Microstory 2188: Trust in Other People

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Thank you for being patient with me yesterday. How easy it is for us to forget the lessons of our youth. I’ve been trying to take on too much work for one person, and it’s had a negative impact on my well-being so I need to learn to lean on others. Or rather, I need to relearn it, because I already figured it out during college. I was taking a class in the linguistics department called Semantics, but I wasn’t working very hard at it. I didn’t go to class unless a classmate was presenting—because I wanted to show them respect—or if there was a test. I was at a high risk of failing when I discovered that some of my classmates were regularly meeting for a study group. I’ve joked that the TV series Community was probably based on them. Lol, you don’t know what I’m talking about, but that would be really funny if it were true. I wouldn’t know, because I never attended the meetings. I wasn’t invited. They did let me use the study guide that they had curated for the open note exam at the end of the semester. I aced that test, and passed the class with a C. I didn’t learn much about semantics, but I did learn everything I needed to know about humanity. I learned to trust in other people’s expertise, and their efforts. People are basically good, and they’re just trying to do the right thing, so don’t assume the worst in them, or try to take advantage. Share knowledge, and help when you can. You never know when a friend will come in handy. I won’t ever forget that again.

Microstory 2180: Secretary is a Dirty Word

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My neighbor and new assistant has agreed to let me tell you her name, and a little bit about her. I didn’t ask her if I could do this; she volunteered, thinking that it didn’t make much sense for me to keep referring to her by her relationship to me. I try to keep the specifics about other people out of my posts, and not reveal too many details about them, in order to protect their privacy, but I can also see how it may feel impersonal and detached. I hope that no one else is experiencing any such issues. Anyway, Jasmine Soun is 29 years old. She’s from St. Louis, Missouri. After she graduated from St. Louis University, she decided to leave all of her belongings behind, and just start driving. She stayed on the road for four hours, and the only reason she stopped is because she ran out of gas. She had made it to Kansas City by then, but wasn’t too near a gas station. She had to get out, and walk the rest of the way to buy a gas can, and fill it up before making her way back to her car. It was there that she met her future boyfriend when he offered to give her a ride. He also offered her a job at the gas station, and she didn’t have any other prospects, so she accepted it. That’s the kind of person she is, a real go-with-the-flow type. He would later convert her to vegetarianism, which was what made her have to quit her job before too long. She didn’t like selling the types of foods to which she had a moral objection. I can very understand that. Fast-forward about six years, and she’s no longer with that guy, but they keep in touch. She’s had a number of jobs since then, but just before I hired her, she was a secretary for the Vice President of Manufacturing at a computer hardware company that specialized in memory modules, so she has decent experience, which means that it’s not a cronyistic hire. Back in my home universe, secretary is a dirty word, filled with a historical context of misogyny, and an imbalance of power through a gendered dynamic. People in this world apparently never had that problem, so the word doesn’t have the same negative connotations. Sure, it’s not like it’s a coveted position, admired like astronauts, but it’s not shameful either, and it hasn’t been traditionally dominated by women either. No job really has been; I find that interesting. And on that note, we better get back to work. Say goodbye, Jasmine. She says hello.

Microstory 2133: Sweet in an Alarming Way

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Though the tests suggest that I’m recovering from my infection, I just had a bizarre experience this morning. Prison food is mostly bland. I think it kind of has to be, because that type of food is easier to work with, and you don’t have to worry about people not liking the taste, because everyone hates it. I don’t love that, but it’s been easy to keep down, because that’s all they’re giving me. I’m much better at following rules when I’m being essentially forced to. When I was dieting, trying to maintain my food plan without cheating was really difficult, because I was always only truly accountable to myself. I wasn’t dating anyway, so it didn’t matter how I looked to others. Anyway, the taste was strong with my breakfast, and I can only guess that the fungus is messing with my taste buds. It was just a bran muffin with oatmeal. That’s it. The oatmeal wasn’t even heated up in milk; just water. Pretty boring, wouldn’t you say? No one loves that kind of food, even if they eat that sort of thing all the time. The first thing I noticed was the smell. I can’t really describe it to you. Because of my seasonal allergies, I never developed a good sense of smell, so I don’t have a very good frame of reference. But it was rancid. Still, I ate it, because I didn’t have options. The oatmeal had no smell at all, but it tasted sort of sweet in a really alarming way. There was no flavoring added to it. It was meant to be plain. This all reminds me of a time in college when I thought the pastries I bought had gone bad, but then I realized that I gargled some mouthwash not too long prior, so that was what was weird about it. Still, I remember worrying that the thin fibers in that chocolate chip muffin looked like spiderwebs, so I threw it out to be safe. I feel all right this time, so I don’t think it’s just that the food went bad, or that there were any spiderwebs, but I’m not a doctor. I suppose it could actually be that I was poisoned. Maybe I should be more worried about that possibility. The doctor isn’t worried about it, and just shrugged it off as a fleeting symptom, which should go away when the fungus does. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep working, staring at the wall during breaks, and occasionally hanging from the pull-up bar. That’s as much as I can do. When I was a child, I set the record for the highest number of pull-ups, but now I can’t do even one. To be fair, I’m about three times the weight, and I don’t work out anymore. At one point, I was doing gymnastics three times a week, so my life is very different now, even excluding the whole jail time thing. I refused my lunch today, because I was still freaked out and nervous, but I’m going to have to eat something soon, so I’ll let you know tomorrow if the issue has persisted.

Microstory 2129: Eat All the Things

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Today was a fun day for me, but will make for a pretty boring post for all of you. My new company gave me both a signing bonus, and an advance. I’m not a millionaire or anything, but I have enough money in my bank account to start taking care of myself. After the pre-onboarding paperwork and meetings that I had to go through—which I can’t talk to you about—I went shopping. I bought groceries, as well as other necessary new belongings, like a nightstand to put next to my bed. I got a lot of walking done today, because I don’t have a car, and I had to make separate trips, since I didn’t want to be carrying all of the bags around. For the larger furniture, like that nightstand, and a rug for the dining area, I had to make a whole separate trip each. Fortunately, I’m in a really convenient area, so it’s not like I had to travel for miles and miles to get to these places. I have this problem when I go grocery shopping, especially if I’m starting with very little, or in this case, almost nothing. I buy everything that I feel like eating that day, but that’s too much food, so I have to choose one for my next meal, and save the rest for later. Or I don’t wait, and eat all the things. That’s how I gained so much weight even after leaving college. The way it worked in the dorm cafeteria was that I could eat all the food I wanted every time I swiped my card, and I felt like I had to take advantage of the savings by eating extra, because my parents were paying for it. I thought that this sort of behavior would stop once I moved into an apartment during my last year, but by then, I was used to binging, and couldn’t help myself. That’s never really stopped, even when I’ve been able to lose weight, which is what happened when I became immortal, but it’s coming back now, so I have to be really careful. Anyway, I’m sure you don’t wanna hear any more about my eating disorder and weight issues.

Microstory 2100: All Over the City

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Counting my alternate self, but only counting work on my original Earth, I have had 17 jobs for 42 companies at 48 locations. How is that even possible? Well, keep reading, and I’ll explain it to you. But first, let’s start at the beginning; a very good place to start, as they say. When I was in my twenties, I took a personality test. (Okay, I guess we’re not starting at the beginning, are we?) What I learned is that I exhibit traits from all sixteen personality types, but least of all Performer, and most of all Protector. When I see someone crossing the street, my instinct tells me to watch them to make sure they make it all the way to the other side. My head is constantly on a swivel, looking out for threats, and keeping an eye on people who may be in danger. Now, I’m not saying that I would easily jump between an innocent person and a bullet, but I do believe that I wouldn’t ever use someone as a human shield. I’m always worried about people’s safety. Somehow, my dad intuited this, and he made me get my lifeguard certification when I was fifteen years old. I think the class began the day after my birthday, or something really soon, so I could not have begun any earlier. The course translated well into a job, with my teacher becoming my boss, so that’s what I did for three years. I was young and frustrated with it, but when I look back, it was probably one of my best jobs. I just didn’t know how good I had it. As I explained in the previous post, I started doing volunteer work right after high school, and when I came back, I fell into a job working for a maintenance contractor. I don’t remember much about it, including how much I made, but I know that I took a business trip to build workstations at the client’s new site in Wichita. The other guys in the car were smokers, so that was pretty much hell for me. They were so inconsiderate, and disgusting, and I hope they live in misery now. In 2008, however, I started to work as a projectionist at a small movie theatre while I was already in college. There were actually a few different locations owned by the same people, but you couldn’t really call it a chain. I was the only projectionist the place had ever had, and probably ever did have after that. Most staff members who handled that were also managers, but I didn’t want that kind of responsibility. My bosses asked me repeatedly to be a supervisor when I was a lifeguard too. I eventually regretted declining both of those jobs. I would have made a little extra money, which could have come in handy later. I just didn’t trust my leadership skills yet. I only worked at the theatres for about fifteen or so months, and I hated every second of it. My bosses were all republicans, and they had this warped view of reality, which made them conflate busyness with productivity. It didn’t matter if you had already cleaned the counter fifty times in a row today. If there’s nothing else to do, then wipe it down fifty more times!

Whew, I’ve only talked about three jobs, and I’m already in the second paragraph. The time after I graduated from college was really tough on me. Years later, it may not sound like I spent that much time out of work, but when I was in the thick of it, it was torture. I applied for a ton of jobs, but no one was biting. Even when I could get an interview, I did poorly, because of my autism. I started volunteering at the elementary school where my sister worked, in the library. I also branched out to other libraries at the same time. I took a brief job in the mail department at the IRS, which only lasted a few weeks, then went right back to the libraries. Finally in 2012, I got my first big boy job at a tax preparation corporation, editing training documents for other employees. It was temporary, but it paid a whole ton of money; enough to let me move out of the house! It was over after several months. But then they called me back the next year! But that only lasted two months. They put me in charge of even temporarier temps, but paid me less than the last job. And then they never called me back, so screw ‘em! It was probably a few weeks before I secured another job, this time working at a warehouse for a computer manufacturing company. I had some six-degrees of Kevin Bacon connection going on, but I ended up not liking the guy on the other side of the separation, and I still don’t know how we were connected. That only lasted about fifteen months too. I went on vacation, came back for less than a week, and then the FTC raided the offices, and shut the whole company down. They were selling preorders to customers before they had engineered the product, and never making good on their promise (read:fraud). They tried to start up again after all the legal stuff, but ultimately didn’t survive. Maybe if they had asked me to return too, things might have turned out differently. Lol, no thanks.

I spent about a year unemployed, trying to take some classes to become a web developer, but I’m not smart enough for that, so it super backfired. I ended up taking a part-time job as a package sorter for a worldwide courier. It obviously didn’t exactly pay six figures, so I tried to get a second job at a grocery store, but it sucked. I was looking to add a few extra hours every day, not work twelve hours straight some days of the week. Plus, the boss was another guy who thought being busy was the same thing as being productive. If there was no bad produce to turn over, then he expected you to throw away perfectly good fruit, just so you’re doing something. What a dick, I hope he’s miserable too. I hate wasting food. I didn’t even ever put that job on my résumé. I lasted two weeks, and only gave him a few hours notice. Finally, here’s where the real work begins, and also where my numbers begin to rise. I worked for a temp agency, for a contractor, which had a contract at an engineering firm. I was on the mail team, and often moved around to a few different sites. I even drove the van. I was basically a floater. When someone was out, I would fill in for them, so while everyone else specialized in their own thing, I knew everything. Unfortunately, they ultimately decided that they didn’t need an extra person, so they dropped me after a year. I was only off work for a month before a replacement came along, though, working for their primary competitor. I was actually at the unemployment office when I got the call for an interview. The guy who would become my boss said that the reason he hired me, despite my many, many jobs up until that point, was because I said that I just wanted a chance to prove myself. Most other interviewers didn’t like that much honesty, but he did.

Now the company number is going to skyrocket. I was even more of a floater than I was before. Like the previous contractor, this one also had contracts all over the city, but unlike that one, I was assigned to most of them, instead of just the one. I went to over a dozen different places, sometimes staying there for a week, and sometimes only a few hours. I went to a few sites only once, but many sites a whole bunch of times. That’s how I’ve worked for so many companies, but only with a handful of jobs. A few of the sites were about an hour away, so I got a lot of money from the mileage reimbursement, especially since we would always subtract the distance where we lived from the “home office” even though I literally never stepped foot in there, and didn’t even know exactly where it was. Anyway, it was just like the job before, but more formal. When someone was sick or on vacation, or just if a site needed extra help, they would send me, or someone else on my team. One of the site supervisors was being hired by the site themselves, so I interviewed to replace him, and got the job. It was at a law firm, so I learned a little bit of law there. Three years later, the site was shut down when a competitor secured the contract with a lower bid, but my company didn’t let me go. They moved me around a couple times, technically in the position I was just before, but that only lasted a couple of months before I found another site. I wasn’t the supervisor anymore, but I told my then-boss that I wasn’t going to accept anything lower than my wage at the time, so it came with a raise, which was what really mattered to me. This was the best job that I (my alternate) ever had. The work is really hard to learn, but very easy to do once you learn it, so he’s actually happy there. So there you have it, all those jobs, with even more companies, and even more locations. I wonder what’s next...

Microstory 2099: That Slacking Pays Off

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Like I said in the last post, I moved around a lot as a kid, as well as into adulthood, and it had an effect on my schooling. For kindergarten, my parents sent me to a hospital academy in Springfield, Missouri. They had some sort of connection to someone there, but as I was so young, I don’t know much about what it was all about, nor whether it was any better than a regular public school. I ended up moving on to that public school the next year, though, for first and second grade. We moved to Lawrence, Kansas before third grade, so I attended a school where we would walk through a tunnel underneath the street, which is not all that common in Kansas, since we tend to have more space. We moved to Overland Park a year later, so I switched schools yet again. Then for fifth grade, they built a brand new school in the district, and I was zoned there, while most of my peers were not. Notice how I said peers instead of friends. The last person I could confidently call my friend was in Springfield, and he grew up to become a republican, so that relationship was doomed to fail eventually. Anyway, most of the kids in my fifth grade class went to the middle school right next to it, but they rezoned the district again, and I ended up going to the middle school that was generally fed into from the elementary school that I went to for fourth grade, which placed me back with all the kids I thought I would never see again, and in many cases, hoped I wouldn’t. Funny enough, three years later, they built a brand new high school, and most of the kids from my middle school didn’t go there with me. I actually think we technically lived closer to the older high school, but somebody was apparently gerrymandering the school district. I guess it can happen in all levels of government, eh?

After I graduated from grade school, I took a gap year. I didn’t call it that; I doubt I even knew that that was a thing that some people did. My parents didn’t think that I was ready for college, and they were probably right. We didn’t know at the time that I had a diagnosable learning disability, which led to a lack of skills in maturity and socialization, which teachers don’t get paid enough to focus on, especially not since their funding is often dependent upon their students’ standardized test performance. Instead of continuing my education right away, I flew to California, where I volunteered on a farm. The greater organization provided livestock to developing regions of the world, and this particular location was designed to promote awareness of their mission, and educate visitors. My autism bit me in the ass when I was having trouble getting along with the other volunteers, so they kicked me out. I won’t tell you what the organization is called, but they made up these lies about how lazy I was, and how I didn’t do any work, which anyone could see were lies, because they kept changing their reasons. So they’re assholes, and I hate them. I’m the type to hold a grudge, and the only reason I don’t hold more of them is because I have a terrible memory. But I remember this traumatic experience. I’ll never forget how they treated me, and I’ll never support them again. It turned out to be a blessing, though, because Hurricane Katrina destroyed the gulf states soon thereafter, and I decided to take classes with the American Red Cross, and fly down there right away. That’s why I’ve been to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. I went home after one round, developed my first staph infection, got it cleared up, and then went back, this time being assigned to Florida, so I finished out the southern row.

After that second stint with the Red Cross was done, I enrolled at my junior college for a few classes, only one of which ultimately transferred properly to my four-year school, which I started the following summer. It’s annoying, really. When you do the math, I am quite certain that I could have graduated from college in three years, extremely plausibly in two. I kept taking summer classes, and took a full load for each term, plus I failed out an entire semester, plus several other classes after that. If everything had gone well, I’m really sure it could have taken me less than three years, I just had too many credits when considering how much I had from dual enrollment during my high school career. I failed too many courses, yet still made it in four years, for that not to be true. If I could go back in time, I would have graduated by the time I turned 21, I’m sure of it. In the real timeline, I graduated in 2010 with a degree in Linguistics, barely eking by with the minimal requirements. For the final semester, I was taking a geography class, because I thought it would be fun, but it turned out to be too technical, so I dropped it, and switched what I thought would be an extra linguistics credit. I literally signed the paper on the very last day allowed, and had to take a test with everyone else on my first day of the new class. I aced it, by the way, even though I had zero time to so much as open the book, so don’t act like you’re not impressed. A few weeks later, I was talking to my advisor when I learned that I needed an A in one of my linguistics classes and a B in the other in order to make the minimum GPA for graduation. If I had not switched classes at the last minute, that would have meant an entire extra term there. Thank God Geography 101 was so boring.

I didn’t learn a whole hell of a lot in school, if I’m being honest. I know that people will argue that I’ve retained more than I realize, but I dunno. I did a lot more studying in the decade afterwards than I did in the four years I was there. I did learn a valuable lesson once. In one of my linguistics classes, I was notoriously absent. I only showed up for tests, and other students’ presentations, because I wanted to be respectful. I didn’t do well on the assignments, and only kept myself afloat with my superior writing skills. That’s a bonus lesson that I learned; that teachers’ standards for writing had to be so low that I could get an A on a paper even if I phoned it in. Give me enough time to craft my words, and I could probably figure out a way to convince you that liquid water was dry. But that’s not the lesson I learned in this class; I already knew that I was a writer by then. No, what I learned there was far more valuable, because it applies to everyone. The other students were more interested and focused, so they formed a study group that I was not a part of. I would like to think that they would get up to entertaining shenanigans like the characters on the show Community, but I will never know. Still, I benefited from their hard work. The final exam was an open notes test, and someone in the study group let me have a copy of their study sheet. I can’t remember how well I did, but it was well enough to pass the class, when really, it should have been another failure. So what did that teach me, that slacking pays off? No. It taught me to trust and believe in others, and to accept help when it’s needed. I don’t have to do everything all on my own, and I shouldn’t want to. Humans are a tribal species, and community—there’s that word again—is the only reason we have managed to advance to the point of dominating this planet. So instead of ignoring people, or dismissing them, try to listen, surrender to their expertise when warranted, and let’s all work together to build a better tomorrow. No one gets through this life alone, and it would suck if they had to.

Oh, PS, I took a few more classes over the years after getting my degree, but we’ll talk more about that in the next post, because I signed up for some of them in the pursuit of figuring out what I could do for a living.

Microstory 2098: Where I was Living

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I was going to crack a joke about being born “at a young age” but it seems that joke has already been made. Or maybe it wasn’t a joke, but written by someone incredibly, incredibly dumb. Either way, it’s as true for me as anyone. My family lived in a small town called Derby, Kansas, which was a suburb of Wichita, which is where the hospital was. I’ve asked my mother multiple times where else exactly we lived after that, but I don’t think I wrote everything down, and besides, I don’t have that information with me, do I? But I know that we moved around a little before I was old enough to retain memories. I was three years old when I first became self-aware. I recall playing in the leaves at my house in Springfield, Missouri, which was where we lived for about five years. My father’s time as a teacher was ending, so we moved back to Kansas. I learned years later that he was applying to jobs in both Topeka and Kansas City, so we lived in Lawrence for a year while we waited to find out which it would be. Once his employment was settled, we moved to Overland Park, and we stayed in that area up until the day I disappeared, though not always in the same house. Overland Park is probably the largest suburb of KC, and they’re all sort of mixed together. You can drive on the highway for less than half an hour, and pass eight different cities without realizing it. This has all complicated my education history, and been complicated by it, but I reckon that I’ve lived in eleven places. That’s not even counting the two months I volunteered on a farm in California, the five different dorms and apartments I was in during college, or the two months that I house-sat for my aunt in Michigan.

I didn’t always get that most people don’t move around this much. As adults, they can return to their childhood bedrooms to find them just as they were. The last room I slept in before leaving the nest is my dad’s home office now. I never stopped moving. Once I was making enough money at work, I moved to a studio apartment.A year later, my parents invested in rental property, and I was their first tenant. It was a two-bedroom house with a yard for a future dog, though it was never a great setup, because the only way to the backyard was through the garage, or from the side yard. So I moved again, this time to a four-bedroom house. That’s where I was living when I got my dog, Daisy. Since I’m a temporal alternate, I’ll just tell you that my other self lives in yet another house now. It only has two bedrooms, but the den (living room) has a door that leads to the backyard, which is perfect for Daisy. She hangs out right by the door, and never dirties up the rest of the house, which is important, because we’re allergic to animal dander, and we have OCD. This is only about my original life, so I won’t even get into all the different worlds I’ve visited since becoming a bulk traveler, but that’s all added a lot too. As I mentioned, I moved schools a lot too, and not always because I moved houses, but won’t get into that until tomorrow. Here’s a list of other states that I’ve visited, in the order that I remember them: Michigan, Colorado, Illinois, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Florida, Ohio, Minnesota, Indiana, California, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Iowa, Tennessee, Washington, Alaska, New York, and Hawaii. Here’s a list of other countries that I’ve visited, in definite chronological order: Japan, France, Canada, Egypt, Panama, and Peru.

Microstory 2056: Good Word For Me

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My mother always told me that the best way to succeed is to know people. I never put much stock into that, because I didn’t want to believe it. I remember watching some movie or TV show a couple of years ago. A guy was trying to get out of a speeding ticket, or something, so he promised the cop to help his son get into college. I think he was lying about knowing the Dean, or whatever. It was a ridiculous scenario. The speeder didn’t know this kid, or whether he belonged at that college, but the cop was willing to overlook that, because he was desperate. I guess he expected the speeder to make a phone call, and just randomly drop the name of an applicant who should go to the top of the pile. I can’t remember how all that turned out, but the fact is that networking is real. Only twice have I applied to a job, secured an interview, and then gotten that job. When I was still a kid, my dad signed me up for my lifeguarding certification. A friend from church owned a maintenance contractor. A friend of a friend knew about a warehouse who was hiring a lot of seasonal employees. That’s mostly how I’ve conducted business, and I find it incredibly annoying. Don’t put out a want ad online for employees if you’re just going to hire your old roommate’s slacker nephew, okay? But despite my “principles” I’ve played along with the game. I’ve taken my opportunities. I jumped at the chance to sleep in this finished attic from the nurse at the free clinic, and when she had a lead on a job, I jumped at that too. I have an interview for an entry-level gardening position tomorrow, but my landlord is pretty confident that I’ll get it, because no one else seems to be applying, and because she put in a good word for me. That’s all it takes sometimes. I don’t like it, but I’ll benefit from it, because if I tried to go through this life without any help, it would turn out to be a rather short one, I’ll tell ya that much. So anyway, wish me luck, and all that. Or don’t, if it goes against your principles.

Microstory 2050: Minnesota

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Now, some of you may say that my papa never made it to all fifty states. He died in Oklahoma before he ever got the chance to see Minnesota. But my family and I don’t feel the same way that you do. After he died, we had a funeral service for him in Florida. My grandma has a hard time moving around. She doesn’t have ALS, but she’s old, and that’s just what happens. My aunt, uncle, and cousins all flew down to be there too. All of papa’s friends from college, the Navy, and his co-workers from the submarine company were there. Papa met a lot of people as he was going to every state. I didn’t talk a whole lot about that, but he didn’t just step over the borders, and take photos. He became involved in people’s lives, and they remembered him later. People heard of his accomplishment, and because of my dad’s work with the news, it made it into national news. Everyone knew that he had died, and they knew when the funeral was. They even had to move the service to a bigger room, because there wasn’t enough space in the one we had booked. When it was all over, we took papa’s cremains up to Minnesota. When you die, you might be buried in the ground, but they also may turn your body into ashes. It may be scary, but a lot of people want this to happen to them, and that’s what my papa wanted. We spread his ashes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. Papa loved forests, so we thought that it was a good place to do it. Don’t worry, we asked for permission first. Some of the ashes are still in a little urn on our mantel. We had the special map framed, and it’s hanging on the wall right above it. The rest of the ashes will stay in Minnesota forever. I think that’s fitting. My papa went to all fifty states in the United States of America. I think that’s pretty amazing. Thank you for watching and listening to my presentation about my papa.

Microstory 2044: Nevada

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Even though he hasn’t been to all fifty states, my dad travels a lot too. He is a photojournalist, so he takes pictures for news websites. He works as a freelancer, so he doesn’t just work for one site. He usually stays around where he lives, but he sometimes has to go out to other areas. Actually, the reason that he and my papa met on the train in Kentucky is because he was there to photograph the completion of a new college outside of Louisville, which was partially funded by someone who lived in his part of Virginia. He usually only leaves the state when there’s a connection to the local area, but a few years ago, in the year 2020, he wanted to go to Nevada. Dad also went to college, and met friends. One of his friends was a soldier who lost one of his legs in the war. He lived in Nevada, and wanted to raise awareness for something called veteran healthcare, so he set about to take the longest hike on a single leg. He carried a pack on his back, and only used a cane to support himself. He walked 17 miles all in one day! Isn’t that impressive? I couldn’t even do it with two legs. My dad was there to photograph the whole journey, so he also walked the 17 miles. My papa went on the trip with him, but he didn’t do much hiking. He dropped them off at the beginning of the trail, and then picked them up at the end. I stayed here with my cousins, since I had school.

Microstory 2030: North Carolina

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Papa made many friends while he was in college, and a lot of them were Mormon, but not all of them were. He had at least one who was Jewish. She lived in North Carolina, and after college, she went back there. She met a man at the place where she worked, and decided to marry him in 2011. It wasn’t too long after papa went to Michigan for the corporate retreat. Papa’s friend and her fiancé lived in Charlotte, North Carolina, but they wanted to hold their wedding on the beach of the ocean, which is on the other side of the state. They chose Atlantic Beach. My dad found pictures of it online. It looks pretty and nice. The wedding and the reception were held there at the same place, but they didn’t stay there the whole time. There weren’t a whole lot of people invited, so papa must have been pretty good friends with her to be invited. After the reception was pretty much over, they all took a boat out to an island called the Shackleford Banks. It’s a barrier island, which is basically like an extra beach that’s on the other side of some of the ocean water. There’s something very special about Shackleford Banks, though. A herd of wild horses live there. Most horses in the world are domesticated, which means that they all belong to humans. They feed them, and ride them, and even give them jobs. The Shackleford horses, though, do whatever they want, and humans aren’t allowed to live on the island with them. Luckily they’re allowed to go visit, and watch the horses from a safe distance. They don’t want them to be disturbed. The people at the wedding had fun there. I hope to go see the horses myself one day. That would be really cool.

Microstory 2021: Tennessee

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Papa was only an active member of the Navy for four years. He thought about staying in, but ended up not. It’s all because of something he did as his required time was ending. He was still in the reserves after this, but he wasn’t working on the sub anymore. While he was trying to make a decision, friends of his from college called him up, and asked him if he wanted to work with them on a mission trip in Tennessee. They were Mormons, and they were doing it for their church, but that wasn’t going to be what the trip was about. There was an old folks home in a small town outside of Memphis. He was in Arkansas at the time, so he wasn’t very far away. That’s probably why they called him. He took a bus to the home, and got to work. The people who owned it didn’t have very much money, and they were having trouble keeping their residents comfortable. Don’t worry, they all always had their medicine and stuff, but there were other issues. They couldn’t afford plants, or nice paintings for the walls. The biggest issue was the courtyard, which is a space that is outside, but it has walls around it. Residents can go and sit down and enjoy being outside, but it wasn’t very pretty at this place. I don’t think my papa spent much time on that, though. He basically became a volunteer handyman. While the others were planting trees, he fixed things around the building, because he was an engineer. What he said was that this was an eye-opening experience. He wanted to spend more time doing things like that. Of course he was helping people when he was serving this country, but he decided that there were things that he should do outside of it. That’s what led him to leaving the Navy, as an active officer at least.

Microstory 2017: Rhode Island

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After my papa was finished with college, instead of going out to get a job, he decided to attend a place called Watch Hill Naval Academy. He had to take more classes in order to learn how to be an officer in the Navy and work in a submarine. From the records that my dad found, papa first took a 3 month course to teach him what it’s like to be a military officer. After that, he spent another 6 months learning about nuclear power, which sounds really scary and cool. Then after that, he spent another 6 months using what he learned working at an actual nuclear power plant. Finally, after all that, he got on a sub to learn to operate it with a crew of other officers. Submarines are really dangerous, and hard to use. That’s why he had to spend so much time learning these skills, because if someone messes up on a submarine, it could mean everyone on it dying all at once. Unlike the way it is on a ship, if something goes wrong in a sub, you can’t jump off and swim away. Not only can you not breathe underwater, but the water is really heavy, and it hurts for it to be on top of you when you go deeper and deeper. My papa was really smart, and he also cared about people, which is why he wanted to use his engineering degree to protect this country, and make the world a better place. I’m so proud of him, and I wish I had known all of this about him before. The military is a noble and difficult profession. Probably no one in our class will join the military, but if it turns out to be true, it will only probably be one of us, according to the math.

Microstory 2016: Missouri

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Papa graduated from Promontory University in the Spring of 1996 when he was 22 years old. Like I mentioned before, he met a lot of friends at college, and some of them belonged to a religion called Mormonism. He didn’t believe in the same things that they did, but they still got along with each other. A few of them had families that lived in Missouri, so they invited him out for a big graduation celebration. They had actually already been to a few other parties, but this was the only one that was over a thousand miles away. It took them three days to drive all the way there, which they did to save money on plane or train tickets. They drove through Wyoming and Nebraska on their way there, but of course, he had already been to those two states anyway. They slept the first night in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where some of his old friends lived. Remember that he lived in Buffalo, Wyoming for about ten years when he was younger. On the next night, he once again helped his college buddies with somewhere to sleep. He still had lots of family in Grand Island, Nebraska. He wanted to help them with where to sleep because his friends were going to give him somewhere to sleep once they arrived in Missouri. They lived in Independence, Missouri. The party was really big, with I think over a hundred people! Some of them were just family members, but others were other graduates who had gone to schools in other parts of the country. He stayed with one of his friends’ parents for three nights. He slept on the floor in a bedroom with five other people. Can you imagine? When it was over, he took the train back home to Idaho alone.

Microstory 2015: New Mexico

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Papa met a lot of cool new friends when he went to college in Utah. He was still friends with some of them even as an adult. A few of them were at his funeral. One summer, after he was finished with his junior year at Promontory University, some of these friends decided that they wanted to go hiking and camping. Normally in the summer, papa would go home to stay with his parents, but he wanted to go on the trip too. They had done trips like this before, but always somewhere close. A mountain called Wheeler Peak would have taken them twelve hours to drive, but none of them wanted to be on the road for that long, so they bought train tickets instead. The journey was actually longer, because trains have to make a lot of stops, but it was much more comfortable. It was a popular destination for college kids, so a train went pretty close to both places. They still had to take a car to get to the mountain. They didn’t want to spend money on a rental, so they hitchhiked, which means they asked for a ride from a stranger. Dad says never to do that, because it’s dangerous, but papa and his friends were okay. They hiked for several miles up the mountain, and it was really hard, but they enjoyed it. I’ve seen the pictures that he took while he was there. They’re very beautiful. Once they were finished with the hike, they went back to the train station, and took different trains, because they needed to go to different places. Papa did end up going back home to Idaho until it was time for his senior year.

Microstory 2014: Utah

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Promontory University is a college in Utah that’s near Salt Lake City, to the north. The city is named that because it’s next to the Great Salt Lake, which is a really big body of water that has salt in it, like an ocean. It actually has more salt in it than the oceans. I don’t understand how it works, but Mrs. McKinney told me that she’s going to teach us the water cycle in a couple of months, so we’ll probably all learn more about it. Anyway, after the big trip in Europe, my papa decided to go to Promontory University. My grandma said that it was only about 2 and a half hours away from where they lived. So he was able to be out of the house, and learn how to be an adult, but he could also drive back home, and then back to his dorm in only one day if he really needed to. I don’t think he ever had to do that, though. He loved being at school. It’s where he learned the skills that he used when he got a job. That would not happen for a long time, though. After he graduated, he joined the military, but we’ll talk more about that in a few slides when I talk about Rhode Island. At Promontory University, he studied Architectural Engineering. That’s what people use to draw out buildings before other people build them. But he didn’t do much with buildings. His work had more to do with vehicles. That will come up again later too.

Microstory 2013: Maine

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I’ve been telling you stories about my papa going all over the country, but that’s not all he did. He also went to other countries. After he graduated from high school, he and his parents didn’t think that he was ready for college. He wasn’t stupid or too young. They just thought that he should do something else first. A lot of people do something called a gap year, which is when you wait to go to college. This often means traveling to other places. What my papa decided to do was to go on a big ship all the way from the United States to Europe. Specifically, he went from Maine to Portugal. Portugal is a country in Europe where they may sound like they speak Spanish, but it’s actually its own special language called Portuguese. They speak it in Brazil too. Papa did a lot of driving, but he flew in planes sometimes too. This time, he flew to Maine, and stayed for a couple of nights before the ship left. It left from a city called Portland. You’ve probably heard of the Portland in Oregon, but there’s also one in Maine. The ship was this really big thing called a freighter. They carry a whole bunch of cargo across the ocean. Even though it was really big, there weren’t that many people on it. Papa didn’t work for the ship company, but they let him ride for very little money as long as he helped clean. It took three weeks. When he got to Portugal, which the capital of is Lisbon, he spent another couple of nights there, and then he started to backpack all over Europe. The whole trip took him about four months. Dad thinks that papa went through a storm in the middle of the ocean, but he’s not sure, and he obviously made it home safe and sound.

Microstory 2012: California

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As I mentioned on the last slide, my papa one time went to two different states. Actually, he also went through Utah, but he would not have counted that yet, because he didn’t even stay the night. After the college tour in Arizona, he went on to San Diego, California. It was here that people were holding a convention for EmptyCon. You’ve probably never heard of it. They don’t do them anymore, because most of the fans are dead now. The first time they did it was the first convention in the history of the world. Soon after movies were invented, a bunch of them were made that told the story of a man who accidentally traveled to a thing called EmptySpace where there weren’t any suns or planets. Aliens only had ships, and there were stars that were far away that gave them light. I’m not sure how they were able to build ships without planets, but whatever. Papa was probably the youngest fan of the movies, which are kind of stupid now that scientists know more about space than way back before. He spent the rest of the weekend in San Diego, talking with other fans, and the people who owned the movies, but none of the actors who were actually in them, because they were long dead even by then. I’m not into the movies, and neither is my dad. That’s not a problem, though. Both of them taught me that it’s okay to not like everything that the people you love like. I did some things with my papa, and sometimes he did things on his own. It’s the same with my dad. They did things without me too. Always keep an open mind, though. They taught me that too, so maybe I’ll start liking EmptySpace one day when I’m older.

Microstory 2011: Arizona

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My papa applied to go to a ton of different colleges, and got into a lot of them. Grandma says that he filled out more applications than most students do. She laughed when she talked about how much money that they must have spent to send in all of those applications. Did you know that just asking to go to a college costs money? Maybe I won’t go to Harvard. It’s probably really expensive just to apply! As I was saying, grandma can’t remember why he did it for so many of them, but she thought maybe he was playing the odds, but I’m not sure what that means. He only went to visit a few of them, mostly to the ones in the states that he had already been to, but it was the first time that he went to Arizona. He didn’t end up going to school there, so no one can remember which school it was, but everybody thinks that he only chose it because it was on the way to California, which was where he really wanted to go. He wasn’t going to San Diego for a college, though. On the next slide, I’ll tell you why he was there instead, but apparently, he didn’t really care about touring the college. It was just an excuse to drive south. The capital of Arizona is a phoenix, which my dad says is his favorite mythical animal. I think it’s pretty cool too.

Microstory 2009: Ohio

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Both of my dads are really smart, and everyone in their families are smart too. While my papa was still in high school, his sister was older, and went off to college. She chose a place in Ohio. It was really fancy, and only for really smart people. There are probably really good colleges closer to where they lived, but she wanted to go there. I forgot to ask her what it was called, and she was too busy tonight, which will be last night by the time you see this. She had too much stuff that they couldn’t fly it all out there, so they drove the whole way from Idaho. They left early, so they could make it a road trip. It took them over three days to get all the way across the country, but they could have done it faster if they had really wanted to. They drove through five other states besides Idaho and Ohio. Remember, my papa had already been to Wyoming and Nebraska, but not Iowa, Illinois, or Indiana. Papa didn’t count that as going to those states, though, since they drove through them so quickly. He even thought that his family didn’t stop once the whole drive through Indiana, though dad thinks they probably had to stop for gas and a potty break at least once. Anyway, Aunt Cooper had to go back and forth from home to her school a few times every year in college, but papa never went back. This was the only time he was there, and he stayed one night in a motel before his parents drove the three of them back to Idaho, so Aunt Cooper could be alone and start learning. I’m still too young to be thinking too much about college, but I really hope to go to somewhere here in Massachusetts. Maybe even Harvard if my grades get a little better.