DEFINING MOMENTS

Some people have that one defining moment in life, that one moment that turns their life around.  The turning point in my life came on June 28, 1973, one month after I graduated from high school. What I remember most from my childhood, and I remember it fondly, is that I was poor; growing up a young Mexican boy in a single female, head-of-household family sucked.  Yes, I remember my childhood fondly, and yes, growing up poor sucked, but I was a happy child nonetheless.

It wasn’t so bad until adolescence when I came to realize that I was poor, with the first stark realization coming when I was in the sixth grade and I wanted to play basketball for my school.
Of course, poor students go to poor schools and ours could not afford uniforms in our school colors with names and numbers. We had mesh knit colored jerseys that we wore over our white t-shirts. I wasn’t much of an athlete, but it didn’t matter I was on the team, that was until our first game. The coach wouldn’t let me play because I didn’t have tennis shoes. You see, mom couldn’t afford to buy street shoes AND tennis shoes.  My team mates would not let me wear their tennis shoes so I that I could get on the floor, so I sat on the bench.

In conversations with my sisters, we didn't really remember being poor, or being hungry, when we were young children.  However, this experience came when I was 12 years old and was becoming aware of the world around me.  That experience, with that moment in my life, made me realize that I was poor, more poor than my classmates who all lived in the same low income neighborhood as I. Poverty kept me off the team because we could not afford tennis shoes needed to run up and down the wooden gym floor.

Such was life growing up, until that fateful day in June, 1973. During high school I worked on weekends, during summer months, and over the Christmas break, and I earned a few dollars, rarely enough to make a difference. However, I hooked up with a friend’s father, a carpenter, my junior year of high school, and stayed pretty faithful to him because he paid me cash at the end of the day, a dollar an hour. Plus, he got me some additional gigs with his friends in the building trades. I graduated from high school on Thursday, went to work on Friday, and have never been a day without a job since then. The day after my high school graduation I went to work with Victor, the carpenter, full time, so now I had spending money. Not enough to buy a car, but enough so that I could play with my chums on equal footing, uninhibited by the fact that previously, I had been the guy without a cent, relying on friends to chip in for me.

Few of them were working and making as much money as I was, but they had access to their parent’s car and usually some allowance money to get by. Well, on a fateful Sunday in June we planned a beer bust in the cool southwest desert, and we got drunk, this was my first beer party. The next day, when I awoke, I was still drunk and in no mood to work. Being quick on my feet, I called my boss to tell him that I had to go register for the draft – back then it was mandatory that young men register for the military draft after their 18th birthday.

I went back to sleep, until guilt overcame me. I got out of bed, dressed, and went to the recruiting station downtown to register for the draft. A few hours with the recruiter and I was hooked for four years. I got drunk that Sunday night, enlisted in the Army on Monday and shipped out to boot camp in Fort Ord, CA on Friday, June 28, 1973.

Never again was I to be poor. I kissed away poverty forever, it was not in the cards for me. After four years in the Army, armed with my G.I. Bill, I enrolled in college. While in college I washed dishes at Chef Ed’s, I enlisted in the Army Reserve, I landed a full time job earning minimum wage and finished my college degree after only 3 years and one semester. I kept that job until a better one came along and I haven’t looked back.

Soon after graduating from college in 1977, with the country in a serious economic recession, I faced bleak job prospects with only my bachelor’s degree. I had started a family, so quitting work was not an option. Not to worry, I still had some G. I. Bill benefits available because I whisked through undergraduate studies with lightning speed so I entered graduate school paid mostly by my trusty G. I. Bill. Two years later I had a master’s degree and bright future, sans poverty.

That defining moment in my life was when I took the oath of enlistment in the Army. I had a love/hate relationship with the military, but I stayed with it. While in college I entered the ROTC program and earned a commission in the Army Reserve at the same time that I earned a college degree. With these two credentials under my belt, or rather in my wallet, I nurtured two careers, a civilian career as a social worker and a military career as an officer in the Army Reserve. The latter came to halt in December 2004 after 31 ½ years, the former is still a work in progress. The fruits of my labor are sweet.  At age 60 I began receiving my military retirement benefit, a modest pension and Tricare Health Insurance.  I will be eligible for early social security at age 62, or I can wait for full social security benefits at age 66.

One thing is certain, I ain’t poor no more because I joined the Army. Everyone needs to have a defining moment, I suppose many folks have more than one defining moment, but there should be a least one point when life takes a turn.