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Father’s Day Brag about my Kids #2
This is in reverse order: Brian is the older of our two kids, but I started bragging about Valerie. I have some good stories from Brian’s younger days, but I am proud of his young adulthood. He had lousy luck, and endured through it all. His 34th birthday is June 21.
Brian and I were nudged into getting serious about firearms after 9-11. We lived near Washington DC and decided we needed to be proactive about defending our family. Along with communications and bug-out plans for an emergency, we both got certified as NRA Instructors (a process involving a week of training) and taught Basic Pistol classes together.
Unlike Valerie, Brian’s school experience was frustrating. In second grade we were told he had ADD and Fairfax County wanted him drugged. We fought it. My wife spent six months taking him to psychiatric evaluations and group therapy, and I went back to the school committee with a half-inch thick report on him. I told them, “He doesn’t have ADD, he has an IQ of 138. You’re boring him.”
There were no shop classes or anything of interest for a kid who wanted to build things, and no teacher he met who inspired him. He graduated and decided he wanted to be a gunsmith. At the time there were four colleges in the country that offered a degree in gunsmithing, and the best and oldest was in northern California. Six months away from his graduating, California changed the laws and shut the program down. He came back to Virginia and decided to go for a two-year electrical engineering degree. He did so well he kept going and got the four-year degree. The bad luck? It was at ITT Tech, and they didn’t tell anyone they had lost their accreditation. He wound up with an EE degree that no one would accept.
Back in the ADD days, one very good doctor had suggested that Brian should drink coffee as a substitute for the medications we didn’t want to put him on. Coffee became a ritual, with the two of us preparing and drinking it in the morning. As soon as he could get a job he went to work for Starbucks. He loved it and they loved him, and he worked at different stores all through the college years, in Virginia and California. After the college fiasco he moved to Seattle with his sweetheart (they got married last month) and took a job at the Starbucks factory. Today he’s running a production line, and is happily pursuing a career in the coffee biz. Say what you will about Starbucks, as a place to work there are a lot worse. And he sends me some special beans from time to time.
They are coming east in October for Valerie’s wedding. and I am really looking forward to having everyone together for a while.
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I remember Brian’s tough times–the guy just couldn’t get a break! But it looks like life has turned around for him, and I wish him and his new bride the very best! And the same for Valerie in October. What a reunion it will be!
My father taught me how to play chess when I was a kid, which was pretty awesome. Now had I been able to sip some Turkish coffee with him while we were making our moves, I think I’d be a different man, today. Happy Father’s Day!
Great story! Parenting is an adventure with some of the most rewarding results. Then we get an encore as grandparents.
Since this got promoted to the main feed, I thought I should share some pictures: Brian and Eliza, and Valerie with the first results of this year’s garden.
Brian is definitely in your image. I’ll take the dog! And the summer squash!
You beat me to it!
Eliza is a veterinary nurse. She and Brian adopt dogs that are sometimes abandoned at the practice because their owners don’t want to pay for needed surgery. They have had five or six of them, all with some sort of handicap but all very dear little puppies. One of the many reasons I’m proud of them is that they have such kindness for small critters.