38 Years.

38 years ago today in the city of Manchester, England a little boy took his first breath, and promptly screamed! He was the second by in his little but growing family and would end up being the second oldest of 5 children. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Saudi Arabia. Yes I did say Saudi Arabia. He spent the first two years of his life there playing amongst the sand dunes and various friends. It was here where his allergy to Penicillin was discovered after he became very sick, according to his parents. After two years of playing in the desert, his family moved back to England for a short stay before heading to Canada. His family settled in a little town called Calgary, yes it was little at the time. Shortly after arriving in Calgary, the little family grew a little bigger with the addition of the first girl in the family, aside from the mother. Anyways, back to the little boy.
When the little boy was young, he played with little cars, like most little boys his age, but the little boy was a little different. He seemed to be fascinated with the automobile. And not just the little toy ones either. He was eager to learn as much as possible about them. He would subscribe to Road & track in his early youth and soon be able to tell anyone around him who would listen what year, make, and model the car approaching them was. This seemed to drive his parents crazy as he would sometimes yell it out while we were all in the car. During his later teens his interest seemed to change a bit as most young boys’ minds do, to girls. This didn’t mean that he stopped learning about cars at all, he just supplemented that interest with a new one. At one point he was seriously looking at a career in Automotive design. That was his goal, until he found out what it would take and how much it would cost. There was no way he cold afford to go to school for design. He was bummed. He then thought that the next best thing to designing cars would be selling them and running his own dealership. The cost for schooling wasn’t nearly as much as design and he could stay in Canada to do it. He researched the school, got information packages for it, and worked to save up the money to go. However, the job he was doing to save for school presented another option. He could have a good career fixing cars. He would be around them all day long, learning a how they worked, how the complex systems worked together, etc. He abandoned his dealership ambitions and set out to be an Automotive Technician. Five years later he was a Certified Automotive technician with an Inter-Provincial Red Seal. He was in heaven. Then the monotonous daily grind started to fade his enthusiasm for the trade. Then he made one of the biggest decisions in his life. He would open his own repair shop. During his career, he also got married and started a family of his own. He had just moved into a new house in a nice area of Calgary and things were looking good! He opened the shop 3 weeks after 9/11 happened and the economy tanked. Not the best timing in the world, as two years later it closed down. Also in that time his marriage fell apart and he had to go into bankruptcy. This wasn’t the worst part. That was that his parents and his older brother also had to go into bankruptcy as they were all partners in his shop. His life was at an all time low. That’s when an epiphany happened. He realized that cars could be a hobby for him and he could pursue a real career with real pay and opportunity. He went back to school and started a new career at the age of 33. Since then he has been in his new career for 5 years. He got remarried 3 years ago this July, and is expecting a child this Christmas season. He is still very passionate about cars and all thing automotive, but now it is not the be all, end all.

How do I know so much about this person? Because this person is me. Today I turn 38 years old. As you can tell from everything above, it has been an eventful 38 years. And what have I learned? I’ve learned that there are more important things in life than 4000 pound hunks of metal and plastic that look good. Family is the most important thing in life, and I have been blessed to be a part of one of the best. Even though we are very sarcastic and joke around with each other, we all know that we love each and every member of the family.