We were talking on the way down from Texas State University graduation ceremonies and we realized what special children we had brought to bear on the world's situation. Their friends and associates are all dull and boring like us, no nightly police responses for wife beating....no one starring in clips from "World's Dumbest"....no need to drive up to TDC in Huntsville, Texas once every month.
During my time of it at Southwest Texas State University, it was a great source of pride for the Old Gringo to be able to say "I paid most of my own way through school." My mother, but not so much my father, was flabbergasted because I had been such a gadfly....lazy, profligate, over-accustomed to being waited on hand and foot, and generally disgusting. My father had had faith that my redemption would come as upon the wings of a buzzard.....and that I would suddenly feel like doing something and amounting to something.
So, it is true, that in the main, the Old Gringo did actually pay his room, board, tuition, auto insurance, maintenance, tires, and various things on his own for the last 2/3's of his stint at University. Much of that was working at a very fine hamburger shack named Gil's Broiler, a half-block off-campus.
So it is a bit of a source of pride and humiliation that first my daughter essentially paid her whole way through University and advanced herself professionally all on her own. And then her brother has done the same thing, wandering through life doing a thousand interesting things....capping it with things like being an Eagle Scout, a Coast Guard Veteran, and little things like leading Texas State Universithy in beating Dartmouth in the Philosophical World Series Debates this past Spring. Now he is still working and heading into the ethereal world of Graduate School....happy with his place, station, and progress.
So, it is humiliating to know what a slug the Old Gringo is and was, but then .....he helped Diana raise a pair of perfect children.....helped pretty much by staying out of the way. So, The Old Gringo was a very effective parent after all.
More Later, and thanks for your attention.
El Gringo Viejo
So, it is true, that in the main, the Old Gringo did actually pay his room, board, tuition, auto insurance, maintenance, tires, and various things on his own for the last 2/3's of his stint at University. Much of that was working at a very fine hamburger shack named Gil's Broiler, a half-block off-campus.
So it is a bit of a source of pride and humiliation that first my daughter essentially paid her whole way through University and advanced herself professionally all on her own. And then her brother has done the same thing, wandering through life doing a thousand interesting things....capping it with things like being an Eagle Scout, a Coast Guard Veteran, and little things like leading Texas State Universithy in beating Dartmouth in the Philosophical World Series Debates this past Spring. Now he is still working and heading into the ethereal world of Graduate School....happy with his place, station, and progress.
So, it is humiliating to know what a slug the Old Gringo is and was, but then .....he helped Diana raise a pair of perfect children.....helped pretty much by staying out of the way. So, The Old Gringo was a very effective parent after all.
More Later, and thanks for your attention.
El Gringo Viejo
