Storytime, yall. When my best friends daughter was about eleven or twelve, she came and found him one Saturday afternoon as he was working around the yard. She said, Dad, they talked to us in school yesterday about careers, and they talked a LOT. It was really boring. But they said we have to start thinking about careers, and what we wanna do, and it sounds to me like some jobs are easy but dont pay well, and some jobs are really hard but pay well. There arent many that are easy but pay well, are there? He thought about it a minute, and said, No, youre right- there arent. There are a few, but mostly if a job is easy AND pays well, its because its gross and nobody wants to do it. She mulled that over for a minute, and asked, Whats a job like that? Im not afraid of gross. (Its true - she wasnt afraid of much of anything.) He said, Youre serious? You really want to know one? She said, Yup. Tell me. He said, Ill do better than that - Ill show you. Tell your mom well be back in a minute. So he walked her down the street and over to the funeral home a few blocks from the house. He showed her the impeccable lawn, and the brand-new hearse out front, and the two others in the alley. Then he walked her down the alley and lifted her up and showed her the directors classic 66 Corvette in one side of the garage, and his new boat in the other side, and her eyes got big. Walking home, she was quiet for awhile, then said, Okay - so whats he actually DO? You have to touch dead people, right? He said, Yup. You have to pick up dead bodies from wherever the people died - sometimes its at home, or it could be from hospital morgues, or the county coroners office. People die in car accidents too, or suicides, and sometimes the funeral home transports them right from there, too. Then you do stuff to the bodies to get them ready for the funeral, and make them look as nice as you can for their families, and you help with the burial. Some people dont want to be buried, so theyre cremated, which means theyre burned in a furnace, and that usually happens at the funeral home, too. Its not pretty, and its definitely not clean. But its not hard. And it pays well. She was quiet til they got home, then said, Thanks, Dad - Ill think about it, and headed off to the computer. She came back out to the living room two hours later, and announced, Okay. Im in. I looked all that stuff up online, and I can do it. None of that stuff bothers me. How do I do it? And she did. Shes twenty-nine now, smart and gorgeous, married to a funny, handsome young man a few years older, whom we all like immensely; they both work as funeral directors, and are expecting their first child in the summer. Moral of the story: Dont discourage your kids from things that YOU might not want to do. Give them the tools to think on their feet, tell them the whole story, and let them figure it out on their own. They may surprise you, but they will rarely disappoint you. ;) ~DowntroddenDad
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 02:59:19 +0000
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