Dear Garrett..

I received two graduation gifts when I graduated from High School. The first gift came from my girlfriend when she told me she didn’t want us to go together anymore. My second graduation gift came from my employer, Mr. Baneth, when he told me he was terminating my employment at his pharmacy. Mr. Baneth told me that there was no future for me at Baneth’s Pharmacy and that I would have to move on. That unexpected news hit me hard because I liked my job at the pharmacy and it had been the most stable part of my life during my last two years of High School. Losing my girlfriend hit me hard too.

When Mr. Baneth gave me the news of my job termination, I remembered all of my Dad’s friends telling me, at his funeral, that I was now the man of the family. They also told me that if I ever needed a job when I was older to let them know. Well, that was in reference to a work opportunity with the telephone company in Michigan. But now I was in California.

I figured that one phone company is as good as another phone company so I applied for a job with the California phone company. I thought that since my Dad was an Engineer at one phone company it should count for something at another phone company. Not knowing much about life yet, I was surprised to hear that I would have to take a test for them to determine if the phone company could hire me. I fantasized about what a phone company job would be like, hooking up phones for nice people and climbing poles, etc. I could see where I could be a pretty important person having such a great job.

My hope’s were quickly dashed when I showed up at the phone company and began my attempt to take the test. The test was all electronics diagrams, questions and situations, nothing at all that I could recognize. The test may as well have been written in Greek! I could guess and bluff my way through a High School exam but I received no inspiration whatsoever on how to handle this phone company test. Nothing I had taken in High School remotely resembled anything I saw on this test.

In High School, I had managed to scrape by in math, geography and history, etc. Most of what I remember in my language class were my French teachers legs and how to say a few simple phrases in French like, “Do you listen to records?” and “How are you?” and “I am fine, thank you.” I did do better in English, Wood Shop, PE and surprisingly Bio Chemistry. Not only did I make a “A” in Bio Chemistry but I fell in love with my Bio Chemistry teacher too, Miss Cutler, a pretty blond.

Okay, so now my job at the pharmacy had ended and I failed the test for the phone company. A job at the phone company was the one ace I thought I held in my back pocket being placed there when I was age 12 while being told by my Dad’s friends to let them know if I ever needed a job. But now my Dad’s friends weren’t there to help me because I was in California and they were in Michigan.

For a while, it felt like there was no place to turn and no place to go. I remember feeling lost. At this point, I did not feel hopeless, only lost for a while. Later in Army Flight School, I remember an instructor telling us in a class on navigation, “Remember, you never get lost, only temporarily disoriented.” That’s what I felt like when I failed the phone company test, lost the pharmacy job and lost my girlfriend. At that time, I did feel that something would work out. I just didn’t know what that might be.