Seeing The Destination

117

And with the end of May Nineteen Ninety-Four came the end of my last full semester of College. Having a chat with the receptionist student of half American and half German background, she told me that it had been a very close decision when tallying the grades but she had just narrowly beat me to become our Campus's Valedictorian. As the role conferred the responsibility of giving the speech at the graduation ceremony, I was glad I had just missed the bar as I didn't want to attend the event anyhow. I had actually received a better honor already by the time I graduated. The College had offered an Academic Excellence Award the previous year and I had won it giving me some additional scholarship money. With the end of College came the end of my Social Security PASS Plan and I would once again be back to my normal monthly income. Now with the most recent turn of the year cost of living adjustment, I would have just over one hundred dollars of spare money each month. I remembered how I had started at my first apartment having just under fifty dollars per month five years earlier.

There was still one more College class for me to take. It was a job hunt preparation class of only a couple sessions offered at the end of each semester for graduating students. As the Spring version conflicted with a core class I needed for my degree, my chance to take it had been bumped to the end of the summer semester. Still I wasn't going to wait for it before updating my resume and mailing it out. Actually, as I had gained such a diversity of skills over the years, I created three 'targeted' resumes, each with a subset of my skills intended for different types of computer jobs. One variation listed all of my Desktop Publishing skills, one for my Personal Computer maintenance and configuration skills, and finally the Computer Programming variation listing all of my completed projects, languages, and development platform experience. But this last one gave me pause. As I had roughly fourteen years of software development under my belt, but listed my degree as being received this year, I wondered if this resume would be seen as 'too good to be true'. As I had already had years of people disregarding my computer skills as they couldn't believe that I could truly have them I decided to play it safe and take out my most impressive projects, just keeping to a handful that would show breadth of skill without too much depth of experience. Technically, everything still in that resume was true, it just left out quite a bit.

With these resumes completed, I began mailing them to various businesses I thought might be interested and have openings, especially Rocky Mountain Telecom. That was still the place I wanted to work at and given my past letter of recommendation and the names of a few managers there, I felt I'd be a shoo-in now that I had my degree 'in hand'.

One wrinkle, I didn't have my degree in hand yet. As I hadn't taken that final course, they hadn't printed it up for the end of the spring semester. I'd have to wait until after the end of the summer semester before they'd issue the 'sheep skin' document to me. I didn't think it would be an issue.

Our local office of Colorado Vocational Rehabilitation was thrilled with my completion of college and let the University of Colorado job hunting team know so they could now bring forth jobs requiring a degree in order to apply. As a twist, they had found a job for me that didn't need the degree. Their helper I most often worked with had a perfect job for me: His wife was part of a start-up business that would be producing a new medical device. The Federal Drug Administration approval of their device would come down 'any day now' and they'd be making money hand over fist. As they wanted to get ready for that, they had rented office space and wanted to hire me to setup and maintain all of their data processing systems and office computers. I was taken to the empty office space they were going to move into and met his wife and all seemed fine, but it just wasn't that Rocky Mountain Telecom type job I had my eye on. Further, there were often reports in the news of how the F.D.A. routinely dragged their feet on approving anything and I felt like this new business was counting their one chicken before it had hatched. I explained this to the job hunting associate as my reasons why I wouldn't take the job, noting too that Social Security only had a limited transition period when taking a job and I didn't want to lose it on a business that might be defunct in under a year if the F.D.A. approval didn't come as hoped for.

To put it mildly, he was outraged I was turning down this job opportunity. He had been working on my behalf for the past two years to find me a job and here I was, with the first solid job opening he had found for me, nix that, a job specifically designed by him through his wife's position at the start-up to use my talents, and I was turning it down so I could wait around for a ''Pie in the sky'' corporate job that I would most likely never get. Not only was he outraged but he was dropping me as a client. My VocRehab counselor, Greg, was shaken by this as well but at the same time he understood my position and decided he wouldn't let this fall out result in VocRehab dropping me, too. Still, he warned me that I really couldn't pick and chose a prospective job, I needed to be thankful for what I could get going forward.

Two months later, Daina and I drove past the set of offices the start-up company had been settling into only to now see the offices were once again vacant and for lease. Either the F.D.A. approval had failed to come through like I suspected and the company had already folded, or they had hit it big and decided to immediately move to a more prestigious office park elsewhere in town. As I never heard the name of the company again, I suspect it was the former that happened and I had made the right decision.

In the meantime, since my resume was already sent in to various companies around town, all I needed to do was sit at my apartment and wait to hear back from one or more of them with job offers. The months came, and the months went, without a call.

When August came and I took the preparing to job hunt class, sure enough, there was nothing in the class that I didn't already know...

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My Role

114

My life was in a gentle arc of finishing the last year of College classes before I'd have my long sought after Bachelors degree. In Nineteen Ninety-Three very little happened in my life to disturb this gentle conclusion to my college years. But that doesn't mean the time wasn't without some tidbits...

One summer day Daina thought it would be easier if I just drove myself home from her condo that evening and then pick her up the next afternoon for errands rather than making the trip both ways herself. That made sense to me and I drove to my apartment complex and parked behind my bedroom window and settled in for the night. The next morning I got up, cleaned up, and dressed and looked out my apartment back window to check the weather. While the weather was fine, I realized Daina's car was gone! Not knowing how to respond to this, I decided to go to the complex's manager and ask him for his advice. He winced when I told him the news and explained that late last night the parking lot had been filled with cars that he suspected were for the next door jazz club. So he called up a towing company and in the darkness of night had them tow away all the cars he didn't recognize. This next day, a number of tenants had been coming to him to ask where their cars were. As with them, he handed me enough money from petty cash to pay for the car to be released from the tow lot and gave me the address. I checked the address inside my apartment against the bus route map and there were no buses that went to that end of town. How was I supposed to get Daina's car back?

Sheepishly calling Daina and telling her the story, I wondered if one of her work friends could play chauffeur for us to collect her car, while I had the release money and car key, I also feared the tow yard might not release the car to me as it was in Daina's name. She called a friend who was free and gave her a ride and soon after picked me up and we got Daina's car back and took her friend out for breakfast as payment.

Always wanting to approach problems in a constructive manner, I returned to the manger and said that, since I had experience with desktop publishing, I could create parking tags for him to pass out to the tenants and then he would be better able to tell which cars belonged in the parking lot and which ones didn't. He though that was a great idea and all I asked for in return was the cost of getting them printed. He agreed and I went to work on my computer and came up with a design that he liked and the problem was soon solved. Having gotten to know me better, he asked me where I worked out. Worked out? I asked. He said he could tell I was a body builder since I wore a sweat tee shirt and he was thinking of building up his muscles as well. I noted that I didn't go to a club but 'worked out' at home.

This was funny. As with my notebook in High School, now my attempt to hide my breasts during my final college years had 'over achieved' and people mistook my sports bra strapped down breast as prominent pectoral muscles, despite my long hair tied as a tail. I'd cut the sleeves down on the sweat shirts which I used to hide the sports bra straps, I guess people assumed those short sleeves hid the otherwise nonexistent bulging muscles of my upper arms? One time a female teacher in one of my classes called for our nightly mid-class break, she quickly made her way to the door out, but then stopped with a group of girls waiting by the door for some reason. As I got from the back of the class to the door to leave she burst into laughter as if someone had told her a joke, though I hadn't seen any of them talking at the time. She leaned forward and supported herself momentary from 'the laughter' by resting her hand on the left side of my chest. Once I got to the cafeteria and thought about it, I felt this was a staged moment and could only guess that the teacher wanted to cop-a-feel of my 'pectoral muscle' to see how firm it was. As it was my breast strapped down by the sports bra a couple of sizes too small, I wondered what she reported to the girls who had gathered by her once I left the room?

When I had returned to College the previous year, I was greeted by the half American/half German girl who handled the reception desk at the office when otherwise not in a class herself. Over the years I would chat with her from time to time when I'd visit the office. One evening when I was chatting with her during the class break, she suddenly brought up the topic about 'all of those minorities around ruining the country' while eying me intently. Given my Native American mixed race background, I decided not to bring that up and instead simply shrugged my shoulders and replied, ''I hadn't thought about that.'' She didn't continue with the topic and with the way she had looked at me intently at the time I wasn't sure if she was trying to figure out if 'I was a body builder' because I was a secret White Supremacist, or if she herself was one and had been trying to see if I'd make a good recruit? I hoped it wasn't the latter as, given her half German ancestry, that would have been a sad commentary that there were still problems in Germany despite how World War II had turned out. Either way, I reduced my subsequent visits with her to only the few times I needed to ask her about an office related question.

With Fall, came the obligatory 'Psychology 101' class. I was actually looking forward to taking it as, with my years seeing Jude and then Samuel, I felt like a psychology acolyte as much of the time they would be giving me pointers on how to assess troubled people and help to calm them down if they were having a problem relating to me and my ambiguous nature. Arriving at the first day of the class, this new instructor flat out told us that, rather than going through the book and teaching us about psychology, he was going to 'teach us to be good Christians as that was the only thing we needed to know for good mental health'. Then once he was done with that he would briefly go through the book at the end of the semester to point out all of the flaws in the 'secular humanist psychological philosophy'. When break came, I went straight to the office to withdraw from the class and transfer to the daytime version taught by one of the instructors I already knew and respected. That paperwork done, I went to the cafeteria for the rest of my break.

When I left there I was spotted by one of the staff and asked to return to the office. In there was the rest of my 'Psychology 101' classmates and they, too, had decided to drop the night class and look into joining the day class. Given that the College would no longer have the minimum number of students left in the night class to pay for the instructor to be there, they were instead going to replace him by the following week and didn't want any of us to transfer out. We agreed and I returned to the classroom to retrieve my books and then left the teacher to watch me leave for the rest of the night. I wondered if he was aware of what was going on at the office...?

Had the other students been following my lead, or had all of us deciding to drop the class at the same time been a coincidence given the attitude of the instructor? In this case, rather than pet my already over inflated ego, I've assumed it was a coincidence.

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College Classes

112

Past the turn of the year into Nineteen Ninety-Three, I didn't want to make the same mistake I had seven years earlier when I was pursuing my computer degree. Back then, as I was focused on getting the Bachelors level degree, I didn't worry about taking the Associates degree. As fate would have it, I couldn't complete the full Bachelors due to my growing health issues at the time and I ended up with no degree at all after three part-time years of College. Had I planned ahead, I could have chosen the classes needed to complete the Associate level degree, first, then continue onto the full degree. But I hadn't and thus I had nothing. So with my return to College after a five year health related break, the moment I had those few classes needed to finish the Associates, I filed for the degree and kept it for safe keeping, just in case something unexpected came up and I once again couldn't complete the Bachelors.

At first nervous returning to College after my lost years, I soon liked the variety of activity and topics it gave my starved mind. But to my surprise, after finding I was at the coding expert level in the eyes of Rocky Mountain Telecom, it was the handful of remaining computer courses I was bored with. In the past I could have bucked-up and tried to test-out of them, but I was so apathetic with the courses, rather than put in the effort to bring myself up to speed on the topics in order to test-out, I felt it would be easier to sit in the class room and work on other class material while 'absorbing' the nuances of the subject matter being discussed 'in the air' around me. This might have worked with the computer teacher I had quickly impressed the year before, but with this year there was a new instructor for my last two computer courses, and his only impression of me was my not paying attention to him in the classroom as he taught. Still, I got my projects done on time and without error, as well as getting all of the test answers right, so he didn't have a way to vent his displeasure other than glare at me. Then he assigned a project where he found his opportunity.

The coding project was to simulate the lottery number drawing. This was a program I had mastered for my Junior year of High School and needed to simply transfer it to the chosen computer language. I did and I was done in an hour at home. For the class he spent a full week working with them to figure out the logic. He hadn't figured it out himself ahead of time. So he came up with having them write a program to pick six random numbers, but then realized they could get a duplicate number or two as a result. So he had them place all the possible numbers into memory slots, then picked the numbers out of the slots, but how would they detect if a number had already been picked? He had them fill each picked slot with a invalid number after the original number had been chosen, thus if a random number was repeated, it would see the invalid value and not print it. The problem was this would then only result in five or four numbers being produced by the program instead of the six required. So he then had them create a second variable to count how many valid numbers they had gotten and not let the program finish until six had been printed. Next, as the real world lottery balls would tumble about in the cage between each one that was chosen, he wanted the students to randomly pick two slots a random number of times and swap the numbers in them. But he felt they should check for invalid number slots and skip those, yet still complete the same number of valid slot switches. They were trying to debug the logic on this twist when the time frame ran out for the project.

All of the students who followed his lead during the course of the two weeks received an 'A' for their program, even though it still didn't run. My program which fulfilled his requirements and ran flawlessly each time, he gave a 'B' noting that I had 'poor logic'. Whatever, I only had one more computer class with him and I spent a large chunk of that one staring out the window and watching the summer foliage as it grew during the semester. This time I made sure that not only were all of my tests and projects complete and error free, but if he led the students into a rabbit hole figuring out logic, I made sure my code followed that convoluted logic and then took the final steps needed to make it work, even though it ended up tied like a pretzel while doing it. He had to give me top marks for that last semester with him and I could tell he resented it.

But my other classes still captured my attention and one of them was 'Comparative Religions'. I enjoyed this class as it gave me a chance to become familiar with many different faiths without having to become an acolyte to do so. As Daina herself was interested in all of the world's faiths, she had a selection of books in her personal library I could draw upon as additional resources when working on the projects and other class work. For the Final, we were to give a presentation selecting a topic and then using it to compare two or more religions we had discussed during the semester. Now being familiar with the content of Daina's books, I decided to be daring when choosing my topic. You see, Daina's books didn't only just have the information, but often featured full color reproductions of classical paintings displaying aspects of those religions...

We had two days to give our presentations before the class and I chose the second day simply to reduce the number of hours I'd miss if I got kicked from the classroom for my topic. When my turn came, I brought with me a pile of Daina's books with various page markers in place. I then compared five different religions and their beliefs about sexual activity in the afterlife, showing various pictures from the books as I went along. The teacher placed her knuckles to her mouth to stifle her laughter as I did this. And I assured that the students had a good view of the various pictures, some depicting couples & threesomes, others including full orgies, though nothing too explicit. I ended with the Christian depictions of sex in Heaven, which pretty much was a good handshake, if that. The teacher loved my ballsiness and gave me top marks for the presentation and for the class.

I could tell I had won her respect and made sure to take more classes with her for my last year.

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The Beast

109

At first going from having infinite free time and then back to full-time College was a bit of an adjustment; I was suddenly having to keep to a daily schedule again and perform tasks other than the ones I chose at the spur of any moment. But only within a few weeks my mind lit up with other things to think about and cognitively toy-with during my days. One semester, I had a 'business' class as well as a 'marketing' class. Marketing class was more interesting as it gave me insight as to what physically formed, versus what the intentions were for, various types of advertisements.

Yet one day in 'business' class I perked up when the teacher proffered what he felt was obvious to him, that someone could buy the vacant two story national bus building downtown and turn it into a drive through grocery store. The 'Trailways' bus line was the competitor to the more dominant national bus line in the country. But times were hard for it and they eventually had to close their branch in our town by the nineteen eighties. Their building, designed to have the buses pull through the lower story while the passengers would wait on the upper floor, had been empty ever since.

Our business teacher envisioned people driving into the bottom floor and giving their grocery lists at the pull in. It would be sent to employees upstairs with the stock and they'd bag it for them and send it down to the drive through exit, where the customers would have already paid, and the groceries would be placed in the car. It was the grocery store equivalent of a fast food place. While other students in the room murmured various notes of surprise or acceptance, given my years in the grocery field I knew it would never work. First off the top floor of the building wasn't large enough to hold the variety of food stuffs that customers would expect. Second, running through all that stock to pick out the items people wanted would take far more time than picking a burger out of a bin. And while it was annoying enough when your fast food order arrived and had one or more wrong items in it, could you imagine families paying fifty to seventy-five dollars for a grocery order and have bags placed into their car with them assuming it'd be correct on faith and just drive off? For something like this to work, there would need to be strict verification of the orders, when given and once delivered. But including this additional verification time would leave customer cars sitting in the lower level for up to half an hour. Why would customers find this more desirable than picking the items they wanted off the shelf and seeing for themselves what they were getting as they checked out?

Not liking the business teacher's idea struck me as writing for a television show struck me. If I watched an episode I didn't like, my mind would go to work on figuring out how to do it better. In the case of this drive through grocery store idea, I couldn't help myself but to dwell on it and work up a viable alternative. By the end of the week I had the better idea in mind and it was just sitting there waiting to be delivered when the business teacher assigned us our final project 'to create a detailed business plan for a business of our choosing', and the marketing teacher's Final was 'to create a marketing plan for an imagined business of our choosing'. Needless to say I was primed and ready!

Creating the business plan was the hardest of the two whereas given my previous years of writing, desktop publishing, knowing artists, and even failing to produce an audio drama on tape, I was quickly done with the marketing campaign and example advertisement scripts. In the case of the marketing material, some of it was television commercial scripts and while I couldn't film the actual ad, I knew I could make the soundtrack for it using my audio equipment and multi-voice talent. So for the visuals I approached Suzi, the founder of our defunct writer's group and asked if she could help me out. Before coming to our town and forming the writer's group, she had lived in a rural part of Colorado and formed an artist's group there to help feed her own drawing and painting interests. I knew what I needed the various pictures to show for the television commercial storyboard and asked her if she would be willing to draw them up for me. As I had hoped, since it tickled an area of her creative talents that she hadn't used in years, she was happy to do the minimalist artwork I wanted.

While she worked on that, I then focused on the business plan and tapped into my long time friend Jeff for insights. As he had grown-up watching his father create and run a dry cleaning chain, he had a broad knowledge of what businesses would need to get off the ground as well as technical names for the various types of equipment I'd need. Discussing my 'alternative' grocery store concept with him over the course of a few hours he helped me nail down the broad details I'd need to keep in mind and budget for. Then it was time to start calling the various companies who would be involved in such a business and crunch the numbers. In the case of building costs, I contacted a construction company touting their recent work on a grocery store building they were nearing completion on. The secret was not to ask how much that project had cost, but how much a project like that would cost; thus client confidentiality was maintained as they gave me the rounded off, but closely accurate figure. I then called the utility company and did the same thing for the utility costs of such a place, giving two different existing businesses I felt would be on par in their energy usage. While she couldn't have told me the figures for either business without breaking confidentiality, since I had given her two businesses to look at, she could give me the average of the two which was close enough for my plan's estimate.

There would be a need for large refrigerated rooms, one each for chilled items & frozen items. I could estimate the size of the rooms based on my own knowledge of the percentage of a store dedicated to those items. I then contacted an industrial refrigeration company in Denver and asked them for an installation estimate which would include specialized insulating concrete floors, the insulated metal sheathed housings and the specialized piping and compressors for those rooms. I was so detailed when giving this information to the company representative on the phone that he assumed I was doing this for real and said he'd draw up a detailed estimate for me and call back with the figures at the end of the week. Given the level of work he was going to do, I decided not to correct him and tell him I was only doing a project for College.

Touching base again with Jeff I figured the number of initial employees I'd need to start the company and he provided the associated costs beyond an hourly wage for each. He also helped me fill in the broad strokes and costs associated with an online ordering system for the business and I had all of the information I needed.

I created the business plan with at least a two year financing window for it to become established and start breaking even. Adding the figures from the industrial refrigeration company when they called back, I was done with my full detailed business plan for my delivery or pickup grocery store business. People could place their order online, or if desired with a live person over the phone, and it would be assembled overnight and then they could pick it up at their leisure the following day or it could be delivered to their home at a specific hour. Given the overnight assembly of the order, this provided plenty of time for the customer to confirm what they wanted with their order ahead of time, then a group of employees to roam the warehouse and collect the items needed for the order, and finally a string of people to validate that the order had been properly filled with all of the items desired. Based on a nineteen ninety business understanding I didn't include the mechanical automation that would now be naturally incorporated into the business if pursued today.

Picking up the artwork from Suzi a day before hand, I arrived at the College with my audio soundtrack tape in hand and waited for many of the other students to present their work first in marketing class. I found I had little competition to worry about. I quickly described the business I had created my ad for and when I played the tape and displayed the story board pictures in sequence on the overhead projector as the tape ran, I knew I was doing well. The wide-eyed silence of the other students was all I needed and I soaked it up. I got top marks from the teacher. For business class I came in and while the other students placed their handful of pages long business proposals on the teacher's desk for him to review by the end of the week, I plopped my folder on his desk with my business plan and, just for fun, included the advertising story board drawings and soundtrack tape as well.

Having grown up with little positive feedback from parents or teachers as a child, I had learned to live without it. In order to survive I developed my own sense of when I was doing well or not and for anyone's feedback to have any impact on me they had to provide the facts to show how their opinions were grounded. Without that grounding, others' opinions were gravely disadvantaged in my eyes when compared to my own self-judgment. This has left some people baffled when I would curse myself for not having something done to perfection while they thought it was 'good enough', but this would also lead me to unshakably know when I had done a good job, regardless of what some other people might think.

This built in sense of self appraisal & judgment Daina found to be my biggest drawback. But assessing & judging it for myself, I've found it to be my greatest strength.

Why do I feel the need to explain it's not ego based...?

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Over Achieving

107

Focusing on College in July of Nineteen Ninety-Two, I was quickly the apple of the computer instructor's eye and I wowed and amazed him with my understanding of logical routines and computer obscurities. Going through the text book we came across the statistic that a company could only expect to complete ten lines of debugged code per day, per person, for any project. I felt that number was low, but the instructor pointed out it included systems analysis & designing, documentation writing, and testing time, not just the time it took to write the code. I still felt that was a little low and so the teacher decided to challenge me. Our first project was to write a stock tracking program, where the user would manually input various stock codes and daily numbers and the program would provide various averages which the user could use to decide if it was a good time to buy or sell. These were the minimum needs but we'd get brownie points if it exceeded those needs. Given the complexity of the task, he broke the class into two groups who would each work on the project separately... And then there was me: I'd be working alone. We had two weeks for the project and he wished us luck and offered to be available to provide any help required.

The following week I came in with the printed documentation I had finished for the program. I handed it to him along with a disk. He asked what the disk was for and I said, somewhat confused by his question as I thought it would be obvious, that it was the program. I also gave him my time sheet noting how many hours I had been working on it and when during the past week. I noted that I had averaged thirty lines of debugged code... an hour. He couldn't believe it and did the math himself assuming I had never slept, visited with friends, or eaten since he had assigned the task. Even with all of that factored in, he figured I had produced around three hundred lines of code per day. He made sure I remained as a group of one for all future coding projects during the class so I wouldn't just quickly put out the code and leave any team mates in the dust without them having a chance to code themselves. I thought that made sense.

Toward the end of the Summer semester came a surprise call from VocRehab. They had worked out a one month trial job for me at RMT. I would work at the complex on tasks they needed, but given the red tape of them being a national corporation, rather than my working there and being paid by them, and then them asking for reimbursement on my initial pay, VocRehab was going to pay me directly for the first month I worked there. I would be like a free 'independent contractor' for the company as they got to review my skills and decide if they wanted to hire me. I readily accepted the offer and my counselor noted that I'd need to get myself some formal clothing for my time working there. That threw me for a loop as I had none, but told him it wouldn't be a problem.

I asked Daina if she could loan me the money to buy a work wardrobe and I'd pay her back once I got my VocRehab check. Enthusiastically, she agreed and we were soon off to thrift shops in search of what I could find. Ultimately we got me about five short sleeved button up shirts. Given how light the material was, I would need to go back to the ACE bandage binding technique and even wear an additional white tee shirt under the work shirt to better disguise the presence of the ACE bandage, itself. Then we picked out a bunch of neck ties that would go along with the shirts and Daina, thankfully, knew how to tie them and showed me. Once again for ventilation, I hoped the short sleeved shirts wouldn't look out of place as I'd start the job at the tail end of August. While I still had trepidations about my ability to get a job at a corporation as I'd known in the past they would often require passing a physical as an employment requirement, I pushed that fear aside for now.

My work uniform set, I next had to deal with school.

I could take my Finals the week before the end of the semester and be done with my classes a week early so they wouldn't interfere with the start of my new job. But I would have to switch to night classes for the Fall semester to ensure there wouldn't be a conflict for the last two weeks of my one month trial job. Further, one of my degree requirements was to perform a 'work study' job. This would normally take place once I was reaching the end of my college time and just before I would get my degree. But as the opportunity was too good to pass up, I asked the administration if I could count my month at RMT as my work study requirement. Not only could I, but normally the best their students could hope for was a job copying diskettes as their work study so the College was thrilled that one of their students was going to be doing their time at RMT! Checking with the VocRehab counselor, he saw no conflict with it, either.

The next problem was my lack of a car. It turned out the local buses only ran during the daytime hours and the closest bus stop to the RMT complex was still a mile away. While taking the bus to RMT would be very problematic given the long walk to & from the bus stop while wearing my minimum layers of clothing, once night school started I'd definitely need a ride to & from College at a minimum. Daina offered to let me use her car, effectively I would keep her car overnight and then pick her up in the morning and take her to work, then drive to my RMT job. As the end of the school day came, she would work late on paperwork until I was done for the work day and then pick her up at the school. We'd have dinner someplace and then she'd drop me off at College allowing her to keep the car for any evening errands and then pick me up after classes. I'd drive back to her place and drop her off and I'd go home for homework and bed. While this plan worked on paper and we didn't have to worry about it during the first two weeks as I didn't have classes... Once the plan was in full swing Daina quickly chaffed at the sudden increase in gas costs and having to spend ten hour days in her classroom. She insisted and I agreed that once RMT hired me after the trial month, I was to promptly buy my own car.

I was heady with the thought that I would soon be able to buy myself my own car once again and no longer have to depend on free local bus passes from Vocational Rehabilitation.

When I arrived at RMT for my first week, I met the senior manager who had come up with the plan and was then introduced to the manager of the X400 messaging group who I'd be working for. He in turn introduced me to the 'team lead' who would be in charge of me and in return that team member took me to my empty cubical. It would take the next two days just to get the cubical set up and I used the time in between to tour the building alone with my little badge to defend me and spend some time under the skylight lit library area of the complex paging through the Digital Vax manuals; the machines I was told I was going to be working with once I had a computer terminal.

On the third day I was ready for my first assignment, the team lead looked through the 'needed code changes list' and assigned me to change a single line of an existing program. That took me a couple of hours, mainly just familiarizing myself with the system of getting the source code from the coding library and then compiling and testing my change before turning it in well before lunch time. I was ready for my next assignment. He had thought it would have at least taken me the whole day and asked that I come back to him after lunch for my next assignment.

While I didn't have cash to afford lunch, I did pocket a few dollars from my tiny savings to pay for my daily soda at their cafeteria, it was a gorgeous two story open area made of concrete which had an ambiance between a cave and a cathedral. I'd take a seat in a far corner and spend my time slowly sipping the soda and watch as the employees would trickle in for the lunch hour and socialize. Some would eat & run while others suddenly realized the clock after over an hour of socializing and rush to finish eating before parting from friends and returning to work.

When I returned to the team lead, he simply handed me the rest of the 'to do list' hoping that would keep me busy for the rest of my time. When I turned in all the completed work to him at the end of the week, he pointed out he meant 'for the rest of my time during the trial month', not for the week as I had assumed. He didn't know what else to assign to me and I had three weeks left to fill. He said he'd find something for me by the next week and I could leave early for the weekend. As Daina had needed the car for work during that day, I walked to that nearest local bus stop a mile away. Once I was there, I was soaked through with sweat and was glad I wasn't having to make this walk twice each day.

The following week I came in and the team lead had decided to stump me. They had always wanted an X400 message dump utility for debugging purposes but never had the time to create one. Thus my job would be to create that utility from scratch. He wished me luck and told me where to find documentation on the X400 message interchange file format.

The X400 messaging format was how companies exchanged eMails with each other over the developing internet. While internal messaging formats were often just text files, the X400 message format had to take in all considerations as to what sort of message might be passed through the internet. Not just text, but voice, telex, faxes, etc. As a result, the file format for a message was complex, if not convoluted, and the freakiest thing I had ever seen. Not only was the message dump utility going to have to be complex as well, it would also have to serve as my learning tool to come to grips with the file format itself. On the second day I asked if I could have sample X400 messages to use for testing. They got that data to me by the end of the day. By the third day I realized I wanted more time to work on this each day, but as I was tied to borrowing Daina's car and keeping to her schedule, I couldn't return during the evenings to keep working with the sample data. I asked if they had an option where I could dial in from home? They did and since I already knew Jeff had a spare Digital terminal I could borrow for a few weeks, I was soon spending my hours at home working on the same code I was working on during the day. Knowing by my third week I'd have to accommodate college classes into my schedule, I made a weekend long effort to finish the utility.

I returned Tuesday morning, after Labor day weekend, and asked the team lead if he'd like to review the output of my utility. He assumed I meant review the proposed output of the utility and said I could bring a copy to his desk, instead I arrived with the program on a disk. It took him a moment to understand it was a working program I wanted to show him and then he gave it a try. He was impressed that it was already a working program, but felt the output was too technical in nature: 'Priority = Normal, From = Bob'. He felt it wasn't readable enough. The output had to be readable, but when I asked him what that would be, he didn't know. I'd have to just work it out for myself and then he'd let me know if it was good or not. Returning to my cubicle I easily foresaw days of frustration coming up with a new output format for him to nix and my returning back to the drawing board to try again.... and again.... and again.

Instead I got the idea of attaching my FlexBase code library to it. A system I had developed in the early eighties to serve as a universal online site code base, it worked on the concept of 'you draw-up the format you want an online page to display and it would determine all of the logical needs to fill it in' for each unique user. In this case I married in the form based logic and allowed the X400 message dump routines to fill the variables with the message values. This took me almost three whole days to complete and test and then another hour making the first form template for the output. I took this new, 'more readable' output to the team lead. While he thought it was better, he still had some changes he wanted to it. I left and went to my terminal, tweaked the form template and reprinted the message data and was back at his cube within ten minutes with the updated print up and a huge smile on my face. He assumed I had made this 'example page' by hand and gave some more recommendations to tweak it. I didn't let on and returned to my cube, tweaked the form, reprinted and was back at his cube. He liked that one and asked how long it would take for me to incorporate these changes into the program. I told him I already had and this was the actual output.

I treasured that look on his face. Jaw agape, eyes wide, reading his mind that if he hadn't already seen the speed of my work the previous two weeks he wouldn't have believed it. But even knowing that it was still hard for him to accept and he asked me how I could have changed the output of the program so quickly. I told him of my FlexBase code library and showed him the template form it used and he tweaked it himself and reran the program to see the updated, instant results. In High School my coding skills had been admired, but as I was a 'big fish in a small pond' I really couldn't gauge if I was truly that good, or simply the best looking dog given what little competition I had. I knew my time at RMT would be my first true chance to find how good my skills really were, and it didn't disappoint!

The team lead asked for my source code and told me I could leave early for the weekend. The following Monday he came to my cubical with a huge smile on his face. He pointed out that he had a Masters Degree in software development, that looking at my code Friday afternoon he had become so impressed by it that he spent the rest of the weekend going through it for fun. He admired the logical structuring of my code and my use of tables to drive the code flow, not to mention the output coding which allowed the easy to modify template. He thought this was some of the best code he had seen in his life, and he was highly recommending me to be hired as an employee by the company. He gave me a copy of his letter of recommendation and his manager was reviewing it as we spoke.

For the rest of the week, more and more high level employees and managers paraded into my cubicle to see me run the code, promptly update the form with their suggestions as they watched and reran the program affirming their requested output changes. By the middle of the week they wanted to offer me a job...! There was just one little question: ''What degree do you have?''

I noted that I was self taught and didn't have a degree, as such, but was currently in night College to complete my Associates Degree by the turn of the year as I continued on to a Bachelors of Science. There seemed to be some turmoil with this answer and then they asked me when I thought I'd have that Bachelors in hand? In another year and a half, or so.

No job for me.

The head of the company on the other side of the nation had recently dictated that he wanted to have 'the smartest work force of any telecommunications firm' and by 'smartest' that meant everyone had to at least have a Bachelors Degree to get hired. As I didn't have that degree in hand, it didn't matter what level I performed at, they simply couldn't hire me.

So I got my work study completion form filled out by the manager as well as a glowing review written for the Vocation Rehabilitation people to have. Then I was back home at the end of the four week period with nothing but college studies to again fill my time.

I felt like I was the most highly praised applicant they wouldn't hire!

(at least I no longer had to worry about passing a physical examination to work there.)

Hallways

104

Returning to College left me with decisions to be made, such as what I would wear. From my teenaged years until my emaciation, I had been wearing an ACE bandage to strap down my breasts and keep them hidden. After losing so much weight, along with muscle tissue, my breasts had shriveled down as well and I had simply spent my few days in public each week with my shoulders rolled forward to keep my tee shirt from revealing too much. I had grown to like not strapping myself down anymore at the start of each day. But now with my health restored, my breasts had returned to a cup size larger than my mother's and I once again needed to return to the hassle of cinching myself up before going out in public. I chaffed in more ways than one about this and decided I wanted a change.

Sports bras had since been developed and looking at them in a catalog I realized they could be a quick to put on solution to replace the ACE bandage. Ordering one two sizes too small, I received it in the mail and sure enough, it was much handier. The problem was, though, the shape of the shoulder straps were visible under a tee shirt. This obviously wouldn't do as I'd only be hiding one thing and in return make something else appear that would raise the same questions. If only I had tee shirts of a thicker material, then the straps might not show.

When Daina and I made our next weekend errand run around town, I told her of the problem but she didn't think that such 'thick' tee shirts existed. But still we looked and I finally spotted some women's long sleeved sweat shirts at a department store. It occurred to me to buy one and then cut and sew the sleeves to the shorter length. While it would have seemed easier just to wear the shirt with the existing long sleeves, since the age of sixteen I had been having these sudden short fevers a couple times each day and my bare arms had been my only way of radiating the heat. One of Daina's work friends had given her an old portable sewing machine years earlier and, while Daina didn't know how to use it, I had experience given my time in 'Home Ec' class from sixth grade. Sleeves shortened, sports bra on, I slipped it over my head and sure enough it was thick enough to hide the shoulder straps. The following week we returned to the department store and I got a sweat shirt of each color to then take home and modify for my needs. Daina didn't seem fully comfortable with this, I assumed from the excess of buying one of every color.

I now had my college uniform and returned to the halls to resume, and hopefully, complete my education.

Of my first set of classes, one of them was 'Public Speaking' and, given my great experience with the equivalent class in High School, I was looking forward to revisiting that success. And then there was 'Literature' which, as it turned out, featured many of the same short stories I had read for High School as well. That was the hardest of the classes for me to take as I was getting used to once again not having uninterrupted free time in my life and rereading familiar stories didn't seem like such a great use of that reduced time. Still, it had been over a decade since I had last gone through the texts and doubted I could request to test-out of the class and pass the Final cold. Eventually the teacher asked me about my frustration and I explained it, but neither of us could think of a solution other than going through the class and getting it over with.

As I had imagined, 'Public Speaking' was my favorite as, again at the podium, I'd forget to stutter and could impress my classmates with my ability to speak clearly. Then the break between the classes came and I was once again not able to talk about the weather because of the renewed stammering. One week in July, our next speech would be an 'extemporaneous speech' where we could not have notes with us, though we could chose the topic ahead of time to get our thoughts in order. I decided I'd do mine on the techniques I'd figured out during my emaciated years to hide the effect of my condition when out in public. But then the morning of the speech, something happened.

I received a call from Hollywood. It was a representative of 'The Other Show' and they had read my script and had really liked it. They liked it so much that they wanted to use it to introduce a new writer to the show and add them to their writing staff...

My head exploded with awe as not only had they liked my script and wanted to use it, they also wanted me to join the writing staff!!!!!!!!!!!

… And as they had already chosen who that new writer would be before they read my script, they were wondering if he could use its premise for his first teleplay.

It took me a moment to wrap my head around this concept. They wanted a new writer for the show and they had chosen one who apparently needed to use my idea as his introductory story as he couldn't, what, come up with his own...? I didn't ask this question, just thought about it silently.

''Are you still there?'' the representative asked me and I decided to play for time saying that I'd have to call my agent about it and ask her. ''You have an agent?'' came back the worried question. Yes I did, I confirmed without adding that she had already told me she wouldn't represent me on this script. He told me I could, of course, talk to her first but that I'd need to get back to them soon as they needed to move forward with the production of the show. I agreed I'd call back by the next day at the latest and then took his contact information.

The call over, I was shaking with mixed feelings and debated what to do. I checked the clock and I still had a half hour before I had to catch the bus to College and decided I might as well call my agent and get her advice. Digging up her home number I gave it a ring and this time her script writing husband answered. I asked to talk to her but was told she wasn't available and was asked what it was about. I told him and he was thrilled for me, but apologized as she was away on a trip to Las Vegas for the week and they wouldn't be in contact again until she returned. As that was well outside of the time frame 'The Other Show' wanted an answer, we concluded I would have to figure out whether to accept the offer on my own. I thanked him and the call was over.

I had just enough time to grab my books and run for the bus. On the ride toward the school I realized, with this excitement bubbling in my head, I had to expel some of it by changing the topic of my 'extemporaneous speech'. Arriving to class, I awaited my turn and then spoke about my news and my time writing with the show in mind and now I had gotten my chance to sell something. I skipped the detail of the sale being for another writer to use my work. And then I was off to my next class which I pensively waited to end so I could get back home and give Daina a call at the end of her work day.

Talking to Daina on the phone and telling her of the news, I realized that the amount of money they were offering me, though very low for a script sale, was still more than enough to pay for my initial appointment with the medical doctor knowledgeable in intersexed conditions. Based on that and the fact that my agent had previously told me she wouldn't be representing me on this script, I called back the Hollywood Rep before the end of the day and discussed the deal. As I had already made up my mind to accept the offer, I didn't see any point in having a sleepless night until calling him the following morning. He was still in the office and I told him I also wanted a name credit and, as I heard they were planning to develop a spin-off series, I asked for the Writer's Guidelines on that show as well as a copy of the pilot script as source material to work from for submissions to that show. No, they wouldn't give me a name credit as the goal was to allow their new writer to have his name only on his first show, and while they would agree to everything else concerning the spin-off series, they hadn't yet determined if they would have an open submission policy for that show as they had for the current show. I acknowledged that point and the deal was set.

Daina picked me up for a celebratory dinner.

Just before midnight my agent called. On a fluke she had called her husband to touch base and was thrilled about the news and was willing to represent me after all. I told her that I had already agreed to a deal but I'd be willing to have her represent me on my future efforts. She was pissed and demanded to know why I had gone ahead and made the deal without her. I pointed out the obvious, that I had been told she would be out of contact until the following week and that she had already told me she wouldn't represent me on the script. Then I added, simply, that I needed the money. ''Oh, you needed the money!'' she sarcastically echoed back and then slammed the phone down, hanging it up.

I then got a series of additional wordless phone calls and slamming hang-ups until one thirty in the morning...

A few weeks after the sale, the Hollywood representative called me back and said they 'had a slight problem'. Their new writer was having issues plotting out his take on my story and they were wondering if he could work from an outline of my script, not just with the premise. I said, ''Yes, in return for a name credit and a complementary copy of the final script,'' and added that I could have the outline printed-up mailed to them by the end of the day. He agreed to the name credit and script but added that they had already worked up the outline for him so I didn't need to mail one of my own. The updated deal was agreed to and I quickly called Daina with the news that my name would be on the show!

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The Morning After

103

I arrived at the mobile home before nine the next morning to find that my sister and her daughter were already gone. Checking on my mother, she thought they had gone at least an hour earlier and she had been alone since. But she pointed out that she had called my not as older brother and he would be getting emergency leave from the Air Force and flying out to take care of her. When I asked her when he'd be arriving, she said he hadn't figured out the arrangements yet, but when he did he'd be here to take care of her. In the meantime I told her that I'd be moving back in temporarily and would be bringing my computer here to keep me busy as well as some books. Was there anything she needed in the meantime? More water and the bed pan.

During my drive home the previous night I had stopped at the grocery store to find some bending straws to make it easier for her to drink water so that request was quickly addressed, as for the bed pan we finally guessed that the best technique was for her to roll to her side and then I place the pan where her seat would be once she rolled back. It took two tries to get this right and then she'd need time alone to do her business. I took this as my first chance to go back to my apartment and get a car load of my stuff for the stay. The new 'speed bumps' in the mobile home park quickly became the bane of my existence as I had to very carefully roll up one side of them and then gently back down the other side with my impact sensitive computer in back. Even without the computer, these lengths of asphalt curbing were so steep that they could only be taken at less than one mile an hour to reduce the abrupt, unforgiving jump they caused in the car. It was time to empty the bed pan and my mother rolled to her side again and I had to quickly intervene to stop the bed pan from rolling onto its side as well and spilling its contents. I then emptied it into the toilet and thought to take it to the kitchen sink where I could use the sprayer to rinse it out. Returning to my mother I asked her what else I could get for her. She said she would be fine for now.

Realizing I'd have to be spending the nights using her water bed so I'd be within ear shot of her, I stripped its sheets and blankets and put them in the washer next to the bedrooms. As the machine ran, mother called me back into the bedroom where she then cried about what had happened to her. My mother cursed my sister for not having a bathroom night light so she could see what room it was in the dark. She had gone passed it, assuming it was another bedroom door and then realized she had gone too far when she found the steps, instead, and fell down them. Our mother had apparently been at the foot of the stairs for a long while calling for my sister before she finally woke up and came to see what the problem was. She hadn't wanted to take her to the hospital fearing my mother's out of state insurance wouldn't cover it and she'd be stuck with the bill, but she finally relented after a period of mother's begging. The emergency room doctor told mother she had a broken pelvis and was to be kept in bed for the next few weeks until she healed up enough for a follow-up with a specialist. I tried to imagine a broken pelvis and all I could guess was a plate split in half with the two halves waving like wings whenever my mother moved. I couldn't imagine how she had been released from the hospital and neither could she.

The good news was, in her eyes, that my not as older brother would be taking leave from the Air Force and coming out to take care of her until she was all better and I wouldn't have to be there for more than a night or two. I thanked her for letting me know, especially as I would be returning to College in a week and wouldn't be able to help her full-time by that point. After a few more days of my mother assuring me my not as older brother would soon be arriving to take care of her, she finally concluded, ''I guess he can't get away, just now.'' Not having witnessed any of the phone calls she told me she had made to him, I didn't know how much contact she actually had with him about her condition, or what he truly told her. Years later when I'd talked to him about the time, he said he had never told her he would be coming out to help her so he didn't know why she had been telling me that. To my mind, though, my not as older brother had always been deemed 'the best child of us all' in her eyes and she was likely just expressing her preference as to which one she wanted to take care of her by imagining he was swooping out to save her.

My mother wasn't sure what she could eat and eventually decided on canned Spaghetti O's as a food she could easily just swallow without chewing. At first I tried to feed her with a spoon, but she decided it was better if I propped up her head with multiple pillows allowing her to drink it down from the edge of the bowl until she was done, then I would remove all but one pillow so she could return to lying flat. And so the days went for the first week, her diet of canned Spaghetti O's being supplemented with occasional glasses of juice between the routine glasses of water. She just lay in the darkness and I guess she let the time drift by her as the days wound on. I would sit at the computer on the dining room table and surf online or sometimes watch television with the sound very low waiting for the next time she'd call me for food, liquid, or for help with the bed pan. While she had been on vacation during the holiday weekend this had happened, it soon dawned on us that I needed to call the hospital kitchen where she worked and inform them of her injury and that she would have to be out indefinitely on medical leave until she was well enough to return.

To break the monotony, Daina would sometimes sneak over for the evening and we'd quietly watch television together as I waited for the next time I was called to mother's bedside. One time Daina needed to use the restroom but, as it was next to mother's bedroom, she decided to wait until our current show was over and then go home so as not to disturb her. At the next commercial break I went and got myself a glass of ice tea and then sucked some into my mouth and gently spewed it through my pursed lips back into the glass making a peeing sound. Daina lightly punched me in the leg in response. I'm so evil.

Toward the end of the week, I called a social services group who specialized in helping older people with mobility issues and asked what services they offered. I told them of the condition my mother was in and that I'd be returning to College with the following week, asking if they had someone who could check on her during those times. I also asked what other help they could provide and requested overall advice as the only guidance I had about the whole thing was what my sister had told me. They said they would check into it and call me back. I gave them the mobile home phone number and, after not hearing back for a while, I walked to the post box to get the daily mail. When I returned mother was angry at me as they had called back and she had answered the phone. ''I don't need any help from strangers!'' she yelled at me and I told her that the help request was in part for me. It turned out I didn't need any help either to her mind and so I concluded that when I returned to College the following week that it meant she would be able to take care of herself.

In reality though I continued to live with her for the next two weeks and still took care of her except for the six hours from the late morning to the late afternoon when I took my classes.

By the third week she was well enough to get up and painfully hobble on her own. I moved my stuff back to my apartment and no longer spent the nights there. When I took her to her first specialist appointment, she found out that her pelvis hadn't been broken all the way through, just fractured. That was why staying still had been allowing it to heal over time without any intervening surgery or devices needed to stabilize it. Until the end of June I continued to check on her and be with her a few hours in the morning before College and a few hours after College to make sure she was doing as best as she could. By the end of July, she was well enough to return to light duty at her job, thus I was out of a car and back to taking the bus for my needs so I just ended up calling her once a day for the rest of the month to check on her and insure she was doing all right. By August she and I were back to our lives as if nothing had happened, having little contact once again.

But something had happened.

One day, she asked for me to come over and see her for 'something important' that evening. Rather than take the multiple hour ride on the bus, I asked Daina if I could borrow her car when she was done with work and she agreed. I drove over to my mother's mobile home and rang the door bell I had installed for her a decade earlier and she opened the door and was glad I had come. She had recently figured something out and it had been a profound insight for her and she wanted to share it with me. We sat down at the antique dining room table and mother looked to me. ''I just wanted to tell you that, when you came I couldn't understand why God would want me to have another child under those circumstances. When I didn't have a miscarriage and the doctors even revived you when you had been born dead, I couldn't imagine why God wanted you here so badly. But now I know.'' She reached out her hand and placed it on the back of my hand already resting on the table, ''God sent you to me so you would be here for the time I broke my pelvis.''

I could tell by the gentle and warm look in her eyes that this was important for her, but for me all it confirmed was she hadn't wanted or valued my life until this Summer.

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