Emergency

7

After being shorted for my March pay without explanation, it gave me the perfect excuse to leave my key behind at the software start-up and leave the associated negative work environment behind me as well. I went to classes that night feeling a sense of relief despite my cough, but by Tuesday, the next day, the cough and chest soreness outweighed the relief I felt. Still, I muddled through that night's classes just the same. By Wednesday, a piercing pain had started to develop in my left ear as my cough continued to get worse and I began to have balance problems. All I could do was lie on the living room area couch in mother's mobile home.

She was surprised to see me when she got in from work as I would normally have been gone to classes by six forty-five at night. I told her that I was having problems with a bad cold and ear pain and hadn't felt well enough to go to classes. But once she had finished her little dinner, I decided to ask her to take me to the emergency room by seven thirty. As she worked in the kitchen at the hospital, she knew where it was and how to get there, but she had also decided I shouldn't see a doctor again since my 'situation' cropped up at puberty. If it was her concern of a doctor finding out about me, or that she just didn't want to be bothered, she refused saying it was ''Too late at night.'' Yet the pain in my left ear got worse and my breathing more raspy and just after eight o'clock I pleaded with her to take me to the emergency room. She scolded me for even asking such a thing and I continued to lay there while she watched a couple hours worth of evening shows, then went to bed.

With the astounding level of pain in my left ear, I couldn't imagine falling asleep and instead stayed on the couch to let the evening news and subsequent two hours of late night talk shows distract me. The thought of calling an ambulance flitted through my mind, but I disregarded it as I thought they were for gun shot or heart attack victims, not a bad cold and an ear ache. I tried to go to the kitchen and get myself something to drink, but with my sense of balance all screwed up I found I needed to use my hands just to keep upright, so the thought of returning with a glass of water or tea was quickly discarded. I just took a quick sip at the sink and lay back on the couch. My eyes repeatedly glanced at the clock as if doing so would make it tell me it was now time I could fall asleep. By the end of the second hour of late night talk shows, I felt I could fall asleep despite the pain and made my way to my bedroom where I collapsed onto the bed still dressed.

The next morning I woke-up and the pain in my left ear was gone, but the wheezing wasn't. Sitting up in bed I noticed a large blood stain on my pillow where my head had been lying and I checked my left ear to find it coated with dried blood. Getting up from bed I made my way to the kitchen where my mother was making herself her morning breakfast and asked her about the blood around my ear. Her eyes widened in horror and her breakfast was abandoned as she decided to rush me to the nearest 'SwiftCare' location. Intended for small health care needs like cuts, or sore throats, when we arrived the staff asked if mother was sure she didn't want to take me to the emergency room. She was very sure as, being the place where she worked, the last thing she likely wanted was to get me to the emergency room and them asking her why she hadn't brought me in sooner. Knowing her as well as I did, I had no doubt she had spent the past few years at the hospital kitchen telling all of her coworkers what a selfless and caring mother she was to feed her own ego.

Oddly, despite people being in front of me and asking questions, I felt like I should turn to the right to better hear to them. Then it dawned on me that I couldn't hear with my left ear anymore and that's why everything sounded like it was to the right of me. The doctor had the nurse clean some of the caked blood from my ear as he got an abbreviated health history from my mother, then he put a fresh plastic cap on the scope and looked into my left ear. He told us that my left eardrum had ruptured and I would have to keep it dry from now on; I was to use a cotton swab coated with Vaseline tucked into my ear to keep the water out as I took showers. He told mother I needed to see an ear specialist right away, if not by the end of the day then by tomorrow at the latest. She agreed, but on the drive home told me we couldn't afford that and berated me for not having her take me to the 'SwiftCare' the previous night given how serious it was.

But I was not quite with it and didn't pay much attention to what she was saying. As she scrabbled for a quick bite and then a dash to work, I welcomed the chance to get back into the blood stained bed and fall back asleep...

I woke up by one in the afternoon with a piecing pain in my right ear. I used the cotton swab technique to seal my left ear and took a quick shower just to, at least, feel clean even if I was otherwise feeling like crap. The problem with the cotton swab technique is that it leaves the opening of the ear canal all slathered with Vaseline once you remove it and I tried to wipe it up as best I could with a tissue. I got dressed and laid back down on the living room couch and prayed for the pain in my right ear to get better as it got progressively worse. I also found I was having to breath more just to feel like I was breathing at all.

By two thirty I was becoming increasing sure that my right eardrum was going to burst and wondered if that meant I'd be deaf for the rest of my life. I once again debated if I could drive myself to the emergency room or should call an ambulance, but again they seemed like a bad idea. By three, I realized what I could do and decided to manipulate my mother. I called her work number and told the lady who answered who I was and that I needed my mother to pick me up and take me to the emergency room. She said she would put me on hold and get her, but I told her just to give my mother the message and said goodbye. If I had been passed to mother on the phone, she would have poo-pooed it and not come. But by having a coworker know that I needed my mother to get me to the emergency room, my mother would have no choice but to pick me up and take me there, less she look like a bad person by ignoring my request in front of her coworker.

By three twenty my mother was at the mobile home and helping me into the car. She glared at me and told me, ''Never do that again.'' But it didn't matter as I got the result I needed. The emergency room staff quickly got me to a bed as my mother stayed rather than returning to work. When the doctor came to examine me, checking my left ear, then my right ear, he decided to check my lungs and slipped his stethoscope up under my tee-shirt. When he encountered the ACE bandage, he paused for a moment, then slipped it under the bandage without comment and asked me to breath in and out. Then again, from the back. It turned out I had ''Walking Pneumonia'' and the congestion had been clogging up my inner ear tubes as well as filling my lungs. He ordered a decongestant on site to relieve the pressure on my right ear and then wrote a prescription for the pneumonia itself.

He told my mother she'd made the right choice deciding to bring me in as we waited for the Actifed to arrive from the hospital pharmacy. When it did, it took less than fifteen minutes for the pain in my right ear to improve and by the end of the hour the doctor confirmed that I was out of danger of losing my right eardrum and released me to go home with a pit stop to get the antibiotics and more Actifed at a local pharmacy. As part of the discharge papers, they had gone ahead and made an appointment with an ear specialist the coming Monday to check on my ears and decide on a long term course of treatment for my left eardrum.

Without complaint, mother picked up the prescriptions while I waited in the car and then she got me home. She was silent the whole way. Once home I decided to call Jeff and let him know that I learned the hard way that it was possible to get pneumonia and still be 'walking.' But by then, the decongestant had started to break-up the phlegm in my lungs and all Jeff heard was a largely incoherent gurgle. I excused myself and told him I'd call him tomorrow after I could talk clearly again.

Another result of this experience was my mother developed a need to burst into my bedroom in an apparent attempt to see me naked. I would close my doors to change clothes and she would sneak up to my door, pause a moment or two as she waited for me to unbutton or unzip something and then quietly turn the door knob and thrust the door open and step in. Perhaps noticing that the emergency room doctor hadn't reacted when examining me, she wanted to see for herself if my puberty 'situation', which I had shown her when I was thirteen, was still there or if she had simply imaged it back then. Whatever the reason, she ignored my protests and I eventually found a keyed, locking door knob for my bedroom...

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The Best Outcome

6

[At this point in the story, I return to the medical system after having been kept from it since the age of thirteen at my mother's behest. So before I talk about those experiences, I think I should first bring you up to speed with the then American Medical System as it was before the Twenty-First century...]

Freedom!

Freedom from having assigned doctors (by the government), freedom from making payments (defined by the government), freedom from any significant oversight by the government. The American Medical System of the Twentieth Century was all about freedom from the bonds of government in return so one could be 'helped' by private institutions with the best outcome their only goal. Not by penny pinching dictated by the government!

Ultimately, though, the nose of government still poked in under the tent in local ways. Such as requiring all children receive an education and requiring a minimum number of vaccinations for those children before they enter the school system. Such vaccinations would, then, require the child visiting a doctor and thus the parent would have to pick one. How the parent picked one was based on chance, such as browsing the phone book/directory under the category of 'doctor'. After wading through the listings for the 'Drain Doctor', the 'Lawn Doctor', and 'Car Doctor' the parent may give up hope until directed by a friend or other source to look under the category of 'physician'. Under 'physician' the parent would then choose a name at random and call the doctor's office to find out: If they were a doctor that treated children, If they were accepting new patients, and How much a visit would cost (which would be a secret based on what type of insurance coverage you'd have).

American Health Insurance companies are there to help you through such times. With luck, you have been assigned an insurance company by your or your spouse's job. If not by that, then perhaps your father's or mother's insurance company will cover you and your children, at least for a little while. But if you should find you don't have insurance coverage, you can always buy a private policy off the market, if you think to and can afford to. If for some reason you still don't have any insurance coverage, fear not, medical professionals will always take cash (cost to be determined after the fact on a per patient basis). If for some reason you can't afford the cash option, or the medical professionals in question won't accept you as a patient no matter how much cash you have, then you can go to the government for help and best of luck to you.

But let's say you have insurance. This can be a great help as they can save you from looking into the phone directory for a 'physician', leaving you with a list and no clue as how to pick, instead they'll give you a list of 'their preferred doctors' from which you can cluelessly pick. As you comb through the names you can then call each doctor's office to find: If they were a doctor that treated children, If they were accepting new patients, and If they still accepted the insurance coverage you are lucky enough to have. Many times they won't as they've gotten sick of dealing with one private insurance company or another.

Once you've selected a doctor and that doctor has agreed to see you, you can then make an appointment that suits the doctor's schedule. If you don't have a job which allows you to leave in the middle of the business day to suit the doctor's schedule, then you can go back to doctor hunting. But if you have an understanding job, then you can use the given time & date to arrive at the doctor's office. Should you be late or not show up, the doctor's office will charge you for their time as their time is precious. Should you arrive at the doctor's office and the doctor themselves be late or not show up, you can reschedule free of charge, as your time isn't worth anything.

But now you've finally synced-up your schedules and you and your new doctor meet. Upon meeting you, the doctor can: a) decide they don't want you as a patient and welcome you to leave, b) decide they don't want you as a patient but continue seeing you in a half-hearted way to keep getting the money from your insurance company, or c) decide they don't mind having you as a patient and will accept the money from your insurance company in return for not addressing your health issues in a half-hearted way... when they are in the mood.

From this point forward, you have been embraced by the American Medical System and will have consistent medical care as long as nothing changes, such as your health or the doctor's address. Should your doctor leave, then you have the option of returning to the phone book or insurance listings and pick another name at random, or the doctor's office refers you to a new doctor who keeps losing patients and needs some more. To formalize this transfer, your old doctor will send a copy of his anecdotal office notes of you to your new doctor for his or her entertainment. If you are luck, these notes will contain copies of one or more objective test result.

But let's say your doctor stays in business and you see him for a new health issue than the ones he's been treating you for all along. Then he needs to gain a significant understanding of your new health problem to determine: If your insurance will cover it*, If your insurance will cover him or her treating it themselves*, Or does your insurance company have a list of acceptable doctors who can treat that condition*, If so does the doctor chosen from that list still accept your insurance coverage*, and if 'Yes' is that doctor accepting new patients*. If he is accepting new patients, then he has probably lost some and needs some more.

When seeing this new doctor, whom we'll call 'A Specialist', when you arrive at his office he or she can: a) decide they don't want you as a patient and welcome you to leave, b) decide they don't want you as a patient but continue seeing you in a half-hearted way to keep getting the money from your insurance company, or c) decide they don't mind having you as a patient and will accept the money from your insurance company in return for not addressing your health issues in a half-hearted way... when they are in the mood.

Now that seeing a doctor is clearly defined for you, let's talk about diagnostic tests. Should your condition need to be explored through diagnostic testing, then the doctor can first see if the insurance allows diagnostic testing for the condition he or she believes you might have. If the insurance company doesn't allow such testing, then the doctor can try to argue your cause at their own expense, or agree with the insurance company that your condition shouldn't be addressed... by them.

But let's say you actually have a condition that the insurance company will cover and the doctor orders tests for. Now the doctor will give you an 'order slip' to request a test that you need. You then either have to pick a testing facility from the phone directory, from your heath insurance list, or conveniently it's a test your doctor's office can do themselves. Insurance companies rarely cover the latter as they've found those doctors tend to order the tests they can do in their office rather than the tests you, yourself, need. To assure a problem like this doesn't occur, the doctor's office will often bill performing the test in their office under a different company name so the insurance company won't know.

Once you've had the test done (assuming that the testing facility agreed to perform the test on you*) you then either return to the doctor's office at a predetermined time to discover what the test results were (if the doctor wants to share them with you) or the doctor's office will phone you and tell you the results (if the doctor doesn't want to watch you breakdown when it's bad news). Many times the test results will be lost by the testing facility or not provided to the doctor's office. On these occasions you may be lucky enough to arrive at the doctor's office, pay for the appointment, and then be told that the test will have to be redone...

With luck, the test results come back and reveal that you don't have the condition the doctor suspected you might, thus you get a firm pat on the back and sent home despite the fact that you are still having the same symptoms. Rarely will a doctor test for something else to explain your symptoms as doing so would be admitting that their first guess was wrong. But let's say that the test results have come back and show the problem the doctor suspected was, in fact, there. If this occurs, then the doctor checks with the insurance company to see if it is a condition that your insurance will cover*, and if so decides (based on what the insurance company will allow) what course of treatment you shall have for it. If the course of treatment the insurance company covers isn't one that's known to be effective then you may be lucky enough to have a doctor who will tell you that; though this would often mean they will soon no longer be accepted by the insurance company and you'll have to see someone else instead, likely someone accepting new patients because they've recently lost some.

Finally, if for some reason you have an urgent issue that can't wait until the next free spot in the doctor's appointment book, we do have urgent care facilities and emergency rooms. Urgent care facilities are places, often privately owned, that you can go to without an appointment and wait until you can be seen by a doctor who either can't have a private practice, or has chosen not to have a private practice as he or she doesn't want to see patients on a recurring basis. At these urgent care facilities they can address and handle any condition that really isn't urgent, but that you simply couldn't have made a doctor's appointment for in a timely fashion. For truly urgent conditions you would go to the emergency room, which is typically part of a hospital, so they can quickly review your condition and address it promptly... Once you're done waiting in the waiting room and one of the emergency room doctors is eventually free and doesn't have a more exciting case to distract his or her attention. Once the emergency room doctor has addressed your condition enough that you will survive until you can make it to a regular doctor's appointment opening, they will then give you a list of doctors affiliated with the hospital from which you can pick at random to seek follow-up care.

After visiting the emergency room or urgent care facility, your insurance company will review the resulting records and decided for themselves if you really couldn't have waited until the next available doctor's appointment. Realizing that they'll have to pay if they conclude it was a valid visit, they will often conclude it wasn't and the hospital will send you a bill that you'll have to pay along with your monthly insurance coverage premium, and the portion of regular doctor's bills also not covered by your insurance.

In this way, the system assures the best outcome... for themselves.

(* If not, best of luck to you...)

An Abbreviated Future

5

Stunned at the turn of the year when mother told me that the money she borrowed from me was, in retrospect, money I owed her for a 'privileged childhood', I was uncertain what to do and suddenly realized I was twelve hundred dollars poorer. Given that the bank mother had chosen for me had started eating away what little money I had left through 'maintenance fees', I felt I needed to get the balance up as quickly as I could. I then remembered Al's very positive reaction upon seeing my magnum opus game, 'Star Quest' at Jeff's house the previous Summer and decided to give him a call, ''Did you want to buy my game Star Quest for a thousand dollars?''

While Al didn't own the start-up himself, it was just created around him, he couldn't say ''Yes'' but he had great sway on the owner, 'Chuck', and called him up to discuss it. It turned out the company was on the verge of accepting a high profile contract for a wing of the military and needed help to get the project done on a tight schedule. He agreed to buy my game for the price I asked as four two hundred and fifty dollar payments, in return he asked if my services would be available for a per month fee? It wouldn't be as an employee, more as an 'Independent Contractor'. I agreed for four hundred dollars a month. I was thrilled; in three months I would have made more than the one thousand I was getting for the game I'd spent nearly three years making!

The new project was going to be based on a more universal CP/M platform, the Linux of its day, the office's TRS-80 Model 4 was capable of running it and Jeff's own TRS-80 Model I had a special patch board he had installed so he could run it to. So I could develop much of my code at home, Jeff and I traded our central processing units and mine ended up running Jeff's site with his expansion interface and disk drives while his ran on my peripherals. I'll call the project the 'Prescription Overview Service,' POS for short, the goal was to make a networked database to keep track of patients' prescriptions on terminals that would be available at the medical wards and the military pharmacy itself. In this way doctors wishing to prescribe something could see the most current list of medications for a patient and assess dosing and safety concerns. In return, rather than slips of paper which could get misplaced, be hard to read, or simply not be delivered to the base's pharmacy, prescriptions entered at the doctor's terminal would print-up at the pharmacy and the software would track when the prescription request had been fulfilled and/or why not. As part of confirming each prescription, the pharmacist would again be presented with the patient's current medication regimen online and serve as a second check that any additional prescription was safe.

All seemed set for a productive and financially sound first six months of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Discussing all the needs of the system, Al broke down the file structure and size requirements while we together figured out what logical modules we'd need to create, such as a log-in screen with validating logic, a patient review and update screen, a guided prescription ordering screen, etc. I started off with the log-in service along with some common logic routines while Al finalized the file descriptions & breakdowns and passed them on to me. When I looked them over, I realized there were some problems as the numbers didn't add up and recalculated them and called Al to let him know what the corrected figures were. This was my first mistake.

Al had some idiosyncrasies, it seemed. During my first few years in Colorado I had tried to start-up a new Dungeons & Dragons group and, once going, we invited Al to join us. Rather than create his character and join the team of players, he instead attacked the other players' characters right away before we could even get into an adventure. This caused a quandary as, being Dungeon Master, I was expected to honor each player's actions and figure-out and enforce the consequences, but at the same time his doing nothing but this wasn't what the game was about. After he had killed the couple team mates' characters, the rest ganged-up and killed his character. I tried to paper it over as 'fighting practice', but Al would have none of it and demanded that the results were true and he and the other players whose characters had been killed had to create all new characters before we could enter the adventure. The group grumpily agreed and half the team got to sit around while the other half created new characters from scratch, balancing their skills, choosing their talents, figuring out what equipment and weapons they could afford with their initial pouch of cash. Once done we gathered again to start the game proper and Al promptly started attacking the other players. This time the rest of the group didn't take it with a touch of good humor and turned to me to eject Al from the game. As our playing day was nearly over anyhow, I recommended that we call it a day and decide what to do later. All agreed and we left, then the rest of us discussed what to do by phone in the subsequent days. As I was technically working for Al, I found myself in a bad position as being the one who would have to enforce kicking him out of the game. We came up with the idea of dissolving the group and reforming it without Al a few weeks later. When I told him that the group had dissolved, this actually seemed to make Al happy.

When we would occasionally go on drives for work, or sometimes share lunch, Al and I would discuss life in general and philosophy. I was surprised when he flat out stated that there should be a set of rules everyone else should follow in life, but of course they shouldn't apply to him. I took it with a laugh but then when he asked why I had laughed... I told him I assumed he had been joking. He assured me that he wasn't; he truly believed he should be apart from the rules of the World. I decided to be quiet and not ask any further questions on this and instead kept future discussions to computer code and what modules needed to be worked on next.

Part of Jeff's dial-up, online site adopted my Science Fiction book reviewing software I had created the year before. People now visiting Jeff's site could check the reviews for possible books to read and enter their own reviews. Al took it upon himself to go through some of the reviews and edit them into having foul language and profanity as well as enter some bogus reviews from scratch. Once we noticed this had happened, Jeff and I restored the files from his most recent back up and I asked Al why he had done that. He said he had been bored. When he was asked not to do that, he retorted, ''So, sue me!'' This was a common response he'd give when called on his little offenses and I decided, in fun, to change his first name on Jeff's message base to 'Sue' with Jeff's consent. After Al hadn't noticed for a few weeks, I pointed it out to him. This was my second mistake.

He reacted like it was a good laugh and the next day when I went to get onto Jeff's site I found couldn't. When Jeff went to see what the problem was, my user id, all my eMails, all my contributions to Jeff's site were gone. When he checked the log, Jeff found that Al had been logged into the site and used his honorary System Operator privileges to delete everything, even tangentially, involving me. Unlike tweaking how someone's name was displayed for a few weeks, this left serious damage to Jeff's site which took a few days to sort out and repair. As it was Jeff's site Al had done this to, even though it had been targeted at me, Jeff removed Al's enhanced privileges leaving him the same access as any other regular user. Al protested as he had helped Jeff upgrade the site the previous year and he was allowed to have his full access back as long as he agreed not to do something like that again. He did and so Jeff restored his controlling access and Al went straight back to adding profane language to other people's reviews in the book database. This time his work had been extensive, ruining just about everyone's reviews. The only solution to not burn bridges with Al was to simply take the book review portion of the site down for good. This seemed to make him happy and he didn't do any further damage to Jeff's site.

After the first two months on the POS project Al started to flat out, and continuously, harass me at the office. I tried to ignore it, but soon I took to keeping my work hours to the late night and early morning shift when working at the office, or I would work on the code at home during the other times I wasn't at business school taking classes. This just meant Al had to release his pent-up bile during the brief times I'd still see him to give him my latest completed code or discuss needed coding or approach changes. I kept my cool as I was able to keep these times very brief and otherwise work without him around. Even visiting at Jeff's house, when Al would arrive I'd stick to visiting with Jeff's girl friend in the other room while Al was with him, then go back to visiting with Jeff once Al left.

By the end of March I had developed a bad cold and when I went in to get that month's pay check it turned out to be two hundred and fifty dollars short. When I asked Al about it, he replied, ''Don't worry about it.'' Chuck, the boss, had already left for the day so I couldn't ask him. Already fed up with Al's antics, I decided to play it safe and finish-up any outstanding work I had that weekend and left it at the office on a disk for Al to review when he got in Monday morning. On my way to evening classes, I stopped by the office to see about my missing pay and what he thought of the code. For the pay, he had no answer and Chuck was still not around, as for my disk with the last of my outstanding code completed on in, he said he'd wiped it as well as deleted all of my coding from the previous three months and I'd have to start it all from scratch. When I noted I could just bring in copies from home, he said No, I'd still have to start from scratch.

Short of pay, with a worsening cough, no assigned tasks outstanding for the month of April, I just took my copy of the office key off my key chain, put it on the desk next to Al, and left for school. My future working at a start-up software company was over.

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Prospects

4

You know how you go on a trip and always forget to bring something? As the cooler temperatures of the Fall of Nineteen Eighty-Three arrived, I realized I had left my coat in New England. Given a money crunch at the time, I felt buying a new coat was a bit much and so I just toughed it out in my jeans & tee.

Colorado came with a few surprises for a naive rural New Englander like me. Such as a phone call where I discovered I had 'won a free prize' of a photo sitting. I was thrilled to have won, but as I really didn't like having my picture taken, I asked if I could give my 'prize' to someone else. They paused for a bit on the phone and then said, ''Sure, what's their name and phone number?'' My friend with the unlisted phone number wasn't too happy to get the subsequent phone call and explained to me the gimmick behind these things was the photo was free, the resulting prints were pricey. I was not to give out his phone number again and to take surprise phone calls in Colorado with a grain or two of salt. So when I received a flier in the mail to enroll in a new Business College, I was suitably suspicious of it... And yet, unlike my High School where they told me I had no future educational options, this flier was pretty sure I did. I decided to go visit.

'American Business College' was a small building, about a third the size of my High School, but was bustling with students. Talking to the enrollment adviser, I told him right up front of my dismal Senior year of High School and how it likely disqualified me from being accepted. But he assured me that they judged people based on their performance at their own campus and I could enroll and see how well I did and decide if I should stay. I debated this and wondered if they had any course of study in computers and sure enough they did. Not only did they have a variety of course subjects, but each was taught by 'a professional in the field' rather than a stodgy college professor shy of any real world experience. He gave me a tour of the building; about the right size for an Elementary School, I wondered if it formerly had been. Each room was full of students of various ages and the room dedicated to computer classes had a respectable enough TI 990 minicomputer for the students to learn with. Returning to his enrollment office, he asked if I had any other questions or concerns. I pointed out that I didn't have any current job so I probably couldn't afford it...

There, it turned out, I was in luck. When my not as older brother had tried to go to College, student aid was based on our father's level of income as my brother lived at the family home at the time. Given his management position at a ski area, my father was deemed to have more than enough money to pay for my brother's college studies and thus he didn't qualify for any student aid. Despite the fact that dad wasn't going to help out anyhow. In my case, my mother's level of income was low enough that it wouldn't be a barrier to my receiving Pell Grants and applying for student loans. All I'd have to do is have my mother come in with her most recent tax return to confirm her income level. This seemed iffy to me. So I asked what sort of degree I could get from them, an Associates? With a cheery smile and a laugh he let me know that they didn't do those traditional degrees, but once done I'd receive a certificate of completion and I could cite that as I filled-out job applications in the future. I said I'd think about it and went home and debated it. While I wasn't sure how good their computer classes would be, I was pretty sure of my existing abilities and decided to pass it by mother to see what she'd say. She thought my pursing some form of higher education was a good idea and was willing to bring in her tax form as long as she wouldn't have to pay anything toward my going there. And so I enrolled for their winter quarter that started in November.

As luck would have it, Al's software company had a short term job for me as well. During the past few months he had been writing a package of educational games based on the Apple computer for school districts to buy and, as he neared completion, they found out their publisher also wanted the same package for the Trash 80 line. Would I be interested? Absolutely! Al was going to allow me to port and adjust his code for the project as it needed to be completed by the end of November but I asked if I could first just try out what he had and go from there. He agreed and they bought a brand new TRS 80 Model 4 for the office that I could use. As I had my own Trash 80 at home, I could write much of the code there, then bring it in to show Al and he could recommend tweaks. Looking over his package of about six games from Hang Man, Cross Word puzzle and Word Search generators, etc. I decided just to write my own code from scratch to produce the same results and by the end of the month was done at the same time Al finished his three month effort. We were both pretty happy with the results, as was his math teacher turned start-up owner, and I got paid a few hundred dollars for my work. I was thrilled as I kind of had my first computer job in Colorado and asked if there was anything more I could do for them? Nope.

So I thanked them for the opportunity and went straight to the local ski store and bought myself a new jacket for the winter and picked up ABC's ''Beauty Stab'' album to listen to. As I had taken up getting my food from the 'Academy Burger Company' for my daily meal next to Al's office while I worked for them, I wrote my old friend Van back in New England of my 'ABC's of life. I wrote that I missed visiting with him, Luke, and David at their dorm but assumed they were once again engrossed in studies as they must have entered their second year of College this Fall.

Little did I know.

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