Dark history

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Long ago I was going to become a lawyer.  I had studied Pre-Med, then switched to Math and then I was going to be an Industrial Engineer.  I was all set to transfer to LSU but a thing happened that I didn't expect.  I got a serious girlfriend who wanted sex and then when I didn't make a move, moved on to someone else and had sex with him and everyone knew about it.  

That's when I decided to leave school. It was my Junior year, I was almost done.   

Much later, I started up again and since Industrial Engineering was not available, I took up business in general.  I started with accounting, then learned what that was about and then did some Finance and some Economics and finally settled on Finance because it had the most to do with doing actual math.Nevertheless, I still had a triple major mapped out on my schedule and JU is one of those school=private, where you can count on courses being there YEARS ahead of time.

After school I planned to become a lawyer but somewhere in my second to last term before graduating with a triple major, my best friend was seriously assaulted and was thrown into a coma.  

They never "found" the criminal.  

Somehow I finished but I was much less driven than I was and got almost flushed out as a Finance major after taking MANY more courses than I needed.  It's almost like I didn't want to finish really.  

But I did, and after a while I relegated to my father my burden of going to law school.  I told him that he should become a bosun and he was challenged but not unhappy at the idea.  

He had been going on ships for 20 years or so at that point.  He started before I was born.  The first job was as a longshoreman, then joined a union and became an ordinary seaman(OS) and then after doing some studying he was able to register as an able-bodied seaman(AB).  

And he did that for ~20 years.  

The way the union ran, you had to register your membership card and then they would date it.  When jobs came up for OS or AB, only those people registered for those jobs could "bid" for the job.  To win the bid, you had to have the oldest registration.  After three months however, you fell out and had to re-date your card which would make your card the weakest of the "bids" if you threw your card for a job.   

So it was a good system.  People that didn't go into the union hall very often or languished at the bar too much, usually fell out and others that were there... oh and by the way they did bids usually around 3 or 4 times a day and they had a big board where all the jobs were lined up on the x-axis and the shipping companies were lined up on the y-axis.  And if there was a job then a "1" would be put there in a little box that intersected the jobs with the companies.  A ship could need as much as 6 AB I think and 10 OS if I remember, but most of the time you would just get a 1 and rarely a 2. Ok, so if you were there every day, like my dad, you maximized your chances at getting a job.   More importantly, you learned how many of the jobs were designed, and what opportunities there were, from the other members.  

Now on a ship, on a merchant ship, there are several positions available and this is how they go.  The captain, then the chief mate or 1st mate(often just called the chief mate), the second mate, the third mate, and then the bosun(boatswain I seen it called).  All of these jobs have only 1 position available per ship, maybe a couple of third mates maybe.  The officers all register at a different union from the regular help.  

All except the bosun.  

He is usually the guy in charge of all the regular men.  It's a very rare opportunity to see a bosun job and since people with bosun registration cards and training have first dibs on those jobs, it's moot to even think about posting for those jobs.  Still, one time there were NO bosuns AND my father had the best date of the men willing to bid for the job.  

OH BOY, were we set as a family.  He was making MUCH more money and he was TRULY happy doing his job.  And after years of being a peon, finally he was in charge and was able to pull it off.  He was happy so much so, that he started to hold off throwing for jobs on the off chance he could go as bosun again.  I think he was only able to do it one other time but still, it got his mind to working.  

To become a bosun, he had to go to bosun school in the northeast, in Boston maybe.  And to do that he had to be recommended by someone in an office somewhere.  He sent off his application and YEARS went by and they never called him to go to school.  I kept asking him about it and it just never happened.  

To me it was exciting to have a father that was in charge and I was already proud but that would have made me feel even better.  I often suggested to him about going on ships but he was always against it citing the problems he had with leaving my mother alone for all those years while he was on the ship. 

If we only knew I would spend 20 YEARS unmarried and alone.  

Fast forward to my time in college and I explained to him that we would make a deal, if he went to bosun school, I would become a lawyer.  He had been telling me since I was little to become a lawyer and frankly I always thought being a lawyer was really not very hard at all compared to math or business but meh I started to yearn for the title and for an advanced degree of some sort. 

Besides in the game of LIFE, which we played when I was little, if you didn't become a lawyer or doctor, you kind of ended up a philosopher so...  

Ok, so he was all set.  He called up the people at the head office.  Called them again.  Called some more and finally spoke to someone in charge and when they said he would have to wait, he insulted the crap out of him and claimed prejudice to which the guy said these words...

"Do you know who I am?"

My father didn't care and didn't know, so he slammed the phone down and never called them again.  He accepted the fact that he would not be a Bosun in this lifetime and since it wasn't going to happen anyways, he might as well get his licks in to whoever was in charge that let this happen.  

Some time later, my father had an "accident" on the ship.  He was towing the line between the ship and the shore and suddenly the ship moved and it cracked his hip.  He ws using his whole body to pull on a rope and for some reason a sudden jerk caused his hip to fracture.  They set up a bunch of tests and found nothing and some time later he was finally able to prove it was the shipping company's fault so they gave him a settlement for his lost time which amounted to years of not being able to work.  But that says nothing of his time spent in agony.  He kept trying to work with his injury for a time and it kept getting worse as his bones were already fractured at this point.  All I remember thinking was HOW could this happen?  

But after seeking resolution and visiting several different doctors, and having an operation to replace his hip, he was told he would never work again.  It was like a death sentence to my father who was the very ICON of adventure and happiness and responsibility.  

Some weeks after learning this... a letter... he was accepted to the Bosun school.