
everything was calm. It was now 1981. Incredibly I realized I
had magically become Houston's best-known dance teacher. The
man who couldn't dance now
owned a dance studio and the success of my career was more probability
than improbability.
Incredibly, this erratic
rollercoaster ride had led directly to the formation of my dance
studio. It made no sense. If anything, the position I
now occupied was a complete fluke, a cosmic accident of some sort.
Given my shortcomings, I had no business going from zero to hero.
I was here only because
a series of coincidences and lucky breaks had bounced me from one
point to the next. My conclusion was inescapable... no one
could be this lucky. The odds against my success were beyond
implausible, yet here I was.
One day I decided to
connect the dots. As I suspected, once connected, the dots
began to resemble a pattern that looked suspiciously like Destiny.
To me, I had two
choices. I could either continue to use the word ‘Coincidence’
to explain these bizarre happenings or I could admit what I believed
was the real explanation...
It sure felt like there
was more to this world than meets the eye.
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1981 - The sign says:
The
SSQQ Dance Club meets for Graduation
at the Winchester Club
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Is there really such a
thing as Destiny? To me, it seems that way. To another,
maybe I was just lucky.
And now we know the
reason why I decided to write my two books.
If there is such a thing
as Destiny, then I believe this is a message far too important to
keep to myself.
Before I begin
Book One: A Simple Act of Kindness, I would like to tell the
reader something about my dance studio.
It was not until
I turned 30 that I finally
emerged from my early struggles to achieve
great success in my dance career.
On the surface, the
studio taught people how to dance to Western, Ballroom, Swing, and
Salsa music. The studio was very good at this task.
Over the years,
SSQQ trained many fine dancers. Indeed, there
were
championship dancers who got their initial training at the studio.
However, the dance studio's
main emphasis was taking beginners and turning them into competent
social dancers.
The previous
business model for dance studios was excellence
through private lessons. SSQQ went
totally counter to the prevailing way of thought. I
developed an
original business model based on group classes. The
studio's
group class system proved extremely effective, especially
considering how economically the classes were priced.
SSQQ
made its mark teaching large groups of
people how to dance for the fun of
it.
From the start, SSQQ never breathed a word
about dance contracts.
Now that people were not facing exorbitant dance contracts,
they were willing to risk $30 or $40 on a month of
classes to see if Social Dancing might be an activity they
would
enjoy.
Where other studios used sales pressure, I refused to use
this method. I assumed people would continue to take further classes willingly if
they enjoyed their first class.
At the time, I was told this was a real gamble.
However I am pleased to say I was right.
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1981
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The
Halloween Party from Hell
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1986
- The Tom Easley Look a Like Party
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I ran my
studio for 32 years here in Houston, Texas. At its
peak, my dance studio averaged close to 200 students a night.
The place was a
circus! We had
dance classes in six different rooms and people milling about
everywhere.
When one includes the staff, 1,400 people per
week walked through those doors. I would imagine our
attendance totals made
SSQQ the largest dance
studio in the United States.
However, since I have no
particular way to back
up this claim, suffice
it to say that SSQQ was a very popular place.
My
studio didn't just teach people how to dance, it served as a meeting place for all
kinds of
wonderful people.
We had an outrageous amount of fun.
A good example would be our annual Halloween party.
Attendance at our Halloween parties was enormous.
People stretched wall to wall.
Our final party
had over 400 hundred people. Thank goodness the fire
marshal had no idea. It was so crowded that night people
could barely walk from one room to the next. Did they mind? Heck
no, they loved it! At SSQQ, the more the
merrier.
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2001 - Heartbeat, SSQQ
World Champion Western dance team
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1998
- Swinging Skirtz and Mugz, SSQQ Lindy Dance Team
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Besides teaching vast numbers of people to dance, the
studio's major accomplishment was creating a vast social
network. In that sense, SSQQ
was wildly successful.
What I did not
anticipate was the potential of the studio to turn into one
of Houston's premier dating locations. However, it
didn't take long to figure it out. Right from the
start, I noticed our group dance classes were unusually
effective at creating romance.
Our students came here
to
learn to dance, but they quickly discovered a sweet and totally
unexpected surprise. Once the smiling ladies found
themselves in the arms of men smiling back at them, a
wonderful sort of chemistry began to work its magic.
The series of
classes spread out over a month allowed people to get to
know the other students over a period of time. This
removed the pressure one might feel to make the kind
of fast moves or awkward pick-up lines one might see in
a bar.
Instead people
were able to form friendships over time in a casual,
relaxed manner.
Many of these people who danced together on a regular basis
grew fond of each other.
Not surprisingly, frequently these friendships developed into something much
deeper.
I learned a
valuable lesson... Slow Dance leads to Romance.
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Ann
McKenna and Kirby Lane |
Libby
Ingrassia and Paul Foltyn |
Tom
and Margaret Easley met at SSQQ in 1985. |
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College is the perfect
place to find a mate since there are so many attractive, intelligent
and single people to choose from. SSQQ became
the adult-version of the same thing.
Since the studio was always
populated by a large number of professionals learning how to be kids
again, the birds and the bees
had a field day at SSQQ.
Slow Dance
leads to Romance... time and time again this adage
came true. Not one month passed without someone
announcing their engagement. It was amazing to watch.
I took great
satisfaction in my studio's reputation as the hotspot to find a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
I scoff at
today's expensive dating services... SSQQ
offered more opportunities for romance than one could possibly imagine and it
was all for free! Without a doubt,
SSQQ
was the closest thing in all of Houston to a
marriage factory.
I had always
known about the studio's success at pairing people up, but I had
no idea the extent of it. That changed with the advent
of the Internet Era. Through the development of email,
I finally had a way
to keep careful count.
Over the final eleven year
period, the dance studio averaged 25 marriages
and engagements per year.
All told, I estimate
SSQQ
was responsible for well over three hundred marriages spanning thirty-two years.
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2009 - Formal Night on
the annual SSQQ dance cruise.
Slow Dance and Romance is particularly powerful at sea.
For example,
I met my wife Marla on the 2001 dance cruise
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1988
- Trip to the Bahamas
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SSQQ wasn't just about love affairs.
The studio became a place
where all kinds of activities were incubated - ski trips, cruise
trips, margarita tours, Renaissance Festival excursions, camping
trips, Surfside weekends, charades parties, Azalea Trail
bike rides, you name it. And sports too... we had outdoor
volleyball and swimming pool volleyball. We even had Mud
Volleyball!
SSQQ was
truly the equivalent of an adult playground.
As people took classes together, they got to know each other.
When a class really clicked, an entire network of friendships might
develop. From that point on, these people wanted to do everything as a group.
Whether it was
dancing, cruising, skiing or simply coming to the SSQQ Halloween
Party en masse, wherever the gang went, that's where people
wanted to be.
Often people would
continue to take dance lessons as a way to stay in close touch with
their dance studio friends.
The group spirit that emerged carried over into ski trips, resort trips, and dance cruises.
Adventures like these simply made the ties even stronger.
SSQQ grew into a tight-knit community.
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1983 -
SSQQ Wedding
Doug and Ava Humme |
2001 -
Mud Volleyball Tournament
There was no end to the crazy things we did
Incidentally,
SSQQ came in second out of 120 teams |
1981 -
An example of the silliness:
A Charades Party & a Pyramid |
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I spoke earlier
of 'sanctuary'. I meant that.
I am proud that my studio
helped so many people make long-lasting friendships.
By making the
dance studio a safe, friendly place that attracted a wide range of
people from every walk of life, people felt comfortable letting their guard down.
That allowed a marvelous warmth to permeate the studio. It was
a friendly place.
SSQQ
was often described as a home away from home. As the
walls began to crack and ceiling tiles were stained by roof
leaks, one night a man looked around and called the studio
"a run-down joint". Then he turned to me and smiled.
"But I don't
care. SSQQ is my joint! I love it just
the way it is."
The studio became a place where people could relax and be happy.
In particular, SSQQ was a place where people
could sit back and relax.
Even though we had
our fair share of 'unusual people', they all
felt comfortable
just being themselves.
I
think the pictures make that point perfectly clear.
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1982
- Western dance party at a C&W club
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1989
- Ski Trip to Banff
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TRANSFORMATION
THROUGH DANCE
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The origins of my dance
career were directly interwoven with my struggle to gain any sort of
confidence around women.
Following my graduate school crisis,
in 1974 I started dance lessons as a way to meet women. That is when I
discovered I had no
natural ability for dance.
I do not fib when I
claim I took much longer than the average person
to learn to dance. One problem was my tendency to be far too analytical.
I simply couldn't relax and trust my feet to move without thinking
about it.
My main problem was my
refusal to practice my dancing due a mind-numbing fear of looking
foolish in front of women. I had confidence issues related to
women that stretched all the way back to high school. I never
had a single date.
Due to my fear of
looking foolish, I had a dilemma - I wanted to be
good BEFORE I began asking women to dance. But the only way to get
good is to practice.
Since I was afraid to
look foolish, I didn't practice. And since I didn't
practice, I didn't improve.
And since I didn't improve, I didn't have the courage to ask women to dance.
Sounds like a dog chasing its tail, doesn't it?
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As one might imagine,
progress was slow. However, I refused to
quit.
No matter how bad I was
or how slow I was to pick something up, I stayed with it.
Over a three year
period, slowly but surely I improved as a dancer. In the
process, I discovered a mysterious side benefit to my dance project.
As I improved as a dancer, I noticed that many of my confidence and trust issues
related to women were
slowly dissipating.
My
own story makes it perfectly clear that social dancing can heal people.
It took a while, but Dancing was the reason I finally emerged from
my shell. Once I finally learned to dance, I discovered my
phobia towards women had magically disappeared. Thank goodness!
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2006 - Cruise Trip
Pat Salinas |
1989
- Dirty Dancing Workshop
Janet Gunthrie |
1987
- Valentines Party
Margie Saibara |
2004 - Wedding Day
Marla, the love of my life
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As I stated previously, I believe my dance career
unfolded in such an unusual way that I began to wonder if I was simply an
actor in a drama called 'Destiny'.
For example, my long struggle
learning to dance would pay a key role in my later success. Unlike
some dance teachers who can be impatient with slow learners, I became the
most patient teacher imaginable. I made sure that SSQQ
was structured in the most "Beginner-friendly" manner I could possibly
imagine... plenty of built-in practice opportunities, plenty of
encouragement, and the use of volunteers to give additional attention to the
ones who were having trouble. Over time, SSQQ helped a
lot of people learn to dance who first came to the studio convinced they
were hopeless.
My unusual patience born of my
own struggles is a good example of why I am so curious about how my life
unfolded. Perhaps I was meant to struggle myself so I would have
superior insight when it came time to assume command.
The mystical element began in
childhood. There were times during my
childhood when I was so
lonely and bitter that I was on the verge of going off the deep
end. And yet no matter how disturbed I was, someone would
appear just in the nick of time to help me pull through.
After the third or fourth time,
this series of rescues felt so
unusual and so improbable that I actually began to wonder if a hidden hand
was guiding me. Thanks to the unusual
nature of the interventions, I would develop a lifelong curiosity about
Coincidences.
As far as I am concerned, no one can possibly be as
lucky as me. For example, I have said I started my dance career by
accident. I mean that. Someone handed me a job as a dance
teacher even though I barely had any idea what I was doing.
Immediately after that,
to my surprise, another job was offered out of the blue. Once I started that first dance class, new doors just kept
opening. All I had to do was walk through those doors. Each new
door came complete with both opportunity and all kinds of problems.
I struggled mightily for four
long years. Then one day the clouds parted. The
man who couldn't dance suddenly found that he had become the best-known
dance teacher in Houston.
This made absolutely no sense.
How on earth did this happen?
I became convinced there had to be a better explanation than dumb luck.
We all know that coincidences
can be unsettling. Often we have no idea what to make of them.
A coincidence can be
something odd like running into a childhood friend in an
unexpected place years later. Or it can be getting a phone call from a distant relative just
moments after thinking about the person for no reason.
Ordinarily we dismiss these
moments readily and turn our attention elsewhere. However, once in
while, we run across a coincidence so profound that we are forced to stop
and consider the possibility of a supernatural explanation.
Could it be an unseen hand is
manipulating pulleys and levers behind a curtain?
The following story is a perfect
example of what I mean about the disturbing nature of Coincidence.
THE
CHURCH CHOIR
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Rick's Note: The
strange story you are about to read
appeared in the March 27th, 1950, issue of Life Magazine.
Titled "Why the Choir was Late",
this story detailed a peculiar series of
mundane delays that were responsible for saving the lives of seventeen
different people.
The
story took place in Beatrice, Nebraska, a small
agricultural community about 450 miles due east of
Denver, Colorado. The
population in 1950 was around 5,000 people.
If at the end of this story you have any doubt as to
its authenticity, then I suggest you Google it and
decide for yourself.
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The
First Delay
March 1,
1950, was a
bitterly cold day in Beatrice, Nebraska.
Reverend Walter Klempel knew that the evening's 7:20 pm choir practice would be quite
uncomfortable unless he heated the church ahead of
time.
So that afternoon Reverend Klempel visited West
Side Baptist Church to light the furnace. Reverend Klempel then returned home to change clothes and
have dinner. As usual, he left the door open
so anyone who wished to come early could come in out
of the cold.
At 7:10
pm that evening, as was his custom, he rose from reading his
Bible to drive to the nearby church five minutes
away.
However,
his oldest daughter Marilyn Ruth, 18, cried in dismay when she
discovered her dress was soiled.
Her
mother said not to worry; it would only take a
few minutes to iron another dress.
THREE
PEOPLE DELAYED
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The Second
Delay
Ladona
Vandegrift, a high school student, did not want to leave until
she finished a nagging geometry problem.
Ordinarily Ladona was the most punctual member of the choir.
In fact, she was typically early for choir practice.
Tonight would be the first time she had ever been late
for choir practice.
3 + 1 = FOUR
PEOPLE DELAYED
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The Third
Delay
Royena Estes
was ready to leave on time. However, to her
dismay, her car wouldn't start on this cold Nebraska
night.
Royena's
sister Sadie suggested they call their neighbor Ladona
Vandegrift for a ride.
To their
surprise, the ordinarily reliable Ladona asked them to
wait. She would come pick them up just as soon as she finished her
knotty math
problem. Ladona's
geometry issue ended up making all three ladies late.
3 + 1 + 2
= SIX
PEOPLE DELAYED
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The Fourth
Delay
Mrs. Leonard
Shuster was always among the most prompt of the choir
members.
Ordinarily
she and her small daughter Susan would have been on
time.
However
tonight Mrs. Shuster had received a phone call from her
mother asking for a favor. At the last minute, Mrs. Shuster had to
make an unexpected detour over to her mother's house to help her
mother get ready for a missionary meeting.
This delay
caused Mrs. Shuster and Susan to be late for choir
practice.
3 + 1 + 2
+ 2 = EIGHT
PEOPLE DELAYED
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The Fifth
Delay
Herbert Kipf was
a lathe operator. He was late because he wanted to
finish writing a letter.
When asked later
why the letter was so important, Kipf replied, "I can't
think why."
3 + 1 + 2 + 2
+ 1 = NINE PEOPLE
DELAYED
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The Sixth
Delay
Machinist Harvey
Ahl got distracted. His wife was away, so he was busy
watching his two boys that evening.
Mr. Ahl was
planning to take the two boys with him to choir practice, but
ended up playing with his sons and lost track of time.
By the time
Harvey Ahl looked at his watch, to his surprise he realized
he was already late.
3 + 1 + 2 + 2
+ 1 + 3 = TWELVE
PEOPLE DELAYED
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The Seventh
Delay
Marilyn Paul was
the pianist. She planned to arrive half an hour early to
practice her songs for the evening. However,
Marilyn
was feeling tired, so she decided to take
a nap after dinner.
Marilyn fell
into a deep sleep. At 7 pm,
Martha Paul, Marilyn's mother, awakened her.
However, Marilyn fell right back to sleep. At 7:15 pm,
Mrs. Paul was annoyed to see Marilyn was still asleep. Now she
was forced to awaken
her daughter again.
Mrs. Paul was
fit to be tied. As choir director, she was adamant
that everyone be punctual. Now her own daughter
had made them both late.
3 + 1 + 2 + 2
+ 1 + 3 + 2 =
FOURTEEN
PEOPLE DELAYED
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The Eighth
Delay
Lucille
Jones and Dorothy Wood were best friends in high school.
They were also neighbors who rode together for choir
practice.
Lucille was
another person who had a reputation for punctuality.
However on this night she had become mesmerized by a
radio program. The 7:00-7:30 pm program of This
is Your Life featured the life story of Edgar Bergen,
the famous ventriloquist and puppeteer. Lucille
simply could not tear herself away from the program
until she knew the complete story.
Meanwhile
Dorothy waited patiently as Lucille stayed glued to her
radio program.
3 + 1 + 2
+ 2 + 1 + 3 + 2 + 2 =
SIXTEEN
PEOPLE DELAYED
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The Ninth
Delay
It was a
cold March evening indeed. As the stiff Nebraska
winter breezes stirred the trees outside, stenographer
Joyce Black dreaded facing the cold night air.
Oddly
enough, Ms. Black lived right across the street from the
church. Nevertheless, she couldn't seem to
force herself to go outside in the cold. That
three-minute windswept walk to reach the comfort
of the church made her shiver just thinking about it.
So Joyce
Black put
off leaving until the last possible moment. She remained in her cozy warm house
until finally her conscience kicked in and told her to
get up and get moving.
When later
asked about it, Joyce Black replied she was feeling "just
plain lazy".
3 + 1 + 2
+ 2 + 1 + 3 + 2 + 2 + 1 = SEVENTEEN
PEOPLE DELAYED
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Explosion!
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At 7:25 pm,
Joyce Black was finally able to make herself face the cold.
Just as she opened her door to cross the street, the night
turned scarlet in a violent burst of flames. Joyce
Black was almost knocked off her feet by the nearby blast.
The woman
covered her mouth in horror. Right before her eyes, the West Side Baptist Church
had exploded!! The shock was overwhelming and the lady
screamed in fear.
The entire church building
had been
instantly demolished by a gas leak that had caught fire. After the supporting
walls fell outward, the heavy wooden roof came crashing
straight down.
Joyce Black felt
sick. The fire and the collapsing roof
would have been fatal to anyone inside. There
was no possibility of escape in a blast of this magnitude.
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Meanwhile...
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At the exact
moment Joyce Black was staggered by the explosion, seven cars carrying sixteen people
were en route.
The powerful roar of the explosion was so loud that it
was heard in every corner of Beatrice... that included the
choir members.
Each choir member
distinctly heard the
loud roar as they
drove to practice. One woman said she was so
shocked she nearly drove off the road. Everyone
was deeply worried
because they were certain the sound of the blast had come from the
exact direction of their church.
Choir
practice had been scheduled for 7:20 pm. The
church had exploded at 7:25 pm. Each person in the
seven
cars fully expected that if this was indeed the West
Side Church that had blown up, someone was surely hurt
or maybe much worse.
As each person
arrived at the burning church, they gasped at the flames. Once they
saw the burning church, they were stunned to realize
that their lateness had saved them from certain death.
Thank goodness they were spared, but now their thoughts
turned to their friends at risk. At this point, they believed that someone had surely lost
their life in there.
Standing in
the parking lot despite the cold, they huddled together
and began to take count with each
new arrival. Once the entire choir had arrived,
the individuals were shocked to realize every single person
in the choir group had been spared.
Not one person
had perished in the flames.
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Now the members of the choir
began to compare their stories. It became apparent that each reason for lateness was quite ordinary and
completely
unconnected.
When
viewed separately, each delay was unremarkable in itself.
Yet when each reason was laid side
by side along with the others, a strange hush came over all of
them. They were in
awe as they calculated the enormity of this series of
delays. Several were convinced this had to be
"an act of God".
Someone
estimated the odds. Typically one person in four was
late on any given night. However, to have everyone be
late on the same night was one in a million.
To the
members of the choir, these delays
amounted to a Miracle.
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THE POSSIBILITY
OF AN UNSEEN HAND
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Were these improbable delays
indeed a miracle? Was there a divine hand involved?
I cannot answer that. All I
can say is that an event such as this meets my definition of 'profound'. Although no one can assume the church
choir incident serves as
conclusive proof of God's existence, it certainly gives us all
a reason to remain open minded.
At the center of Book One:
A Simple Act of Kindness, I will share a perplexing
coincidence that was almost as unlikely as the West Side
Baptist Church incident. My own incident left me so shaken that I
would spend the rest of my life thinking about it.
In all, I would
encounter seven unusual coincidences during my childhood and
college years. Nor did my coincidences and lucky breaks end with
childhood. In 1977, I was a novice Disco teacher with one itty-bitty line dance
class when Saturday Night Fever hit town. Suddenly a
series of four lucky breaks literally skyrocketed me into my dance career. Although I was woefully unprepared for this overwhelming
opportunity, I somehow rose to the challenge.
Strangely enough, two years
later, the same thing happened again. The moment I
had finally become a competent Disco instructor, Urban Cowboy
came along and turned my world upside down. Since I had no
idea how to dance country-western, I had to start all
over. I was woefully unprepared. I foolishly
accepted a
teaching job before I had ever been Western dancing in my life!
Furthermore I had no
teacher! I was in deep trouble. Fortunately, I
somehow survived this gamble and several more like it by the skin of my teeth.
When the smoke cleared in 1981, I
had become the best-known country-western dance teacher in the
entire city complete with my own dance studio thanks to another coincidence.
At the time, I simply
appreciated the position I was in. But later in life when I
took another look, I realized what an absurd development this was.
Considering all those lucky breaks, I could not help but wonder if
my dance studio was something "meant to be".
Of course I cannot prove any of
this conclusively. No one can do that.
What I can do is tell my story
and let people make up their own mind. So let us begin.
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Rick Archer, 1981
Western dancing at
The Winchester Club |
CHAPTER ONE:
PARENTS
In this chapter,
we learn about my father's unexpected disappearance and my acceptance into St.
John's School, the single most important break of my life.
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Rick Archer's Note:
I
hope to publish this book at some point. However, right
now I feel like it is more important to tell the story than seek
financial reward.
If you like my
story, you can help me in several ways.
For starters, you
can forward the link to a friend.
http://www.ssqq.com/stories/actofkindness00.htm
I invite you to offer any advice
or encouragement you wish. If you have an idea how to make this book
better, I am always open to suggestions. If you have a
question, by all means, please ask. You can contact me at:
rick@ssqq.com
And... if you
know a publisher, feel free to recommend they take a look.
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