REENTRY

Back to School

Without the Spider-Man lunch box, notebook, or new shoes.

Photo by Shubham Sharan on Unsplash

My first pass through college was for football. Between games, I discovered that with a bit of application, I could achieve top marks. All fine, but I lacked direction. I took that path of least resistance, business — light on math, light on science, right up my alley.

With a business degree in hand, I promptly went to work for my dad, a big mistake. He ran a small retail beauty supply business. I opened a new store for him in a bigger, neighboring town. It was unfortunate the new store wasn’t farther away. Daily contact was not good for our relationship, which was always rocky. My dad was a life-long, card-carrying, registered pessimist. Upon entering the store each day, he’d check the customer count. If the count did not meet his expectations, he’d launch into a long rant about the misery of owning a business, coupled with the misery of working with me. He was a child of the Great Depression. Deprivation always seemed to haunt him. Each day was the beginning of the long, slow road to bankruptcy. All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend my first ten years of work — daily misery with dad.

I had a young family, purchased a home, so I was stuck. My firstborn just started a preschool program. The facility was called the Child…