Chapter 2

My father had repeatedly told me as I was growing up, to be careful of the decisions and subsequent actions you make in life. Because there is no fate, no destiny. Nothing is preordained. Our lives are the sum of our decisions and actions. Nothing more, nothing less. As a teen, that was just more blah blah blah from my old man. I would nod my head and say, “Yes sir,” in the hope he’d wrap up the philosophy lesson so I could get on with whatever he’d interrupted when he decided we needed to talk.

As I got older, my father seemed to get a lot smarter, as one after another, his dad-isms came back to haunt me.

I was never going to be the college type. I hated school and was generally bored to tears. I put forth minimal effort in school, but even so, managed to graduate with a 3.2 GPA. My folks were happy, but Dad always knew I had it in me to do better, if only I’d try.

“Gabe, if you’d only study for an hour a night, you could bump those up to straight A’s and then the colleges would come looking for you!” was his frequent mantra.

The one time I saw real pride in his eyes was when I announced I was entering the Coast Guard. My grandfather had been a Coast Guard enlisted man and my dad had tried to enter as well but had been deemed medically ineligible due to a range-of-motion loss in his right shoulder. From a surfing accident when he was my age. One of his own decisions and actions, he’d point out to me, which changed his life.

I entered the Coast Guard two years after high school. Certain things change when you become reliably employed. I was stationed in Portsmouth, Virginia at the time. I’d just finished my culinary specialist school and was working at the base dining facility. I was promoted to petty officer third class, got a pay bump, and then the credit offers came rolling in. And then ... I met a girl. An insidious combination of circumstances, I am here to tell you.