It's not the first check you've collected. There was the little gas station down the road that was your first job. It didn't pay even minimum wage and when the heroin junky from the next town over decided to relieve you of the wad of cash that represented the nightly proceeds......you learn what it feels like to be robbed. When the police ask you for a description, you can't remember much of his features since you were mostly paying attention to the finger that seemed to be way too close to pulling the trigger of the gun that was stuck in your face. You decide to move on.
Since your dad worked at a steel mill, your next job was as assistant to the mill wright in the blooming mill. He fixes everything that breaks down. Lots of dangerous machinery breaks down and often. You find yourself in precarious situations sometimes handing tools but mostly staying out of his way. You consider it successful at the end of the summer when neither of you are killed. He considers it a miracle.
In between some of this you stop at your grandparents house and work in the garden or sell vegetables out of the roadside stand. Grandpa never says a word to you. You just sort of know what to do or you do what you think is needed. Grandma always sends you away with Mason jars full of chili, canned tomatoes or left overs. Supper is good those nights......not Banquet TV dinners you are getting used to boiling on the stove for yourself because mom is going to night school.
There are more jobs, none of them fulfilling. One summer you make wooden style lake chairs with a friend. You don't make much but later he becomes your best man at your wedding and in the same month.....you at his.
All these jobs you have in mind while studying the art, science and craft of keeping airplanes separated. It has given you the courage to press on even as you realize that you don't have much talent for scribbling on little cards that stack up in a rack in front of you....each one representing a hundred or so human souls. It's a game that drains your energy and bores you instantly. Most of your instructors have suffered nervous breakdowns in the field, been divorced and have been sent to the academy to finish out their career. You don't think about that at age 24. You think about the paycheck, supporting a family and maybe some day...retiring.
By the the end of the six months, impossibly, you have survived the previous cuts. There is only the final exam left and you have to score 70 to be passed and sent to the field. They have already assigned you Washington DC but there is plenty of uncertainty. In the back of your mind you know a wedding is set to occur when you fly home, and it is yours. Everything is riding on this final exam. You do everything in your power to be prepared. The test is excruciatingly difficult but you have faith. It might be blind faith. The results come back in an envelope. As you open the envelope you know that your future will be determined by one simple number. Staring at the paper.....it seems to be a cruel joke. The number is 69.5%.
Continued...