Entrepeneurial Spirit

This has been my week between jobs. Last week I said goodbye to my old company, and I felt a pull. The pull of self doubt. Pull is actually a weak word -- tug perhaps is more appropriate. But this week I find myself completely at ease. The people I thought I would miss so much, let's just say not so much. This isn't my first rodeo cowboys and girls.

I know these lyrics by heart:
I've been in and out of love and in between
And now we play the final showdown scene
As the credits roll the sad song starts to play
And this is where the Cowboys rides away.

Into the city named for the man who defeated Santa Ana after the massacre at the Alamo. Did you know that Santa Ana went into exile in Cuba after that? And that he was brought back by the Americans on the condition that he rally popular Mexican opinion on the side of America in the southern Texan border dispute, thirteen years before the Civil War? He was given troops, and then he marched against us.

I had no idea.

Thank you Jeff Shaara for making it so interesting.

Ah, so, like I was saying...

I'm flying to Michigan to meet up with my new employer on Sunday. My wife asks me if I'm sure this company is legit; I say I guess so. How do you know they aren't organ harvesters?

My son (two weeks ago?) got paid thirteen dollars for a back rub at school. He's in first grade (to give you perspective). Keep in mind that we had to piece this all together and pay a visit to the school principal.

It all started with a note from the teacher reporting that my son was inappropriately touching a girl in his class.

Now I don't know what races through your mind when you hear (or read as it were) such a statement, but head was spinning. He wasn't much use under interrogation. Funny, but he was not unlike Bill Clinton, deftly dodging the questions, not really answering, or playing along with the scenerios I posed, that kind of thing. Then it was useless to keep asking.

Then I saw the money in his Pokemon wallet. I said Where did you get that money? He says her name. For what? Rubbing her back. I think, I thought you said it was an accident. But then I think, No, I suggested that it was an accident and he played along.

I go downstairs and tell my wife. I'm calling her parents, I say. I can't have them thinking that we would keep it. No, my wife says, Let's talk to the principal.

Next morning I'm in the front office. He's a fuzzy little man, a pip squeak, the kind that always got picked last. I interrupt the coffee talk he's having with the secretaries, or whatever they call themselves these days.

We go into a side office and slide him the money and explain.

He laughs, says What kid would turn down money? I laugh too, say, I have to admit, I admire his entrepeneurial spirit. But where did the girl get all that money?

He scratches his head, says I'd better check and see if she still has her field trip money.