When I was growing up in the ORANGE ROOM, I dreamed of being a ROCK AND ROLL STAR!!! It's really all I could think about. Yet, becoming a successful musician, let alone a rock star, was like wanting to play center field for the New York Yankees. When I moved out of the ORANGE ROOM and my parents home in 1979, I was 20 years old with zero job skills. I did secure a sales position in the electronics department at Bergers downtown, but that was hardly a career job. My main focus was on our band and we were traveling a lot. In fact, the travel was getting in the way of my day job...so I had to quit and become a professional musician. I guess I got my wish!!! What I didn't realize was..... a professional musician can also mean, a starving, poor individual with no heath insurance making barely enough money to keep the light on. I remember hiding from Cilco collectors a few times.
After more than a year of that life style, I decided to put my life back on course and re enrolled at ICC. I thank my Mom for helping me. My Dad was not the least bit interested in helping me pay for my previous mistake. But, he reluctantly went along.
Of course I was poor all through school and even after I finished college, I was basically still a person with zero job skills. Through years of worry and determination, I finally found myself passing my health and life exams and started my first career job at Prudential Insurance where I worked for 6 years.
Through Prudential, I managed to get a job in banking. I remember speaking with the President of Bank One one afternoon in a job interview and he told me that he was considering hiring me but at my age, I'd probably require more money than the position paid. I was 35 years old at the time and the position, manager of an in store branch, only paid a starting salary of $24,000. I said, Sir, I know I have no formal banking training, but I will gladly work for that salary as I consider this an on the job training experience.....and with that, I began my career in banking.
While the branches were being built within the local Kroger stores, I worked as a teller and banker and learned something new everyday. It was a long and humbling experience. Stressful at times. There were many times when the customers knew more about banking than I did....but I learned. When it came time to open my in store branch, I picked a qualified group of people who had been in banking for several years and could help me "sail my ship". One such person was Donna Painter. I'll always be grateful for her help and knowledge. I called her the Wizard!!!
Over the next several years, my branch was successful but I decided that management wasn't for me. I was better in sales than operations and all that came with it.
In many ways, the Darren Peacock of 1979, in the ORANGE ROOM, would never have predicted that his future was going to be helping people in the banking industry!!! Who saw that coming? But because of who I was, I had a knack for explaining banking concepts to our customers. It made me different and it made me successful.
I have many memories from my time as a banker.
I would meet people from all walks of life...some very rich and some very poor. I've seen fist fights between sisters, experienced a bank robbery, shared a closed cubical with a BAT and then there was the spider lady!
The Spider lady seemed normal enough when I invited her into my office. She was probably around 70 and had a large bouffant hair do. She seemed lonely as her husband had been gone for several years. I think she just wanted to talk. I steered the conversation to fact finding questions several times but she would always veer off into personal chatter. Finally, I gave up and just let her talk. After a long diatribe, I noticed something in her hair moving just above her forehead. I thought that I was just imagining it at first but then again, I noticed some movement right around the woman's hair line. She continued speaking to me. Soon, little legs emerged from inside the large bouffant cocoon...eight of them!!! I realized it was a SPIDER!!!!
Her little companion, then began dropping down from her human nest and proceeded to ride a web that it had spun DOWN HER FOREHEAD, and stopped right around the middle of her eyebrows!!! Then, just as it reached the base of her forehead, it quickly rose back up its web and re entered her hair!!!
Now I was conflicted if I should continue watching the trapeze spider or look my customer in the eye. I decided it was best to just look my customer in the eye while the spider dropped down at least another four or five times before finally climbing back up into her giant mountain of hair!!!
After escorting my customer out of my office, I wondered if she ever realized that her hair was home to a acrobatic spider or perhaps a whole family of circus spiders? I guess some things are best left unknown.
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