Sunday, August 4, 2019

8/4/19 Recognize When Someone Offers A Handup, Not A Handout?

    I consider our household a place almost akin to a counselor's office.  We have been giving advice and counsel to any and all kids that come by the house whether as Boy's friends, Girlie's friends, and even some older ones that I didn't even realize we helped throughout the years.  Our advice may not be perfect and certainly it may not work for everyone, but I like to think that we care and listen to anyone coming around and then try and tailor our advice to them.  We understand not everyone is interested in a chemistry degree and working in a boring ass lab is what we are saying.
    For example, when DD was graduating high school, he stated he was not interested in college, he was not going the four year degree route, it wasn't for him.  I told him that is fine, school is not for everyone, but realize you will have to work harder and probably do physical work to get anywhere in life.  Wife still tried telling him about programs at ACC where he could get certified in welding or learn some trade with a certificate in a year, as opposed to a 4 year degree.  He has opted not to go to school, and has been doing what sounds like hard blue collar work, installing fancy doors and oversized windows in oversized houses.  He gets paid good money for what he does and all is good and well, provided he doesn't get hurt.
    Last week, while going through FB looking for another old friend, I saw a comment about Boy's old best friend, his sister was telling the world that she was fixing to be an aunt.  I texted the boy, and he said hi and seemed friendly and cheerful to hear from us.  When I asked how it was going he said he was going to graduate (also with some engineering degree), but he hadn't had any luck with internships.  I casually said well come over, it's been a few years we haven't seen you, but we can catch up with you and you can discuss with Boy about where he is working and maybe he can give you some names to places to look into.  I pretty much got crickets after this.  He never responded back, which almost even seemed rude.
    I then talked with Boy asking if they had had a falling out of some sort to which he said no.  That just seemed odd, but ok.  Boy then just casually tells me that he understands he is happy where he is at, but if interested, a company in Cedar Park is working on low orbit rockets and they want a bunch of engineers, and then another company also reached out to him as they got his name through another friend but this job requires all sorts of traveling, and even his company is looking for an engineer for something, but then Boy said I can't just recommend him, I don't even know what he has been studying or what he knows.  By this point I was a bit angry at the whole thing, and just told him not to worry about him.  I mean some people go through life crying that they just need a chance, right there Boy could probably give him any of those three job leads, but the kid can't be bothered to continue a conversation.  You can only help those that help themselves.

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