The best worst day ever

VALENCIA, Spain — My world was obliterated. My boss called me in for what I thought was going to be an annual evaluation. It turned out to be a firing. I was done, he said, as the editor of this newspaper. He did offer me a job as a writer, as long as I worked away from the office. He already had hired a replacement and didn’t want the trouble he believed my being around might bring.

In retrospect, I sort of saw it coming. My boss thought I was overly demanding and a hothead, particularly after I threatened to beat up one of my much-larger, much-younger employees in response to that reporter screaming deeply offensive things about some folks I love. I received a two-week suspension for that offense.

The truth is my relationship with that boss had turned malignant even before that incident. I considered him one of the most repugnant people I’d ever met. He was a bully, a dullard, a sexist and a hypocrite. It was pretty obvious to everyone around how I felt about him.

Still, at age 45, after 15 years in basically the same job, I was out on my ear, at least as editor. And because management got paid at the start of the month, while everyone else — and I now was among everyone else — got paid at the end month, I didn’t get paid for two months. So on top of everything else, I was broke.

Now, as I look back 15 years, I realize that terrible day turned out to be one of the best days of my life. If I’d stayed in that high-pressure, endless-hours job, I probably would have had a stroke or a heart attack, maybe a fatal one, within a few years.

Just as my awkward, work-from-home employment with the newspaper was getting unbearable for both me and the new editor, a new program started at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley, and I was offered a full-time position as an instructor. I love teaching and I love young people, so I jumped at both the teaching offer and the chance to get out of the weird work situation I was in with the newspaper. (I did continue to write columns, and for many years, editorials for the paper, all from home.) I also had time to work on my screenplays, at which I’ve been lucky to have had some success.

Within a few years, I became the advisor for the SDSU-IV study-abroad club and started putting together summer trips for students from both SDSU campuses. I’ve led eight such trips: to Spain, Italy, Ireland and Argentina.

I’ve seen places I would’ve never had the opportunity to see: Rome, the Vatican, Venice, Lake Como, Dublin, Barcelona, Madrid. I’ve seen the wondrous street musicians of Galway, Ireland, and even sang “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” with a busker in Milan; I’ve eaten at a restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark, called Koefoed, which was my family’s name before having it Anglicized at Ellis Island; I‘ve seen the North Sea and the Irish Sea; I’ve seen the many “Mano de Dios” statues of Maradona around Buenos Aires; I’ve swum in the Mediterranean, a lot; I was basically kicked off a basketball court in Valencia, Spain because I was too good for the pick-up players there. (It’s not that I’m that good. Those guys were that bad. )

As I was eating a three-course meal on a patio covered by trees in a peaceful plaza in Valencia on a breezy, sunny summer afternoon last week, my thoughts kept returning to one thing:

Thank God that unmitigated jackass fired me 15 years ago.