Fish Out of Water

When I first promoted to Director of the agency where I had worked for over 25 years, I felt like a fish out of water among my peers at statewide meetings. They were very welcoming, and I knew many of them from before, so my discomfort was my own. Part of my feeling like a squid among marlins was my Parkinson’s. At the time, the only evidence of it was my tremor. It was pretty well controlled with medications. The confounding factor was nervousness. At the slightest sense of nervousness my tiny tremor could become a seismic event.

At one of my first meetings I was preparing to state an unpopular position in a roundtable discussion. Being the new fish in the ocean, I was nervous. As I spoke from the tablecloth-covered conference table, I was quaking enough to cause a linen tsunami at the Doubletree Hotel. Those in the know, knew. Those who didn’t know responded like the Director next to me. She leaned over with a hand on my shoulder and said in a compassionate tone, “Don’t worry, you did great. Do you need a glass of water?“ I guess that is what you offer to a goldfish trying to swim in the ocean.

An hour later we were in the lunch buffet line. I was still having a moderate tremor while interacting with peers and negotiating things like, “Do you think the salad dressing is gluten free?.” The main course was either chicken or fish. Naturally, I chose the fish. As I shakily lifted the fillet out of the serving dish, it suddenly flopped off the spatula and onto the floor. To deflect attention away from the role my tremor played, I turned to the person behind me in line, shrugged, and said, “The fish is undercooked.“

© 2022 Steve Steinberg