3. Moving on

Chained

If you can’t break the chain, rip out the post and drag it with you.  

Stuff happens. I figure you have two choices; you can sit down and quit, or get up and move on. 

While working in the metal shop at school, I hear the teacher yelling out to me, I look up and see all the other students and the teacher in the doorway pointing at a flame above the acetylene tank I am using. Yep. Big tank of highly explosive gas with a little flame burning nicely on top of the shutoff valve, I’m in trouble again. So I calmly lean over, cup the flame and blow it out. Teacher said I could have blown the flame into the tank.

  

Well, I figure if I run for the door it could blow up before I got there and kill us all anyway, so better off to try and put it out. Moral: Keep calm, don’t get blown up, and you might even get a great reputation around school of being the bravest kid around.   

Taken Hostage: grade 11 technical Drawing class. Student sitting behind me is requested to the office. He doesn’t want to go so grabs a utility knife (the one with the very long and sharp extendable blade). Puts it to my throat and says he wants to leave and I am coming with him.

The poor student teacher is in shock. The knife leaves a little cut  on my throat and we are standing there for what seems like forever.  There was nothing I could do, so I stand there nice and calm and accept my fate.  Seconds later he puts the knife down and runs out of the room, we heard the police drag him out of the school moments later and then never heard from him or about the incident again. No big news story, no councillors, no "bring everyone together to talk and cry", just move on past it and survive. The poor student teacher did take a few days of to recover.

Sometimes bad things happen to get us ready to handle things that are much worse. Later that year I was attacked with a knife again, and if not for the two previous experiences I may not have kept calm and walked away alive. The pain of this experience is still chained to me but it will not stop me from moving forward. I ripped the pole out and dragged it with me.

That’s it, enough sad stuff right? Just finished making the sign for the teacher’s end of year party “We made it!”. Heading to my last art class in high school and … My Art teachers dies. Massive asthma attack. He died outside his brother’s house the night before.

That’s it, I am done with high school and headed off  to college! But of course “We don’t accept applications from your school”, so I had to go to a main stream school for at least one year to get in.

So OK, spent one more year at another high school, completed grade 11 and 12 accounting, computer programming and system analyst.  Bored out of my tree, seems main stream schools teach at their pace only, not the pace I can learn?

OK, I’m finally ready for college and certain that I am going to be a computer programmer; I have my hand on the door... but that's for another time.