When I made my first trip to Albany, for a meeting of the users of the BBS Mark had invited me to join (and of course to visit Mark), I learned that Mark was flunking his senior year. He had simply stopped going to classes. To flunk at this point, after earning fairly good grades and receiving his acceptance to O.S.U. in Corvallis, would be a tragedy. His parents had been to the school and all his teachers were ready and willing to provide him with make-up material to get his grades back up to allow him to graduate. It simply didn't seem important to Mark any more.

I took Mark to a coffee house for a soda and a LONG talk. I made a pledge to him, of honesty and support, a (perhaps unwanted) free flowing opinion of anything and everything and told him something he probably had never heard from an adult. I told him I wanted him to argue with me. I would listen and admitted that no matter what I told him he should do, it would only be my opinion and it would often be the case that I didn't know everything involved. It was to be his job to tell me what I didn't know; I told him I just might shock him and change my mind and agree with him. Probably something else no adult had ever said to him.

Then I suggested to him that returning and finishing school was something he should do; not for his teachers or his parents but for himself. I helped him to understand the part that his graduation would play in the future he wished for himself.

He sat and thought quietly.

His school alternated daily schedules. It was Wednesday. Thursday he returned to school, picked up his assignments from that days teachers and made an appointment with his advisor for the next day. Friday he returned to school again, went to that appointment and picked up the assignments for the other half of his classes.

I heard later, after I returned home, that he had gotten himself up Monday morning and went to school again.

How long would this last? How long would he stick with it?

Long enough.

I received this invitation just in time to get time off from my job and join his family on this wonderful evening.

In his "matter of fact" way, not an invitation but a simple statement of the trust he had in our relationship and my commitment to him. If I had been his own father, I could not have been more proud of him that night!