So fine, that was Dad's work - for over 30 years with the same company, but what about me? What about my work? Good question; I thought you'd never ask (that's tongue in cheek, in case you didn't understand that).
I started taking French in 7th grade and took it through the 10th grade and then picked it up again in my undergraduate studies, and even took a class while studying for my second master's degree. I dropped it for 11th and 12th grades because the school levy failures (that's how schools are funded in Washington State) resulted in the loss of one class hour in my school district. So it was French I decided to cut.
But taking French made me realize that I like learning languages and then in high school I became friends with a Swedish exchange student, who I later visited in Sweden and who later visited me in the Midwest. So when I entered college I was thinking I'd go the route of international business, but then the fall of my sophomore year (I just double-checked this on my transcript) I had Principles of Accounting I, Introduction to Statistics and French. I realized then that I didn't like so much working with numbers and that that didn't bode well for me in international business. So I've always told people that I ended out dropping the "business" and keeping the "international", by majoring in European Studies.
My intention was to become a professional missionary to Eastern Europe, so after graduating I continued on to Bible school, where I studied 2 more years.
This might sound very nice and well-intentioned, but you have to remember that this was all between 1978 and 1985 and Eastern Europe was still the big Red enemy, the focus of our Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars") that my dad worked with.
I don't know how much of what happened as things unfurled was related to my dad's work and how much was due to other things, but I do know that missions had their own issues, too, as you can see from that FOIA letter I posted earlier.
I do know, however, that I went in to this all very naively. I never really realized before I started off on this that my dad was in military-related work. My brothers find this hard to believe, but then dad had shared at the boys' AWANA club at church, and they both had posters of the space system, which was very cool, I'm sure. I just never paid any attention and I only remember in adult conversations dad talking about the civilian side of Boeing's work.
I also never thought that missions could be so messed up. I mean, if you think about it, the Communist countries were at least partially right in claiming that Western Christian groups knocking at their doors worked for the CIA. And I haven't even told you the half of it either.
I really haven't told you anything about my actual work, only about my preparations for work. But the thing is, I've had 2 career changes even since that one initial profession. Believe it or not, there's still a lot to tell you before you'll really understand me and my life. And if you ever do get to that point, you may be the only person on this planet who does.
There's a joke I'd like to leave you with for tonight. I heard this joke in Dresden (the former East Germany) at a monthly youth meeting in the early fall of 1983.
There were 2 Jews on a tram. They were mostly silent, broken only with the occasional "oi", to which the other would respond "oi, oi, oi" and this went on for some time. Finally one of them ended this dialogue by saying they had to stop talking politics.
~ Meg
