The Cards We Are Dealt

My parents and grandparents threw me a big graduation party after I finished graduate school. They wanted to send me to Europe for the summer, but I refused. It was the third time I had refused an all-expense trip, so they were a little confused because all the other grandchildren had gladly accepted.

All of the grandchildren in the family were required to go to the same private community college, called a finishing academy, for their lower division work to prove to the family that they could make it through the first two years with a 3.5 or better. After that, we all had to go to the same university that the grandparents went to, and if we achieved a 3.25 or better, graduate school was paid for. Everything was paid for and the only other requirement was that we had to do volunteer work through our grandparents' charitable foundation.

At the party, while I was being teased about not wanting to go to Europe, I told them why, and they were taken aback at how mature I was for a twenty-five-year-old. I calculated the cost of all three of those trips and asked that that money be put toward the down payment of a modest condo near my old high school. That is when I dropped the bomb that I was the school's new career guidance counselor.

“Good morning, Mr. Grayson,” my admin said as I came in on Monday of the third week of the school year. “Now that the year has kicked off, we have a full schedule for you this week. Your first student is Franklin Herbert Raseburtien at 8:15, so you might want to review his file.”

“Already did, and I’m really not wanting Frank as my first student,” I remember returning. “I was once told by a professor that it is best to always assume that everyone in a room is an idiot at the start, and sometimes the idiot at the end is you. After reading Frank’s file, I’m thinking the idiot will be him.”

The admin cringed and nodded to a student sitting on a bench. I remember the lump that formed in my throat even to this day, and I was about to apologize for my comment, but realized he was just sitting there nodding his head up and down as he listened to music. Since I could hear it from under his headphones, I was sure he didn’t hear me.

Franklin Herbert Raseburtien was lucky to go to this high school. His family lived in the trailer park that was drawn into this ISD a few years ago when the neighboring city built a new high school. We inherited about eighty trash families, and Frank was from one of the least favored.

His GPA was 1.8, test scores were in the 10th percentile statewide, and he had no extracurricular activities other than football and track, in which he was third string. Coach Knox would refer to him as the least motivated player he had ever seen and didn’t understand why the boy kept coming back each year only to ride the bench. I think he just didn’t want to go home, but he also didn’t want to put any effort forward.

I’d seen almost every student that came out of that trailer park fail, and most failed hard. Frank was going to be the next, so I didn’t bother to put much effort into trying to help him. I fell back on what that professor told me to do with those idiots that I would encounter in my career.

“Frank, you are not giving me much to work with,” I stated after spending a third session with him during the fall semester. “I want you to take the ASVAB test next week for the military. Maybe you can get into the infantry or something until you find a path in life.

Fast forward thirty years, and I had the minimum needed to retire. I had thirty years of service with the district and was fifty-five years of age, which meant that I could start collecting a pension and enjoy the rest of my life. It was just me now that my wife dumped me for a woman, and my parents and grandparents were gone, along with all of their money.

A few years ago, we bought a converted hotel room on the river in Branson, Missouri and have been renting it out when not using it for a vacation home. She got the house, and I got the vacation condo in the divorce, and that was about it. That bitch took me for everything!

My younger brother set up a fund for me when my mother died last year that covered the HOA, utilities, insurance, and about four hundred dollars for food. My pension was enough for everything else that a modest retirement needed. The perpetual fund and the pension would ensure I always had money, but I found myself living a lower-middle-class life after fifty-five years of an upper-class lifestyle.

On the third day, I went fishing. I sat on the dock next to a guy who was just nodding his head away while listening to music through his earbuds and texting away. He wasn’t even paying attention to his fishing pole, but brought in three in twenty minutes, while I didn’t even get a nibble.

After a twenty-year failed marriage, I found myself failing at something so simple as fishing. I’m not joking here; I was about to cry in frustration in front of everyone on the fishing dock. Just as I was about to throw my pole into the guy next to me tossed me a bag with a few thick French fries marinating in what smelled like tuna juices.

Two weeks later, it rained like a mother, and no one was out fishing. I decided to go down to the lounge, where I found about forty other residents hanging out. It was split between early retired single men and miscellaneous people vacationing.

Despite the cruddy weather, everyone was in good spirits. There was a pool table, ping pong, beer pong, poker and other activities. I decided to fail at poker for the afternoon and drink away my anger.

“The buy-in is five dollars for forty chips,” a well-dressed man in his mid-sixties said as he pointed to an empty chair. “Man with the button calls the game. We play three, five, seven draw and stud or Texas Hold’em.”

“Don’t worry, Mr. Grayson,” the man across from me said, “this should be easier than fishing.” I looked at the man who had his earbuds in and recognized him from the docks. He was also the spitting image of James Herbert Raseburtien, Frank’s loser of a father.

“Have we met before?” I asked politely. “You seem familiar, but I cannot place were have met before. Did you attend Highland Dale High School?”

“Yes, and I look just like my sperm donor, right?” he said to me as the hole cards came out. “They found him dead in the barn a few months ago. I bet my sister wanted the old man dead and left him out there, but that is just me.”

I didn’t know what to make of this coincidence. The last time I saw Frank, he was doing the ASVAB test at the local MEPS. I heard he took the GED as soon as the spring track ended and left before the school year ended.

“I scored eight-seven on the ASVAB and went into the Air Force as a computer operator, which didn’t turn out so great,” he said after the first hand was over. “I failed and was sent to cargo crewmen school, then failed at that. I ended up running a riding sweeper machine around a base in Las Vegas for three years, picking up sand and dirt from the runway, which was a full-time job.”

It wasn’t surprising that a student with low GPA and state standardized test scores scored high on the ASVAB. I learned that students often act out in the form of poor grades in graduate school. It was also no surprise that he failed multiple times and ended up in a job cleaning up sand and dust from a landing strip.

“After that, I had nowhere to go, so I stayed in Las Vegas and got a job doing general maintenance at night at a moderately upper-end apartment complex,” Frank continued after the hand was over. “I got half off my half of the rent, which made it somewhat affordable for a starving student. During the day, I went to Junior College for the first two years of my college career, which was conveniently a few blocks away, so no car was needed.”

The first thing my rich brat mentality went to was how demeaning it must have been to go to a junior college, then I was reminded that I went to a junior college. The only difference was that the one I went to was private and not a community college. I was beginning to be humbled by the man who was a boy I pegged for a dismal failure.

“Three years later, I had a bachelor's degree in IDS, which is Information Decision Systems,” he stated proudly at the conclusion of the following hand. “Even though I didn’t have the best GPA, only a 2.9 on a four-point scale, I nailed my interview when I told the panel that sometimes I had to choose food over books and did the best I could with notes. At twenty-six, I had a job in Dallas with an IT firm providing actuarial data to insurance companies and doing predictive modeling.”

That was even more humbling! Even with a free ride, the best I could do was a sociology degree and a Master's of Arts in adolescent counseling. While my cousins and siblings all got engineering, finance, and nursing type degrees, I went with a soft science because it was easy. I consciously took the easy way out of everything in my privileged, rich kid life.

“After twenty years and a few software copyrights, I bailed and have been here ever since,” he continued after taking a very large pot from the table with a three pair hand at seven card stud. “The last three years, I have been splitting my time between here and my two sugar babies' places; one in Dallas and the other one is in Las Vegas. Cash flow from the eleven books that I have wrote keep the royalties flowing.”

Now he was just rubbing it in! My life seemed like such a failure when I was set up to win at everything life was going to send my way. I always took the easy way out, and this is where it got me. Frank had the deck stacked against him and was destined for failure but ended up a winner.

“Winston Churchill said that 'success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,’ Frank stated as he pulled in the third pot in a row. “How many young adults did you fail when you predicted they were to be failures because you judged them based on your privileged upbringing? In the end, as I see it, that was your biggest failure.”

Game, set, and match to Frank! I wasn’t sure if he was serious or if he was trying to get under my skin as a part of his poker strategy. The bad cards he was given in life didn’t stop him; however, I threw out the good cards I was given and ended up with a high pair.