When I Grow Up

I made another visit to my son's 1st grade classroom recently and I got a pleasant surprise. There was a wall covered with pictures the children had done about "What I Want To Be When I Grow Up..." I don't remember if I've mentioned this before but I work in Information Technology for the local community college. Scotties creation read "When I grow up I want to be a computer technician. I want ot be a computer technician because I get paid. I like to work on computers. Computers are cool." Several of the spellings were quite different as you can imagine. He had a very artistic illustration of me at work that just made my heart swell. Scottie means so much to me and I am so proud of him, and it makes me feel good to know that he is proud of me too. I don't remember all that much from my own childhood, but I hope that I never disappointed my father. He's not with us anymore so it's too late to try to patch things up if I did. What do I remember? Well I remember that he worked as a carpenter sometimes. At one time he was doing roofing and he bought one of those mobile tar pits that you tow around behind a pickup truck. I remember one day we heard an explosion and my mom ran out to see what happened. When she came back in with my dad he said that he had turned the temperature up and forgot to open the lid, and BOOM! He was covered with spots of tar, and his eyebrows had been burned off! After my parents split I didn't see him much, so I never really knew what he did for a living. I feel bad now that we lost touch. I guess everybody would do some things differently if they could go back in time. Anyway, it really made me feel good to know that Scottie wants to be like me. I've tried to hard to remain close to him throughout his early years because I know that every day he gets a little older and a little more grown up and someday his childhood will be just a memory. I just want him to grow up happy, and do whatever he wants, as long as it's not roofing that is.

For a full size view of Scottie's creation click here.