The Gift of Fire

by Dan Caro

  Meanwhile, Glenn and I continued our weekly sessions, and I kept improving. He even invited me to sit in and play with a real jazz band he belonged to during a local music festival. When he first asked, I was dubious; as the date approached, I became so nervous that I thought I’d forgotten how to breathe. So I just applied a lesson I’d already learned in the past—practice, practice, practice. Long before I took to the stage, I got ahold of the music we were to play and practiced it every morning and night until I was practically playing it in my sleep.

  When the time came for the outdoor festival, I took my place on the raised platform with Glenn and the other musicians and took a deep breath. I knew I was prepared, and that made me feel confident I’d hold my own—which I did, and then some. During that short but successful public debut, I felt something like the energy that had gone through me that day in kindergarten when I felt myself open up to the universe in the school yard … and it made me hungry for more.

  I’d thrown myself into my music—practiced and prepared—with the passion of a man certain that this was his destiny. The applause that washed over me when I left the stage that day is still part of who I am. From that moment forward, I knew with certainty that whatever I did in the future, my success would be determined by how seriously I approached the work.

  I’D BEEN PLAYING THE DRUMS for a little over a year when I received a call from a segment producer on The Montel Williams Show in New York City. It seems that Montel was doing a program about young people who had been burned or disfigured but had come to terms with their injuries and had gone on to lead normal, productive lives.

  The producer asked if I was interested in appearing on the show with other young “survivors”; if so, Montel would fly me and one of my parents to the Big Apple, put us up in a fancy hotel in Times Square, and arrange for a limo to take us to and from the studio. The show would be taped the next afternoon, which happened to be my 14th birthday.

  I talked it over with my parents, and we agreed that if sharing my story on national television might help other kids struggling with the kind of difficulties I’d experienced, then I should definitely do it. So the next morning, Mom and I were in a Boeing 747 circling the Manhattan skyline as the pilot waited for the go-ahead to land at JFK International Airport. It was a bizarre and exciting journey, and our first big mother-son trip since returning from Yugoslavia seven years earlier.

  That afternoon I was on the set of Montel sharing my story, doing my best to encourage others who were burned not to be discouraged or allow their injuries to get in the way of their dreams. To bring home the point I was trying to make, the producers rolled some home video that my mom had brought from Louisiana, which showed me playing the drums. After we finished taping, I received a nice surprise when Montel and the producers presented me with a birthday cake.

  But my biggest surprise came later, when I saw how my story acted as a powerful tool in the lives of others. Since that show aired in 1993, dozens of complete strangers have stopped me on the street in cities all over the country to thank me for going on Montel. They’ve told me that seeing me play the drums without hands motivated them to follow their own dreams, despite whatever obstacles life had put in their way. After I’d heard a few stories like that, I realized that the real gift of music was its ability to inspire others.

  Chapter Six

  Navigating the High-School Waters

  As much as I was inspired by being on Montel and had enjoyed my 15 minutes of fame in the national spotlight, I was also entering a phase of my life where I often wished that I could crawl under a rock and hide from the world. That phase was called high school.

  By the time I hit adolescence, I was painfully aware that I’d never be part of a popular clique. I certainly wasn’t going to be a jock—even though I could play many sports well—and I wasn’t going to be a preppy or part of the cool crowd. No, I was going to be what I’d been for most of my life: “different looking.” That knowledge didn’t do me a lot of good, though; it definitely didn’t give me any insight into how to live a normal life, deal with girls, or ignore the gawkers and morons who laughed at me when I was out in public.

  Whatever hassles and heartaches I’d experienced in my young life were intensified during high school. Much later I’d come to recognize and appreciate the spiritual gifts I’d received as a result of being burned. But during the majority of my teenage years, it was very difficult for me to see beyond what I’d lost.

  As I BEGAN MY FRESHMAN YEAR, at least I knew with certainty that the one thing I could do was play drums. I cultivated the ever-growing sensation inside of me that one day I could and would be a fine drummer—maybe even a great drummer! That knowledge is what I held on to whenever I faced new challenges—such as entering high school in a new town.

  Just a few months prior, my parents had decided that it was time for the family to relocate. The neighborhood my brothers and I had grown up in was changing rapidly; we’d had a population explosion in the area that had brought in a lot of petty crime, quasi-gang activity, and drug dealing to what had once been a peaceful family suburb. When I was three or four years old, I remember listening to crickets as I fell asleep … seven or eight years later, the most frequent sounds coming through my bedroom window at night were gunshots and police sirens.

  So we moved about 40 miles out of town (which I considered the sticks), where we could see giant pine trees swaying in the breeze and once again hear crickets in the evening air. The town was called Mandeville, a small commuter community on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain. New Orleans proper sits on the south side of the huge lake, which is the second largest saltwater lake in America after Utah’s Great Salt Lake.

  Although we weren’t that far away from New Orleans, that big body of water did a good job of cutting us off from the people we’d grown up with. This meant that when my brothers and I arrived in our new hometown, we didn’t know a single soul.

  To make matters worse, I had to take the bus to get to school. From kindergarten until eighth grade, my mother had always driven me, so I never had to worry about sitting next to other kids on the bus. Now that had all changed. In many ways, I was facing the world on my own for the very first time.

  Of course, it was high time for me to board a school bus just like every other kid did. By now, I was old enough and confident enough (or getting there, anyway) to handle whatever the other boys and girls might dish out. And handle it I did. A lot of times the seats around me on those first bus trips stayed vacant. But after a while—after I’d gotten to be friends with a few of the kids—those seats filled up.

  I was also lucky that my big brother Scott was in his senior year when we arrived in Mandeville, and we’d often go to school together. (By this point, my eldest brother, Johnny, was off to college, so I didn’t see him too much. I didn’t see much of my little brother, Paul, either, because he was just starting elementary school.)

  Once Scott and I clamored off the bus with all the other kids, however, we’d separate for the rest of the day. He’d go off to his classes, and I’d go off to mine and be on my own all day long.

  IT MAY HAVE BEEN IN THE STICKS, but Mandeville High School was huge to me. I’d come from a private school where the student body consisted of 200 kids at the very most, and my new public school had more than 2,000! The size difference was so overwhelming for me that just being at that school was physically and emotionally exhausting. Often I’d find myself fighting upstream against a river of students flowing around me while I was heading in the opposite direction; pushing my way around or through groups of kids gathered into little hallway roadblocks, gabbing and gossiping between classes; or lugging 20 or 30 pounds of books across the enormous campus, which seemed larger than most small cities to me.

  At least during my first day, which was dedicated to orientation, I was able to meet a few upperclassmen who’d been assigned to show me around and make me as comfortable in my new surroundings as they could. But then I was left to dea
l with the problems, perils, and emotional pitfalls of high-school life by myself—such as negotiating the cafeteria.

  Lunch was held during two different periods, one for juniors and seniors, the other for the freshmen and sophomores. This meant I wouldn’t get to eat with those nice upperclassmen or my brother Scott.

  Those first few weeks enduring the noon-hour meal were pretty much hell, if you want to know the truth. I’d sit in the center of one of the long institutional dining tables, and no one would sit anywhere near me. It was as though the other students suspected that my scars were contagious, that somehow they’d get burned by sitting too close to me! Just like in kindergarten, I could almost feel their stares as they choked down their sandwiches. And just like in kindergarten, the kids grew bolder, and their snickers and nasty whispering became loud enough for me to hear.

  For example, when there were no other open seats one day, a ninth-grade boy standing a few inches away from me loudly asked his friend: “You must be joking! Do I have to sit by him?” I focused my attention on the food tray in front of me and kept eating my meal. What else could I do? If you’re swimming in a pool filled with hungry sharks, the last thing you want to do is let them know you’re bleeding. Sure, these types of remarks hurt deeply, but I did my best to ignore them and protect myself by forming a sort of scar tissue over my heart, as I already had over most of my body.

  Soon I developed a kind of inner radar that picked up on the people in a crowd most likely to attack or insult me. To this day I remain highly sensitive to the energy flow of others and get a sense of how they’re going to react to me before they know what their reaction is going to be themselves—I call it “vibing” people. While I used to rely on this as a tool for protecting my own emotions, more and more I employ it to protect other individuals from embarrassing themselves.

  These days I’m more sympathetic to strangers who react rudely when they first meet me. I understand they have issues and fears of their own that make them act out defensively. But back in high school, I wasn’t nearly as sophisticated in my thinking. So when a fellow student lashed out at me with his or her tongue, it really stung.

  Thank God I had my drum set. As soon as I returned home after school, I could retreat to the den, break out my sticks, and go crazy. For a long time I used the drums as a release for the hurt and frustration that was part of my daily life. Anger was such a part of my drumming style that I became a very aggressive player and often played like a real beast. In fact, one of my nicknames on the drums is “Danimal.”

  But I’m happy to say that I’ve left much of that way of playing in the past, where it belongs. I’m still a very aggressive drummer, but I never let anger fuel my performance anymore. I have far too much respect for the instrument and for the music to do that. Besides, I’ve learned that when you allow anger—which is an emotion based in ego—to dominate any aspect of your life, you’re closing yourself off to love. And love is the most positive and creative artistic force in the universe. Again, these were all things I’d learn further down the road of life; during high school, I needed every outlet I could find to vent my anger and keep myself sane.

  It was also helpful that Scott, who was a senior, had made friends fairly easily and introduced me to some of the boys he’d met. I also became acquainted with some older students on my own through gym class. You see, for the most part, my skin doesn’t have pores. This means that I am extremely sensitive to the sun and have a difficult time regulating my core body heat. Since freshman and sophomore physical-education classes generally consisted of outdoor activities—in the bright Louisiana sun!—the teachers arranged for me to be a part of the junior gym classes, which tended to take place in the gym. There I met those few whom I came to consider my pals.

  I found all of these older kids much easier to hang out with because they were more mature and didn’t feel the need to prove themselves by putting people down. When I listened to them talk, I felt less lonely and put upon by my own classmates.

  Sometimes when Scott’s buddies dropped by the house, I’d flip through the books they brought over. Some of them featured stories of people and history that stirred something within me, making me think about myself as being part of a larger world for the first time. And it was through books that I made one of my first good friends at Mandeville High.

  Her name was Mrs. Plesch, and she was my English teacher that first year. After she’d read an essay I wrote about rock ’n’ roll and society, we began to talk quite a bit. She spoke to me differently, prodding me to think about things such as music and life. She was open to new philosophies and fresh ways of thinking. Through our daily chats after class, I too began to form my own awareness as to what I wanted to become. Looking back now, I see that thanks to her, I had a social outlet—and that was one of the things that saved me from the depths of total social abandonment.

  ALTHOUGH I’D MADE A FEW FRIENDS during those first few months of school, I had yet to make any who were more or less my same age.

  Then one day that changed. It happened in the lunchroom, of course. A big burly kid walked right over to me, tossed his tray down on the table, and sat across from me. He looked at me for a moment with great intensity and started a conversation.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “I was burned in a fire when I was young.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I was two.”

  “Damn. That must suck. Did it hurt?”

  “I don’t really remember any pain,” I said.

  He kept asking questions relating to my accident, and then he introduced himself: “I’m Matt. What are you doing over here all alone?”

  “My name is Dan. I don’t really have any friends,” I admitted. “I’m not sure that anyone likes me … except a few of the older kids and my English teacher.”

  “Well, you’ve got a friend now. What do you do?”

  I didn’t understand the question. “What do you mean, what do I do?”

  “I mean, do you like to do stuff?” Matt asked. He kept jamming food into his mouth and chewing kind of loudly. I suspected that he might be a bit of a ball-breaker and was maybe trying to show me up in front of the other students, but he seemed genuinely nice. He was also kind of funny.

  “I play drums.”

  Matt’s gaze shot directly down to the ends of my arms—which didn’t look like any he’d ever seen before, obviously, especially on a drummer. “Get the hell out of here!” he exclaimed after a few seconds. “How do you do that? I don’t know anything about the drums, but I play a little guitar, and I have a hard enough time doing that with all my fingers! I can’t imagine playing without hands. Come on, man, you’re putting me on! How the hell can you manage to ever hold on to drumsticks without any hands?”

  “I do okay,” I said, smiling at his openness. “I use a wristband to attach one stick to my right hand, and I can hold the other stick with my thumb on my left hand.” I held it up, wiggling my surgeon-constructed digit for him.

  He whistled softly and shook his head in amazement. “Man, oh man! That is so cool … are you any good?”

  I always hated it when someone asked me that. How was I supposed to respond? I settled on: “I’m okay, I guess.”

  That was all it took for us to become friends—me responding to Matt with an honest answer, and him not being freaked out by the way I looked. We began hanging out together quite a lot, both at school and after. At first we mainly hung at my house, jamming on instruments with my brothers and generally having a good time while getting to know each other. Matt would bring his guitar, and I’d play along with him on the drums. They were good days for me, uplifting and eye-opening.

  Matt also knew a lot of people. He had one of those open faces and easy, likable personalities that attracted friends; I really looked up to him. Through him I got to know several other great people, and my life began to open up socially. Sometimes I couldn’t believe what had been inside of me, but untapped, for so long
—the ability to have good friendships!

  It felt incredible to finally have someone around me (who was not my family member) who acted and behaved in a “normal” way around me. Maybe I’d been on the defensive for so long because I’d grown used to feeling isolated, as if it was my normal way to feel. Now that I was venturing out into the world, meeting Matt’s buddies and making new pals on my own, that sense of seclusion was peeling away. I was extremely thankful to Matt, and attentive to the gift of friendship in my life. Matt Rycyk was (and still is) a solid guy, and an outstanding friend.

  I did have to overcome a familiar hurdle not too long after we met, though. Matt took me over to his house, and his mother greeted me with a comforting hug. We then wandered into the next room, where his father sat reading the newspaper. I guess he was fairly engrossed in the paper because when he glanced up to acknowledge my introduction, the first thing out of his mouth was, “Nice mask.” It wasn’t a joke. He just hadn’t been thinking … or perhaps he really did think I was wearing a mask. I honestly don’t know.

  Matt’s mom almost died of embarrassment. As for me, I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. I tried to chuckle a bit, not knowing what to do or say. My friend just sort of stood there, dumbfounded as well. Finally, after a couple of minutes of this awkward situation, Mrs. Rycyk explained to her husband, “Dear, he’s not wearing a mask. This is Dan. He was burned in a fire when he was a little boy.”

  Mr. Rycyk, I knew, must have been in a personal hell when he realized what had just transpired. He was clearly upset by what had come out of his mouth and dropped his paper to take a second look at me. Then he got up and left the room without saying another word. I guess that’s all he could do to try to save “face” after he’d inadvertently insulted mine. Mrs. Rycyk followed her husband out of the room, tossing a little glance of apology in my direction.