On Unfamiliar Ground...Ummm...what now?...

   We were doing her homework, plurals when she wrote down a word that I began to erase.
      Isobel: "Hey, what's wrong with that?"
      Daddy: "You can't use that word, you can't."
      Isobel: "Why not, it's OK."
      Daddy: "It's not right. What word are you trying to write?"
      Isobel: "Foxes."
      Daddy: "And how is that spelled?"
      Isobel: "F-O-X-S."
      Daddy: "ES."
      Isobel: "ES."
      Daddy: "And what did you write?"
      Isobel: "F-U-X-S."
      Daddy: "Sound it out."
      Isobel: "...gasp! I'd get kicked out of class."


       I find it a touch ironic that in there last couple of weeks this column has become a little bit more about me and what is happening in my life and just little snippets of what is happening with our Isobel...but I think it was always as much about my growing as it was her.
     So here I am a college man and I figured I would have an easier time finding a job of some permanence with my new skill set...when it rains it pours. I was hired by one place more or less before I had even graduated  another interview followed soon after that and another after that. I am in a place where I have never been before...I am the popular choice of employees, they want me as much as I want them and that truly is uncharted territory for me.
      It is an odd thing to be able to sit through an interview and actually answer the questions they asked you with absolute certainty and a measure of intelligence that just doesn't happen in any of the factory jobs I've ever interviewed for. George Carlin had  it right, they want you just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough not to question the shitty situation you have found yourself in. I've worked a lot of factory jobs and I was either handed them or bullshit my way into them or a little of both...but no more.
      One of the interviews I had, was a series of questions ranging from conflict management to witnessing of abuse concluding with a question I have never been asked in a job interview. 'If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?'
     I was taken rather aback; "I wouldn't wear glasses anymore." I blurted out followed by a short chuckle. I went quiet after that, intrigued by the question and actually trying to come up with some kind of intelligent answer. The interviewer looked at me uncomfortably when she saw I wasn't going anywhere beyond this question until I had said my piece.
      I took what seemed to me to be an unusually long breath and said; "I don't think I would change anything. I am pretty OK with who I am. It's taken me a very long time to get here but I kinda like who I am now."
      And I think do...mostly. There are always going to be things I could point out as needing changing, like I wish I had less grey hair and fewer wrinkles, , I could use a moderately thinner waistline and more time to tend to the lawn but these are things that don't keep me up at night wondering if I am a good person. I think maybe I holler at the kids too much when I get frustrated but this career seems to make all the little things I used to holler about seem really insignificant.
     I used to think that maybe I was selling out in a way...trading my Rock and Roll credibility for something else entirely. Maybe there are a few people who think that way too...maybe I'm paranoid or just thinking too much. It's the change, the change of the routine that terrifies me and makes people edgy and angry. I felt so out of place and frightened those first few days of school. I'm certain I was just as grey and ashen looking as Isobel was on her first day of kindergarten. And then all of it changed. School's out and it's on to the working world but how do I feel about it?
      I have a close friend, like an older brother who has a a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system and should the need arise, I am completely capable of taking care of him. My parents, most of your parents, all of our parents are getting older and who is there to take care of them as they become frail? Well OK, it likely won't be me but it will be someone like me hopefully.
      So what would I change about myself? Contrary to popular belief, I wouldn't change a thing. Do I think I sold out? Sold my Rock and Roll soul but gained the world... I think I bought in.


      So Izzy came downstairs with the belt of a smoking jacket wrapped around her hand and wrist.
      "Are you going to box somebody?" I asked.
      "No," she said "I have a broken hand from a fisting accident."
      Stunned silence is the best way to describe what followed as that particular phrase left my daughter's lips.
       "Ummm...what now?" I asked cautiously.
       "A fisting accident. Isn't that what you call it when you hit somebody with your fist, fisting?"
      "That is exactly what it is called."
     Honestly, you couldn't make this stuff up.