Goallllllllllllllllll!

I’m not feeling very grumpy today, but I am feeling rather old. My son graduated from high school today. Up until now, I could still claim to have a bit of youth left, but now I am the father of a high school graduate!

I remember promising him, on the day he was born, that I would be there to take care of him and make sure that he got through high school and went to college. Today I made good on that promise and achieved that goal. I successfully kept us both alive long enough to see this day.

It wasn’t easy, and there were many times I didn’t think we’d make it. To start with, he and my wife almost died on the day he was born. He went into fetal distress and they had to perform an emergency C-section. His heart rate dropped nearly in half and the doctor thought she was going to hemorrhage. Luckily they both pulled through, and as I rocked him in the hospital nursery, I made him that promise.

The hard times were just beginning. There have been times of extreme poverty, and a lot of moving around looking for better opportunities. He has lived in over a dozen houses in his 18 years, and has never complained. Well, not very much, anyway. All along he has made the best of it and taken what life has given him. He will have an advantage over the spoiled brats he sat with today.

There have been a lot of good times, too. Another goal of ours was to take the kids to Disney World, and we accomplished that goal in 2000. I can still remember the look of sheer joy when we showed them the tickets and the plane tickets. We were able to get a lot of Internet “freebies” to get us there; there’s no way we could get all of that for free now. We had a great time and brought back a lot of memories.

The next big goal and promise was that they would have their very own home. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but when you have lived in someone else’s house all your life, it means a lot. We always rented because we didn’t have great credit, so we couldn’t get a mortgage. Since we had to rent, we could never save up enough money for that big down payment, so the vicious cycle continued. Once we moved up to the Chicagoland area, we made it a priority to buy a house.

It became even more of a priority after he told me something one day after school. Our landlord’s son went to the same school, and he told the other boys that he was my son’s “landlord.” That was incredibly demeaning and embarrassing. But my son shrugged it off and didn’t let it bother him. But it bothered me. I vowed on that day that I would do whatever it takes to get him his own room that he could paint any color he wanted. When the opportunity came that a lender would give us a mortgage, I didn’t care that it was a sub-prime. He and his sister have their own rooms, we can have a dog now, and nobody is their “landlord.”

I have always been proud of him, but never more proud than I was today. Some of the other kids were wearing shorts and tennis shoes and T-shirts under their gowns. Some of them made fools of themselves, and quite a few parents made fools of themselves (more on that in a later column). But he didn’t have to be told that he needed to get up, shower, shave, and wear a shirt and tie. He knows what it means to be a man and a good citizen, and he is going to be an example for his generation. When he runs for President, he already has one vote; mine. I hope he has yours too.