All In

G started 1st grade a week ago. He's no stranger to school as he went through the pre-K farm league before a year in the minors of full day Kindergarten. As you can see by the look on his face, he's all in.

I've waited all summer for this! He said, trying to keep from exploding.

His buddies are all back too so the whole line-up will share in faster, longer, stronger hijinks. They're a tight crew of boys that I hope can play hard and challenge each other all through school. Sometimes they let the girls play their hybrid Parcour-Power Ranger-Ninja games too.

I'm really pleased with his excitement for school. I know it will ebb and flow but a strong start is a good beginning. Even if his favorite part of the day is a tie between recess and lunch.

Fifteen years ago, barely two years after getting married, A and I concluded the one class a term, 16-year college plan wasn't going to work. She had graduated a few months before our wedding, but I had put off college and even had some high-school to finish. I had every intention of going to college, I just all of a sudden was 29.

I was reminded that there were perfectly good skilled labor careers that didn't require a degree. To be honest, I felt like I needed to conquer college if only to prove to myself that my high school experience was a fluke.  I was one of those kids who was too smart to be left alone, but had too much energy for anyone else to keep up. I simply fell through the cracks of the bureaucracy of education.

 A and I brained stormed and mapped out career possibilities that could come from being a Warehouse Shipping/Receiving Lead. It was a pretty short list. Finally, as the decision came to either commit full heartedly to my education, or take a job as a LTL delivery driver, we decided to swing for the fences. We went all in and I quit my job at the end of August.

Like many newly minted college graduates, when we got married, A had chosen the high road, the career where money or benefits were slim but the chance to change the world was the pitch she swung at. In truth it was a crappy job that leaned more towards long hours and abuse than any chance to hit a home run.

In the spring of 1999 she found a slightly better job as an Administrative Assistant. Barely 3 months before I quit my job of 4 years.  By October I landed a part time job at a coffee shop  in the evenings and started riding my bike again for the 30 mile round trip commute to school and work each day. I treated school like a job. I scheduled myself to stay on campus, splitting my time between classes and studying in the library for 7 hours each day.

There were days or weeks of course when school wasn't my favorite. Much was at stake besides just getting good grades. I had to assure my new in-laws that I wasn't just avoiding work or using their daughter as an ATM machine. A recognized how serious I was taking school. She in turn took her job seriously. We had plenty of heated discussions, but we made up every time and resolved to win the game we were playing one pitch, one inning at a time.

Our friends and family supported us as best they could, trying to motivate us to keep on sticking it out and reminding us that once we made it through our college experience our lives would get better.

How could it not? We were slumming in the minor leagues while many of our peers were working their way into middle management, I often thought.

In the end, it took six years. An entire years worth of credits in failed math classes alone. But that is worth a story all its own. A switched jobs a third time, taking with her a growing confidence of her abilities and stepped up to the bigs. She was a major league sugga' momma by the time I was in my cap and gown.

My point is, for those six years, I carried the same motivation and the same energy for accomplishing an educational goal that I see on G's face in that picture. The difference is that I had some life experience, some successes, failures, lean and lonely times and a strong, loving wife to lean on.  He doesn't even know what's coming. Our job now is to help him keep his energy, keep his imagination, but help him confront his challenges head on and succeed.  Before he turns 30. If only so we can finally get this school thing behind us and head south to watch spring training and enjoy a retirement!