[Pelham]

That petitioning was a novel idea. Some students in the class ahead of me were allowed to take classes at the local JC but that didn’t happen for my year. We remained prisoners at the high school.

Your multiple moves at least rotated you back to San Diego a few times. Maybe a bit of famliarity. Springfield VA is not far from my old “hometown” of Arlington. I had gone to kindergarten in Ft Leavenworth KS. The next year when I moved to Arlington one of my Kansas classmates showed up in my first grade class. My first girlfriend, I wonder where she is now...

[Myrddin]

Likewise, I had friends from other locations land in the same place. A friend in Hawaii showed up 6 blocks away from my home in Chula Vista, CA. We had some classes together at the junior high school. While in Springfield, VA, we went to a movie in Falls Church, VA. A very annoying person kept putting feet on the back of my seat during the movie. I turned around to see my old next door neighbor from Honolulu, HI. Still as obnoxious as ever. A friend up the street in Springfield, VA was also a member of the band. We exchanged trumpet sheet music often. As I was prepping to move back to Chula Vista from Springfield, I carried the borrowed music to my friend's house. It was vacant. A few weeks later, I was sitting in my PE class in Chula Vista. The teacher called the roll. I heard my friend's name. Yup. Two rows behind me in the same junior high PE class. I returned the borrowed sheet music to him at lunch.

I observed a similar pattern professionally. On a fairly regular basis I would be summoned to help fix some terrible problem caused by poor software/systems engineering. Very often, some of the same people we also summoned to the meeting. I referred to it as the SWAT team. It became an employment pattern as well. Regular recruitment to rescue a program in trouble. A good track record of rescues. I'm thinking about retiring this year. Time to put the 60 hour weeks down and enjoy some of the time remaining.