Today wasn't the best day. I woke up this morning, after spending most of the night tossing, turning, and unable to sleep, to gray skies and a crabby dog. I slugged my way through my morning routine and got to work nearly on time, which was a plus, but my morning still wasn't anything spectacular.
As the day wore on, some of the major stressors that I'm dealing with right now decided to show their ugly heads. Early this afternoon I learned that Poppy (Yes, Sean, I call my grandpa Poppy; to borrow a phrase from you, if you don't like it, suck it!) was being transferred to a nursing home. It's very far from an ideal situation, but since he's remaining in Fredonia, my mom, aunt, and sister can check on him frequently. He's not doing at all well; at this point, it's still pretty much a waiting game.
This evening, as I was leaving work, my mood was about as gloomy as the sky. I was unlocking my car and heard my text message alert beep, so I pulled out my phone. One of my best friends, Misty, sent me a text that made me smile and made my day turn out to be a little brighter.
When I was first out of college and was offered my first professional job, I moved to a relatively small town in western Kansas, where I served as the public relations director for a community college. I soon learned that my job entailed *SO* much more than just PR, and while it wore on me at times, I loved it. I had lots of one-on-one interaction with students, and periodically, there was one who would worm his or her way into your everyday life. For me, it was usually the kids who were nice, but also had ornery streaks.
There was one student, in particular, who managed to work his way into all of our lives my first year there: Tex. He was continually doing things he shouldn't be doing and getting himself into trouble, but there was just something about him that made it nearly impossible for you to be angry at him. We pulled him out of numerous messes, but all worried that he would eventually end up in more trouble than we could repair. He left after one semester and, to the best of my knowledge, none of us heard from him again -- until today.
Misty texted me to say that he stopped to see her on his way out to Colorado and told her that he's now married to an amazing woman (a teacher!), has two children, owns and operates a successful welding business, and owns a good chunk of land oustide of Wichita. Wow!
It's awesome to know that, despite my concern, Tex managed to become successful in life. And what's even more awesome is to know that, in maybe a tiny party, his success can be attributed to some of the things that we all attempted to teach him.
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