The Architect

It’s the first Saturday of April 2021 and I’m driving around empty parking lots looking for Ron Scholl.

I’d talked to him just a few days prior. He called looking for some of that ‘health care that Obama gave everyone’. Ron was in his 70s and not in great health and would call me every once in a while. I work at Tucson Medical Center, so it made sense. I’d told him once that I’d help him get squared away – a doctor’s appointment, a physical, maybe even connect him to the hospital's senior service programs

We agreed to meet the next week, ‘Sure thing, Tim. See you Monday.’ I doubt it, I thought to myself. I’ve heard that too many times before.

But I called him out of the blue that Saturday. I’d never done that before.

Ron picked up and all I heard was slurred gibberish. I thought shit, he’s drunk again. But it sounded different than all the other times he was drunk on the phone. It was raspy and a low guttural sound, like a slow gasp for air.

"Ron! Where are you? What’s wrong?" I yelled his name into the phone like it would snap him out it.

‘Lowell...,’ I think he said Lowell. Ft. Lowell? Camp Lowell? I don’t know, but it's a clue.

Ron was such a bullshitter. He’d been a real estate developer in his younger days. I'd seen him a few months earlier at that Subway at Camp Lowell and Swan. He’d tell everyone he owned those shopping centers, with the Subway and Basha’s and medical offices. I think that’s why he’d hang around over there and that’s why I started looking there.

I finally found him, his black Mercedes parked diagonally across two spots, the driver side door wide open. Ron was semi-conscious in the front seat, one shoeless foot hanging out the open door. I looked at him and was shocked. He was a shell of the man and college baseball player that he used to be. He might be 125 pounds. His face is drawn and neck is arched back. His teeth stained yellow, grinning at me…like a corpse.

I called 911, but all I could tell them was - where he was and that Ron was a lifelong alcoholic. They asked again, but I realized I didn't know anything else about Ron.

In a flash, that dude is gone. In the back of an ambulance speeding away, leaving me standing next to his black Mercedes that reeks of smoke, booze and death.

I stand there, I’m just dumbfounded. I’m angry that I’m here, and I’m angry that I’m cleaning up another mess that Ron created. I look at black Mercedes – bumpers duct taped to fenders, missing hubcaps. It’s loaded with trash, empty coffee cups and liquor bottles. Clothes stuffed in every corner of the car. It’s apparent to me that he has been living in this car for some time. I took a deep breath, locked the car door and headed home, hoping this piece of shit gets towed before Ron gets out of the hospital tomorrow.

But he didn't get out of the hospital. He died the next day.

Ron Scholl. My Step Dad.

From the time I was 8 until I was 21, the most formative years of my life, Ron was my stepdad. An oversized presence in my world and a wrecking ball that repeatedly smashed through my family.

I know this is supposed to be a story about fathers and the DNA they give us. Those traits that are passed down from parent to child and on and on again. It’s a family blueprint so to speak.

I get DNA.

But when you’re 8, you don’t know anything about DNA. That blueprint. You just know what and who is in front of you and Ron Scholl was in front of me. I thought he WAS the blueprint. The architect.

Living with Ron was chaotic. He drank a lot and we always tiptoed around his explosive anger and moods. I was sick a lot, too. Probably with stress and anxiety. He yelled and fought with my mom. When I was older and bigger, I pushed him away from my mom, and I hit him as hard as I could. ‘Don’t you ever touch my mom again, or I will fucking kill you,’ I yelled in his drunk face. I meant it.

One time, he fell and hit his head. Bad. My mom comes to get me, says she needs some help with Ron. I think we called an ambulance; they may have stitched him up. I don’t remember, But I do know and I do remember, that it’s just one of a 100 shitty things I fixed for that guy throughout my life.

In the days after Ron died, I think, “I’ve been reacting to stress from this guy my entire life. No wonder I’m so good under pressure. People talk about my “Tim mode” – I flip a switch, get shit done and take charge. I can fix things. Like I learned how to do when I was 9, or 14, or 17, and now here I am at 54. Fixing Ron’s shit

You know what else I’m good at thanks to Ron?

• Lying. Ron taught me to lie. Not in a lesson, but by example. He lied all the time. About everything, to everyone.

• Bullshitting. Another form of lying, but something Ron had mastered. I’d perfect it too, to cover the lies I’d learn to tell.

• Accountability. Not to have, but how to avoid it. Why stop lying and bullshitting when there was never any accountability?

• I’m good at running away, too. Hiding. Ghosting jobs, coworkers and friends that are on to my lies.

• And most sadly, I’d became quite adept at pushing people away. People by nature that wanted to care for me, I wouldn't let them. It’s true. Even in my darkest days of cancer and the year’s long treatment, I closed in around myself. I wouldn’t let my wife, my mom or good friends help. I was alone. In my own goddamn Mercedes.

That’s Ron’s Scholl’s DNA. His blueprint. The Architect.

Ron was a delusional alcoholic. He had images in his head about who he was. He idolized Donald Trump. Not the current Donald Trump, but the 1980s, ‘Art of the Deal’ Donald Trump. He got his real estate license, wore three piece suits and drove a fancy Mercedes and had a beautiful blonde (my mom) on his arm.

He did do big deals and he really did own shopping centers. But I’d learn as an adult he did it by lying, stealing and not being accountable. People went to jail because of him. He lived beyond his means, conning, grifting and crafting a shell game to get money.

Ron wanted the perfect life. Well – he wanted people to think he had a perfect life. And that included the illusion of a perfect family. He wanted me to play sports so badly. He put me in a baseball league way above my skill level when I was 11. He lied and told the coaches I’d been playing for years. I was a good athlete, but I was horrible playing against kids with 3-4 years of experience. I got crushed. And in getting crushed, I learned another lesson from Ron – that I wasn’t good enough. That I was going to fail.

That’s Ron Scholl’s DNA. His blueprint. The Architect.

But I wanted to impress this man. My stepdad. I really did.

In high school I went out for golf – but got cut. I tried out for basketball and got cut. Every sport that Ron wanted me to try. Cut.

But one day I went out for the Cross Country team – because they don’t cut. And what do you know? I could run. I was good at it. Great, even.

Running put me in the paper and earned me recognition, notoriety and scholarships. All the things I thought Ron wanted. I don’t think he noticed.

And I did run. But I didn’t fail. Not yet anyway and running put me on a path that introduced me to a way of life and way of being that was foreign to me. It made me feel good. Those 6 or 7 years after I went out for the team. Amazing.

But I had Ron Scholl’s DNA and I waited to fail.

But those 6-7 years of running started to change my blueprint. Rewire my DNA. The people that I’d meet in my first running career, along with others, would help me see the very best of me. It took me places and taught me lessons that I’d never learn from Ron. I was a runner. That was my blueprint

I didn’t have to lie or bullshit or any of those things that Ron taught me. In fact, I liked the accountability that came with practice, racing and friendship. Running was mine and it was clear that I was finding the best version of myself.

And it was good for a while. Until it wasn’t. Because those blueprints you get when you are 8 are hard to erase. And I’d stumble into my 20’s and 30’s with Ron’s DNA nipping at my heels. Lying, bullshitting and avoiding accountability. Pushing away the people that wanted to care for me the most. Into my own black Mercedes.

That’s Ron Scholl’s DNA. His blueprint. The Architect.

It took a scare from cancer at 43 and a question from a young man that saw the best in me – “Mr. Bentley. Are you a runner?’ – to make me realize that those 6 - 7 years as a runner didn't rewrite my DNA, it showed me my DNA. My blueprint – my DNA – had been inside me from the beginning.

It's my DNA, my blueprint. I’m the architect.