My friend, Rick, and I had our families at roughly the same time. His daughters are about the same ages as my sons. When the kids were small, Rick called their efforts to test their boundaries running for daylight, an expression used to describe what running backs do in football. I never forgot his characterization.
Fast forward to 2006. My younger son, Quinn, was 20 years old, a sophomore at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, and living in an apartment off campus. One night he called me from there.
“Dad,” he said in that kind of drawn-out way he and his brother had of pronouncing the word when a bomb was already incoming.
“Hi, Quinn,” I said. “What’s up?”
“I think I’m in trouble.”
“Oh,” I said. “That’s interesting. Every time I’ve been in trouble, I was fairly certain of it.”
After a pause, Quinn said, “Okay. I’m in trouble.”
“Are you all right?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“And what might be the nature of the trouble you’re in?”
“Well,” he warmed up. “My buddy and I went out and bought some beer. When we returned and got out of the car with the beer, there were plain-clothes cops in our parking lot in an unmarked car. They stopped us and asked for our IDs.”
“I see,” I said. “Is your buddy underage, too.”
“Yeah,” he said. “And what kills me is the beer wasn’t even for us.”
Even though Quinn couldn’t see it, I started waving a red flag. “Stop right there,” I said. “You were doing really well right up to that point. But now I have to ask you: Do you think I was never 20?”
“Sorry about that,” he said.
“With that out of the way, what are we looking at?” I asked.
“I have to go to court and pay a $400 fine.”
“Relatively speaking, that’s a pretty inexpensive lesson,” I said, “as long as you remember it. Let me know where to send the check.”
“Thank you,” he said.
The Backstory
Lest you think I let Quinn off easy, here’s some context: When Quinn was in 4th grade, he decided he wanted to learn to play the saxophone. He signed up for lessons at school and was given a sax from the West Hartford public school system.
In his report card that year, his music teacher, Mr. Torns, wrote this: “The saxophone doesn’t come easy to Quinn. But he refuses to give up.”
At the time, the City of West Hartford had 11 elementary schools. Every year, students from all 11 schools would audition for the West Hartford Inter-El Music Festival, the inter-elementary band (as well as choir and orchestra) that would perform a concert at the historic Bushnell Auditorium in Hartford. As a 5th-grader, Quinn auditioned for the band, was selected, and played at the Bushnell.
At the end of that school year, we knew Quinn would be moving to a private Catholic middle school, St. Timothy, in West Hartford. There would be no public-school saxophones to be had. I told him, if he wanted to continue playing the sax at St. Tim, I’d buy him one.
I said, “I know you well enough to know if you decide not play anymore, we’ll be able to sell the sax and get back darn-near what we paid for it. And I know you won’t give it up to sit on the couch and eat chips.”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ll think about and let you know in September.”
Before the school year started in September, Quinn decided he wanted to continue playing the sax. I bought him one, and he played it for the next two years.
Early in his 8th-grade year, he decided he didn’t want to play anymore.
I said, “Remember I told you I was sure you wouldn’t give up the sax to sit on the couch and eat chips?”
“Yeah.”
“You make Honors every quarter,” I said. “You’re President of your class, and you play soccer and basketball. You’re making the sound decision I knew you’d make.”
At the time, there was a Sunday morning program on a local AM radio station that let you call in to list items for sale. I called in Quinn’s sax. We heard it offered over the air. Thirty minutes later, there was a knock at our door from a gentleman with cash in hand.
When the gentleman left, I said to Quinn, “That’s just the way we drew it up.”
He smiled.
When you have a son that good, he’s entitled to run for a little daylight.
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
