Chapter 11

Bill’s turn:

Things are getting strange. When you understand that I’m starting from a place where I live in a household with my sixteen year old wife and her best friend, my fourteen year old daughter, and we call that ‘normal’, then ‘strange’ takes on new impact.

Now it’s academic. Not ‘academic’ as a descriptive term to denote something that doesn’t affect reality, but rather ‘academic’ as in pertaining to education.

I considered myself to be pretty smart. I mean, I AM an engineer, and as a rule we’ve filtered out a lot of less intelligent participants. Trouble is, I’ve been beaten by the females in my life, daughter and wife. My daughter has a better ACT score in the eighth grade than I did in high school. Well, Okay, not really. I beat hers by a point. She got a twenty-eight, I got a twenty-nine. Mine wasn’t shabby, but Deena’s was in the eighth grade. And Haley, my dear, sweet cutie of a wife, beats me by four points.

I don’t NEED them to tell me that I need to take some serious steps to make room for those intellects to grow to potential. That didn’t stop two excited teens from telling me anyway.

When I’m on the way home today, I do the customary phone call to Haley and get the ring-beep denoting that she’s on the phone. I consider that to be odd. She gets the occasional call, usually about a school assignment, so it’s not big deal, just on the edge of unusual.

I walk in, Deena jumps up to meet me. “She’s on the phone with Doctor Richards in Alabama.”

“Oh,” I said.

“We emailed ‘em. Cindy called us.”

“Cindy?”

“Doctor Richards. She sounds nice. Excited for us.”

Haley looked over her shoulder at me, made a kissy face, then, “Cindy, my hubby’s here. Do you mind if I put you on speaker?”

Apparently not. A voice from the phone said, “Hi, Mister Bill. Deena.”

“Hi, Doctor Richards,” I said.

“Puh-leeze, Mister Billl. I’m Cindy. Couple of years older than your wife.”

“Then I’m Bill,” I said. “And I’ve met your husband a few years back.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he was the engineer on one of our substation projects. Been some years.”

“I’ll ask him if he remembers. Hang on.”

I heard her asking him off-mike, then “Hey, we’re putting y’all on speaker here, too.”

“Hey, Bill,” I head a familiar voice.

“Danster,” I said. “I’d ask what’s up, but we’re just sort of finding out.”

“Know what you mean, buddy. Cindy said you have a sixteen year old wife?”

“That’s me!” Haley popped.

“And a fourteen year old daughter,” Deena injected.

“It’s about ACT scores, baby,” Cindy said. “These two are pretty impressive,” she told Dan. “Bill, what’re you doing with it?”

“I’m just short of sitting in a dark closet, weeping softly,” I said.

“You are NOT!” Haley squealed.

“The truth is, we are just getting into where this all goes. I’m without a clue. Haley and Deena just started looking into it. That’s part of why this call is happening.”

“I had a particularly good guidance counselor who helped me immensely,” Cindy said. “What’re your guidance counselors there doing for you?”

“They’re trying, but I’m one of a thousand high school students, so I don’t expect much,” Haley said.

“And I’m in middle school, so mine is plowing new ground with me,” Deena added.

“Now I’m gonna ask a question and I need honest answers,” Cindy said. “Are you BOTH serious about this? I mean, I was fourteen when I hit college. Nikki Granger and Dana Allen were fifteen. Kara and Tina were seventeen. What we’re talking about is certainly possible, but it’s not worth wasting effort if you’re not going to put forth serious effort. You could pretty much coast through high school and take the traditional college route.”

“I’m bored. Stagnating,” Haley sighed. “I’m a serious student, but...”

“Me, too,” Deena said. “Seriously! You were fourteen?”

“Yes. I was three months shy of my fifteenth birthday. Two years later I had multiple bachelor’s degrees and a master’s in electrical engineering. Now I have a PhD in physics.”

Me, I’m just keeping my mouth shut. I never imagined this was possible ... Finally I worked up to saying, “I guess we could talk with the local university directly.”

“I can do better than that, I bet,” Cindy said. “We need to get you up here to talk with somebody I know. How’re your schedules? Could you miss a couple of days?”

“Not like we’re gonna miss something important. If we say we’re going to visit...”

“Auburn University,” Cindy said. “I’ll have an email sent to your guidance counselors if you give me email addresses. I got somebody on the inside at Auburn. I want you two to meet ‘er.”

“That’s a two-day drive,” I said.

“Bill, Bill, Bill,” Cindy said. “We grow wings here.”

“Wings?” Deena asked. “I saw pictures of airplanes but I didn’t pay much attention.”

“You should, Deena. Details. I’m one of a herd of licensed pilots. Dan and I have our own plane, as do others, plus the corporation owns a couple – a little trainer for teaching students and a bigger twin for moving technicians and equipment around the country. You’re four hours away in our plane. I could pick you up there mid-morning, have you here by mid-afternoon. If you want to...”

My young wife squealed. “Yes!”

“Next question,” Cindy said. “Deena? You too?”

“Absolutely,” Deena said.

“That leaves one more, Bill. You gonna stay there and work while they’re gone, or are you coming with them?”

“I go where she goes ... THEY go,” I said.

“Okay, then that’s settled. I need to make sure a few things line up at this end, but how about Thursday of next week? And we get you home Saturday or Sunday?”

“Good!” Deena blurted. She eyed me and Haley. “Right?”

“Tentatively,” I said. “I have to interface with a real job.”

Haley’s turn:

On a list of things that make high school legends, at least among the faculty, is having the guidance counselor show the principal a letter from a recruiter at a major university asking that I make myself present for face to face interviews.

There are a few students who work in the school offices during the day, so word leaked out.

“But you’re just barely sixteen,” was a common statement.

My reply was standard. “Straight As. Highest ACT that they have at this school this year. Or last year. Or the year before that.”

A few of the academically-minded expressed a bit of jealousy. “An Auburn recruiter? Wow!”

“I don’t know if I’m going to Auburn. I am married. My husband has a job here. No way college is going to separate me and Bill.”

Yes, Deena informed her mom. Deena’s still a good kid (says me, a whole TWO years older) and she talks with her mom almost every day, usually about school and whatever trips we go on as a family or what happens when she goes out with friends.

She explained her glee over the ACT scores and the fact that Auburn wanted to see us and we were going. She side-stepped the part about how we were getting there.

“I can see Mom freaking out,” Deena said. “If it hits her when she’s in the wrong mood, it just gives ‘er something to use against Dad.”

“She does, doesn’t she?” I said.

“Yeah. I don’t know how Dad put up with ‘er long enough to create me,” Deena giggled. “You ‘n’ Dad, I can see. Dad ‘n’ Mom ... Nuh-uh.”

“People change sometimes. Your dad is safe, sane...”

“I’m surprised he consented to flying in a light plane. Sometimes he’s soooo conventional.”

I knew ways he wasn’t conventional, at least not within my experience, but that’s not the kind of thing one discusses with a man’s teen daughter.

“Safe. Stable. Steady. Conservative,” I told her.

“That’s Dad. But Mom traded that for a lawyer...”

“You never know what makes people happy, I guess.”

“I guess so. I mean, I listen to some of the girls at school goin’ on and on about one boy or another and I know the boy who’s the subject of the conversation and I think that bag of rocks is smarter.”

“I see the same thing all the time,” I answered.

“You saw that and you looked at Dad and there’s no comparison,” Deena said.

“I knew I could talk to ‘im about anything and if he didn’t know, he had this way of taking me along as we both learned, and when it became US, before we decided to get married, I knew that if I treated him right, he’d be by my side as long as he lived.”

“Romantic.”

“Practical, too. Why should I waste my time with one of those shit-kickers at school who’d use me for whatever he could get out of me and when I wasn’t exciting any more, he’d move on to the next one...” I paused, “Not that short, flat-chested me is...”

“You know better, Haley,” Deena said.

“Boobs, not brains, that’s what they want. Your dad treated me like brains from the beginning.”

“So!” she said. “Cindy? Boobs or brains?”

“That red hair. I’m jealous. But definitely brains first.”

“Her picture on their website. Not a hint of make-up,” Deena said. “You’re like that. I probably should be, too...”

“You get to be YOU, Deena.”

So Thursday FINALLY got here. I haven’t anticipated anything like this since I used to lie awake at night and imagine Bill’s hands touching me, before we actually mated.

The three of us were waiting in the office at the airport, not the terminal where all the airlines do their stuff, but a place that handles general aviation. That’s something very new and interesting. Little planes. One engine. With propellers.

They had the control tower radio on speaker in the office. We’d already gotten a cellphone call from Cindy telling us she was half an hour out, just to coordinate things, and now we hear her voice talking to the control tower like it was the most normal thing in the world. Maybe it is, for her.

In a little bit, we see a little airplane taxiing up, doing slow curves, the red head inside leaning one way then the other to see around the nose of the airplane.

A guy goes out there with a couple of orange wands in his hands and guides her to a place to stop. By this time, we’re out there waiting. When the propeller stops turning, a door opens and Cindy gets out and she makes me feel good because she’s just barely taller than me. Hugs happen.

Bill’s standing back, observing.

“You get one, too, Bill,” Cindy said. She hugged MY husband. I watched.

Bill’s turn:

“Now,” she said. “Bathroom. Sorry.” And she hurried off. We followed her back inside, grabbed our bags, waited. Presently she came back, face glistening. “Four hour flight, four hour bladder,” she said. She surveyed her prospective passengers. “Anybody scared?”

Deena and Haley both shook their heads, so I guess I’m on shaky ground if I am. “No,” I said.

“Let’s get the bags loaded then,” Cindy said.

She moves with confidence. Our bags were secured. She borrowed a ladder to check the fuel caps on her wing tanks, giving us a narrative as she walked around the little aircraft.