Share your story since high school.
Worked a year post graduation mostly sending supplies to soldiers serving in Vietnam. Don't admit to forklift or warehouse tractor races. Those tractors could do cool wheelies, though. Completed a year at Weber State.
Repented. Went to Germany and tried to spread the repentance around. Got jilted by a German Maedchen and came home with my tail between my legs.
Worked as a custodian and started back at Weber State. Participated in a fraternity there and enjoyed the turbulance of the late 60s early 70s and intermural sports. In 1971, I married Shelley Jean Parker, a beatiful and intelligent Davis Dart (YIKES!), who at least in that instance used poor judgment marrying me to my everlasting relief.
We started working nights at IRS --- who needs your nights free when you're married? --- as we continued our educations, trying to finish up our degrees. We graduated with bachelor's degrees in 1974 and by that time had a daughter, Amy, born in 1973.
Upon our graduation, we explored some options. International Business School was one option we seriously considered. However, since we were paying our own way, and not smart enough or talented enough to have scholarships, etc. we ended up applying for jobs with IRS. We interviewed for jobs in places like Manhatten, Miami, Philadelphia, the Bronx, and Chicago. The interviewers, however, thought we were too innocent (naive) for any of those places --- well, they thought my wife was, after all, I'd spent two and a half years trying to call ex-Nazis to repentance. I guess that makes me naive and innocent, too, doesn't it? Anyway, they said how would you like to go to Rockford?
Rockford. It's the second biggest city in Illinois. We trained in Chicago and lived two delightful (except for the weather) in Rockford. We worked as tax auditors, That's right, folks, we were getting over our innocense and naivite real quickly, catching careless filers and outright crooks. Both of us. In separate cubicles kiddie-corner to each other.
In 1976, we moved from Rockford to the Bay Area in California. I worked in Oakland and Shelley worked in Walnut Creek. She's always had more class than me. Anyway, I'd ride BART from Concord where we lived to and from Oakland, in the afternoons walking past desperate but friendly young girls soliciting me to (ab)use them.
As soon as my wife found out about those daily solicitations, we (I) started looking for another job. After nine months, we moved to Twin Falls, Idaho. Talk about a cultural shock, going home from such colorful people in the Bay Area to the potato farmers of Idaho, we experienced it. Idaho, ho, ho. But we loved it.
Shelley quit work, and after it became evident if we wanted more kids we were going to have to do more than what most folks do to get them. We received our son, Mike, on my birthday in 1979. Happy day. :)
Soon thereafter, we moved to Boise. I got a very appealing advance in my work. I became a Santa Claus for the IRS. I jest not. Not the Santa. A Santa. For twenty-six years, I, as an Appeals Officer for IRS, considered the appeals of disgruntled taxpayers --- both individuals and businesses, often providing them relief from the exactions of ornery revenue agents, gung-ho auditors, and ruthless collectors. Within the IRS bureaucracy, such enforcement folks (the agents, auditors, and collectors) called me and my ilk Santa Clause. Not as a compliment.
In 1980, we adopted a baby from Korea, Kiele. Kiele is our miracle girl. She has cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Shortly after she began walking, she had a CAT scan. The technicans who viewed the resulting pictures whispered among each other, saying things like didn't she walk in here and didn't she say a few words to her mother? The CAT scan showed that only a little more than half of the area that typically comprises a brain within a skull filled space within her skull. The rest of the area was filled with fluid. Typically, she shouldn't have been walking or talking.
In 1982, we adopted another Korean baby, a boy, Brent.
In 1985, we moved from Boise to Layton, Utah. My dear wife had Hodgkin's disease and we decided with our four kids, our jobs and the demands of Shelley's treatment and our overall situation that being near family would be best for us.
My wife retired on disability in 2006. I retired in 2008. I had started writing before that. I've self-published one non-fiction book (Making Expression Less Taxing) and two novels (Time for All Eternity and Alejandro the Great). I've finished another novel but haven't polished it and it's in limbo and I'm working on another novel now. Anyway.
We bought a second home in Star Valley Ranch, Wyoming in 2010. Late that year, my wife got peritoneal cancer (very much like ovarian cancer) and she passed away April 24, 2013.
I never served in the military. My draft number was 366. When I took my induction physical, they deemed me 4F because of migraine headaches.