No turning back now …

It’s my brother Dave’s birthday. He’s 40. Remarkably I remember the day he came home from the hospital. The reason that day is so clearly etched in my memory is because he came home at around exactly the same time that school was going to end. I was 6 and a first-grader at the time. My teacher, Mrs. Schwabele had placed me in the high reading group – a big “honor” perhaps- bestowing upon the holder the extra special “privilege” of being able to stay after school each and every day to sit around with six other high reading group members – all of them girls – while my friends got to play freeze-tag and kill-the- guy-with-the-ball on the playground. Oh joy. When Dave arrived it was exciting and a big event so I asked Mrs. Schwabele if I could skip high reading group and go home to meet my new brother. She said “Now Robert, life is full of hard choices and if you walk out that door that’s fine, but you won’t be in high reading group anymore …”  Imagine how hard a choice that was; in retrospect – it was clearly the right one for me. And today, on his birthday, I’d like to thank Dave for helping me make THAT important life decision. Oh … by the way, and not to toot my own horn, but I think I’m reading at or about grade level right now.

This entry was posted on November 20, 2009 at November 20, 2009 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.