As the school year started in fall of 1981, our three older children began the year at a college in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Carol had reluctantly agreed to get into the nursing program, not because she was interested in that field, but because she didn’t know anything else she wanted to do. It seemed it would be a field where it would be easy to get a job.

Don thought he might be interested in construction, or else something like sports medicine. Sports medicine required a lot of science courses and good grade-point averages. Don hadn't applied himself, nor had he taken any of the required courses toward a degree in sports medicine.

Christi was playing with the idea of being a teacher. At least it was a start toward a career. She had pretty good grades, but she had already tried some substitute teaching and found she had trouble with discipline, much the same as I had had. A test she had taken to determine what she might be suited for showed hair dressing or some type of beauty product related field. She knew someone who was doing well as a massage therapist and was interested, but this school didn’t have such a course, so she just continued along the lines of general education. Since neither she nor Carol had a roommate, they decided to try rooming together again, but we all knew that wasn’t likely to last for long.

Don was able to get himself a job as the gymnastic coach at the college affiliated high school. The college also had a gymnastic team. He was back in school with other friends he had known from his high school days, so this school appeared to be a good fit for him. One of the classes he enrolled in was furniture making. He excelled at working with his hands, but the class turned out to be costly for us. The wood required for making dining and coffee tables was by no means inexpensive.

Evan, Connie and I made a trip from New Orleans to the school in the fall to watch Don's gymnastic team perform. It was an excellent show and our son was a lot better than I had realized. He was in good physical shape.

Connie was attending Alice Birney the public elementary school, where instead of getting recognition for academic achievement at the school’s fall awards program, she was called on stage and given recognition as the class clown. Apparently, her teacher appreciated her sense of humor.

Carol’s Korean friend, Tommy made a trip to her college in Chattanooga to see her, and they continued to write. At the end of her first year of nursing, the school had the students do a summer internship. One choice was back at the Texas college, she left the year before. She chose to go there in hopes of spending more time with Tommy.

Unfortunately, he had gotten a summer job as a life guard and was very popular with the girls who spent a lot of time in the pool. Carol hadn’t had competition for his attention in the past, so her summer didn’t turn out the way she’d hoped. He had changed from the way things had been the year before, and there was some drinking involved which was against school rules. They ended up fighting a lot. Although they remained friends, it wasn’t like their relationship had been before.

The summer for Don and Christi meant working again as camp counselors at Camp Blue Ridge in Virginia. They took a train from New Orleans to the camp. Kelly, the girl Don met at this camp, caused him to fall hard. Since she would be going to school with him in September, he was looking forward to seeing a lot more of her during his second year in Chattanooga. This turned out to be one of the worst years of his life.

The year started out fine with Kelly and she invited him home with her at their first break to meet her parents. I thought it was a bad idea and tried to talk him out of going. I didn’t think meeting the parents for the first time on an extended visit to their home would bode well. It gives the parents, who tend to be naturally suspicious of someone interested in their daughter to begin with, more opportunity to find all of their prospective son-in-law’s hidden flaws. I’d known other relationships which had stalled out on the first visit.

Don didn’t listen to my reasoning and went anyway and the result was that Kelly broke up with him as soon as they returned to campus. She didn’t give him an explanation, and I think it is possible her parents forbade her to keep dating him.

At any rate, his heart was broken. Not only did this rejection shatter his male ego, but a class in Auto Mechanics, which he thought would be something to help bring up his lagging grade-point average, turned out to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back and destroyed what little self-confidence he had left. That chapter of his life deserves its own story. This story is entitled Negotiating the Negative.