bobcat
Well-known Member
- Location
- Northern Calif
Work, fun, relationships, lifestyle, activities, cars, fashion, hobbies, friends, personality type, etc .....
I bow to you. Difficult it was, character it required and you rose to the ocassion! KudosI got my first full-time job at 15 and just kept working. I met my 1st wife, Shelly, when we were juniors in high school. I was the school's baseball team captain and she was head-cheerleader. We married the same month we graduated with our high school Class of '72.
I joined the local men's AA baseball league, worked at my Dad's friend's full-service station, and attended night school at a state college. Shelly kept house and, despite my full schedule, started having babies. So, I quit college to go to heavy equipment operator school, got a really good job breaking ground for a construction company, and kept playing baseball aspiring to get picked for the AAA league and moving up to MLB.
Meanwhile, Shelly had 2 more babies and started smoking weed, then taking colorful pills, and moved up to snorting coke. When I discovered she was doing all that, and doing it with a boyfriend...and you can take that both ways...I filed for divorce and full custody of our kids.
Back in the early 80s, it was extremely difficult and very rare for fathers to be granted full custody of their kids. Equal custody was practically impossible. Lucky for the kids, Shelly signed the papers without hesitation. Our youngest, my daughter, was only 9-mo old.
Anyway, Shelly went off with the new boyfriend, I quit baseball, went to school to get a CNA license, and started working nights so I could be home with the kids during the day.
Shelly was given scheduled visitation, but she only came to see the kids sporadically. Sometimes months would go by without a visit from Mommy.
A couple years later, she was killed in a car wreck, and not long after, me and the kids moved to Colorado where I went to psychiatric nursing school and specialized in Behavior Modification. I got a Psych-Tech license and began a short-lived career (9 years) with a state home for developmentally delayed adults and children.
After that, I took more job-related courses, accumulated a few different job certificates and licenses, and we moved every few years so I could earn better pay.
And I had some tough jobs, but the toughest job I ever had was surviving my daughter's teens, and making sure she did, too. That was holy-freaking-hell. Hands-down the toughest thing I've ever been through.