I’m a simple, blue-collar guy.  I fix multi spindle machines.  I got into it after the army, got married, had a kid, and kept the job because it was steady money, and with my wife’s teaching salary, it was enough to keep us comfortable.

Thing is, my son, John, is smart-gifted is what they started calling him when he was eight.  Being a teacher, my wife talked to a counselor, who suggested that we put him in a private school.  I’ve always been skeptical of private schools; I thought they turned out spoiled brats, but my wife wanted it, and who was I to argue.  It tightened the finances at first, but eventually, I got a raise and my wife found a summer school position that paid pretty well. 

John’s 11 now, and last week, the school had “go to work with your parent day.”  My wife and I discussed it and agreed John probably wouldn’t be that interested in my work, so she said he should come watch her teach.

Gifted as he is, the kid still values a day off of school, and there was no way he was going to school with his mom on a potential day off, so he said he wanted to go with me.  I was a little skeptical since I knew all his friends were going to law firms, hospitals, and what not.  I told him he probably wouldn’t like my work, but he insisted.  Again, who was I to say no?

That was the day I finally realized just why they say my son is gifted.  He didn’t even think about the other kids at the law firms or hospitals; he just came in and started asking questions.  He wanted to know about everything.  I’d be working on a used screw machine that looked like it came straight fro the dump, and he’d ask me about every single part he could point to.  While I was eating lunch, he brought my box of machine tools over to the table, pulled out every single one and asked me what it was and what it did.  After lunch, he insisted on helping me the rest of the day.  I’d ask him for tools and he’d hand me the right one every time.

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