I worked with someone named John back in 1990 when I first started as a co-op at IBM. I remember him in the software design meetings my first week at the beginning of the year when I was a sophomore in college, working my first, “real job” in the industry. I was lost. There was so much going on at a high level that I had scarcely the knowledge to even make remote sense of at the time.
I worked with John for almost four years at IBM. I was a co-op and then an employee. During that time he was a consultant, helping us implement object oriented technology via the language Smalltalk. It was an intense time, but it was fun. He was a mentor to me and I was sad when he left to go to another small consulting company.
Shortly after that IBM was doing layoffs and I was in a special class of employment as a, “Term Employee”. This meant I was hired with a fixed end date to my employment. As the end of my term drew near I worked with my manager to find out if I would be offered a “Regular Employee” position but as time dragged on and I heard nothing, I pursued other employment, including the company my friend, John, had gone to work for.
A month become my term employment was up I let my manager know I wouldn’t be interested in full-time employment, should they decide to offer me a position because I had another opportunity. Suddenly my manager was interested in retaining me, coming back and offering to match my other job in salary. But I declined.
I found working for a small, upstart consulting company interesting and challenging. Working alongside my friend and mentor, John, again was nice. We worked together for a few years and then each took employment opportunities in different directions. And we lost touch.
This was before smart phones and way before social media. We had lunch one time about fifteen years ago when he was in town to do some consulting work and then three years ago he found me on Facebook. We would message a time or two every four months or so. He had gotten remarried, was expecting his first grandchild, etc.
But I’m notoriously bad with social media. This past week I realized there was a notification from May on Facebook Messenger that I hadn’t read. When I realized it was from John I sent him a reply and said, “here’s my mobile number, text me there, I’m much more reliable on responses”. So he did.
Then we decided to cut through all the slow text-based communication and just get on the phone, which is a much better way to catch up on fifteen years of lives than texting can ever be. He’s still consulting and traveling. He went to school to become a chef during his time at home. I told him about my children and how much fun and challenging they can be at the same time. We talked for almost an hour. It was just like old times though.
The Big Boy Update: My son has had a girlfriend for about three years now. This would be his cousin, Kyle’s, girlfriend—who is in college now. I asked him yesterday as he say on the couch with Kyle, playing Fortnite together, “did you break up with Madison?” He said, “what? No, me and her are friends.” I said, “I thought she was your girlfriend.” He explained, “no, me and Kyle were fighting too much so we’re just friends now.”
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter had a much better day today on the fear front. She got out of the boat at the inlet and was playing in the sand. I brought over a dead crab I found and put the small claw that had broken off in her hand, explaining what it was. She wanted to feel the rest of the crab, which was good because she was very scared of a possible crab near her yesterday. She asked if this was the crab from yesterday and when I said no, that this one had been dead for several days, she asked if she could take it back on the boat with us. This was one of several things that happened that she was able to handle without getting very afraid. She still had a good number of fear moments, but we did have some positive experiences today for her to process.
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