Bad Coffee or Vodka Cranberry

As luck would have it, I’ve been blessed with a full life.   After college, I discovered Norman Vincent Peale’s 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking, and it helped shape my perspective. I wish I had read it in high school. Bad things happen to all of us, but the trick is to not let the speed bumps of life define you.  How you interpret the scrapes and bruises is between you and your therapist.

When I write, it provides me an opportunity to reflect and see that everything happens for a reason.  The relationship break-ups that stomped on your heart when you’re 18 seem kind of silly when I look back and see that I didn’t get married until I was 30.

Ultimately, these experiences help you empathize with your boy when he gets dumped. You remember your HS apprehensions, so you push them to try out for a sport, so they have no regrets, even though they are devastated when they are cut.  I was cut from basketball and football over the years due to my size. So, I turned to golf, and both my knees have never regretted it.  However, one of the most critical love experiences is knowing how to deal with “end of the world as I know it” feelings.  I’m not even going to mention the eye roll.

For me, I loved every bit of High School and College and never understood why.  The best I can figure is that I just liked the carefree lifestyle of learning, being part of the close-knit society of 18- to 25-year-olds searching for meaning and making lifelong friends.  At Purdue in 1971, we had 30,000 students, 10,000 women, and 20,000 men. To most, the dating ratios seemed rather daunting.  Some friends at IU poked fun at the perceived lack of potential female companionship. However, unlike myself, 19,289 of those men wore a pocket protector, a slide rule on their belt (yes, I said slide rule), never dated a woman, and talked engineering jibber-jabber nonstop.

College-wise, life was good at Purdue West Lafayette except for the 46 hours I took as a senior. I sort of lost track of my applicable credit hours in the first three years because I switched majors too many times.  Another contributing factor was that I didn’t attend a class that met before 10am or during Cub home games. Plus, my scholarship was only for 4 years, so money (or the future lack thereof) was a motivator. In that last semester, I did bend my principles and attended a 7:30am electrical engineering class wearing my robe and PJs to class to expedite my return to bed.

During the summers, I worked as a Road Brakeman for the Penn Central Railroad, traveling by rail, assembling trains, and setting off railroad cars around Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio.  I was able to save $5,000 each summer (a lot of money in the early 70s and, given the current summer vacation job market, a lot of money now), so I graduated from Purdue debt-free while maintaining a nice college lifestyle. Unfortunately, I had to learn to cuss to survive on the railroad, and “golly gee” have been fighting it ever since.

After undergrad at Purdue University, West Lafayette, I took the best job I ever had. No it wasn’t in plastics as suggested to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate. I was a lifeguard.  With an Industrial Engineering degree, I was a darn good sun-bleached blond, red swimsuit lifeguard and found the perfect tan, you know the kind that’s between your toes.  I perfected my daily routine…golf, test water, flirt, clean pool, flirt, lifeguard, flirt, nap, disco, sleep, repeat. If I’d had ripped abs, it would have been perfect.  Eventually, my transmission went out on my $350 white ’65 Ford Galaxy (60/40 seats, carry everything I own in it, get my head alongside the engine block and gap the plugs with a fifty-cent piece), so I decided to get a real job at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis. I couldn’t fathom how people made it through the day in an office without a nap. Then I discovered Folgers instant coffee.

During my stint at St. Vincent Hospital and a research position at the Indiana Hospital Association, I finished graduate school. Seeking adventure, my wife Lynn and I recklessly moved to Pittsburgh (for a Big Eight, now Big Four, position), escaped to Cincinnati (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, you dastardly Big 4 Public Accounting), and eventually settled in Carmel, IN, not CA.

Then, after 20 years in healthcare consulting, 10 years in commercial and residential real estate, I decided to pursue a lifelong dream to be a writer.