“Really?”

“Yes. I analyze everything. Finally I did a couple of the seminars only because I couldn’t find a way to back out and I am seeing I have a chance to change lives. I don’t think I have the right to sit on the sidelines because of my whims. Look at what others have done to help me. I throw that out when I talk to kids and adults. I need to set aside my petty fears and do it.”

“It is a good point.”

“I have had Carol and a couple of people who worked with her with me at times, Debbie, Susan, Barb and all are really great.”

“I have met all of them. There isn’t a weak one in the group.”

“There is one, Lou, who I really like working with because we click and we complement each other. She is just plain nothing but impressive. I relate best to the students who want to be engineers, doctors, teachers, and she relates to the ones who see themselves doing more of blue collar jobs. Let’s face it, she was a success before she took the job with Fritz. It was a step to something better. With her background she may be a red flag for someone planning to drop out of school. For anyone who don’t know her, about three years ago she was a high school dropout, working as a RV service person, and I might add, a good one. Today she is working with Fritz Productions and she has become a tour coordinator. She is on tour about six months a year. She does the routine servicing of the RV and schedules the work she doesn’t want to do. Fritz keeps telling her to farm it all out, she is more valuable doing other things but she keeps telling him she wants it done right and she knows it will be if she does it.”

“She is somewhat feisty.”

“She is. But she can back up every thing she claims. We had a problem with our family’s RV last year. It was in the shop three times, cost us over five hundred dollars and it still wasn’t fixed. I mentioned it while we were at a meeting. She dropped past the next week, took it around the block and came back. She told us exactly what was wrong and offered to fix it. She had just come off of three fifty plus hour weeks with air travel in them. I told her “no way”, I refuse to abuse people, but I asked if she could call our mechanic and tell him what was wrong. She did. We took it in the next week. He did the work and the bill was about two hundred dollars. And it was fixed.”

“You know she was on the show recently and told us another story?”

“No? What?”

“She was having problems with a couple Math and Science courses. She said you and your husband spent hours with her. She said she was failing, with your help she passed.”

“Failing for her is less than a B.”

“I got that impression.”

“On the tours she is awesome. She drives part of the time. She teaches the others about the RV. Anyone who spends a week in the RV with her can just about field strip one of them if they have to. She helps with the programs, both on the scene and planning them. She appears at times. And last week when I talked to her she was working on a college course. She is now officially a Junior in a BA program in Psychology. I can’t tell you what her GPA is but she was complaining that a B she was sure she would get would pull it down. For that to be true you have to have an average above 3.0. She is a winner. This is the people I have the pleasure to work with in my spare time.”

“So what about Soccer and Basketball?”

“They are games.”

“Yes. But how do they figure in your life?”

“They were a way to get here.  They aer poar of the road behind me.”

Karen: Chapter One – The Attack

Karen Chapter 39 – Two Years Later

Karen Chapter 41 – Two Years Later Carl