Values: A Short Story

Click-Clack-Drip-Drop.

On stormy nights, these are the sounds that filled the back part of a 40 ft long 10 ft wide used fifth-wheel travel trailer parked Southeast of Houston.

On a rickety desk sat a 10-inch square monitor, attached to a base-level e-machine desktop some four years old, accompanied by two cooking pots precariously positioned to catch as much water as their too-small mouths could hold.

Above the desk was a “ceiling” with many qualities. One such quality was how short the “ceiling” was compared to that of a house or apartment. Standing in front of my desk as a 12 year old boy, I could reach my arm up and lay my palm flat on the “ceiling” with a generous bend in my elbow. The shape, however, is more difficult to explain.

Picture your hand in the front pocket of your hoodie. The part of the hoodie pocket where the back of your hand would touch is the “flap”. If you were looking straight up from my desk, the “ceiling” would look like this front pocket of your hoodie, but the “flap” was a half-inch thick piece of sagging rotting wood covered with tattered white wallpaper. Much like your hoodie, you could run your hand along the inside of it.

The caved-in roof formed a bowl for water to collect. From there it would seep through into the ceiling and flow out of the “flap” directly onto my monitor and sometimes my desktop.

Here are the steps I took to prevent my one and only computer, my prized portal into another reality, from being destroyed by the rain:

• Stuff bath towels inside the “flap” (yes the “flap” could be opened this much!)
• Position the towels such that I could control where the drips would fall so I could divert them into pots I set up on my desk (or on the floor near the desk if I could divert the drips far enough away)
• Depending on how quickly the “bowl” roof filled up, and how intense the rain was, I could get away with simply dumping the pots of water when they got full, but often-times this was not the case
• Inevitably the towels became too saturated so I could no longer position them in any way to control the flow of drops; they would drip from random parts of the towel where pots were not placed
• This is where 3 techniques were employed, in the following order of preference, to deal with this too often faced situation:

1. Push up on the front “flap” in several places along the curve to effectively squeeze the water out of the towels, plus try to push some of the water out of the “bowl” on the roof. This had the unfortunate side effect of causing smelly, dark, cold water to flow from my hand, down my arm, through my armpit, and into the crease where my pants met my hip. Sometimes I would get it on my face. What a thrill! This was the stop-gap solution I used if I was in the middle of raiding with my guild in World of Warcraft (that’s a whole other post)
2. If the above didn’t correct the flow, which trust me I tried the above many times each time to avoid this current step, I would have to pull out the saturated towels from the “flap” and rush to the bathroom, which was luckily only 20ft away. This could almost be thought of as pulling soaked gauze out of a bleeding wound. I would then wring each towel the best I could and run to replace them back to the “flap”. Sometimes pulling the towels would displease the “flap”, and the flow of water would not return to its original path even with the towels in place. Also if the rain was particularly heavy, I would have to wring the towels again much sooner than I pleased to.
3. When none of the above quelled the onslaught of drippage on my precious electronics, I had the desperate but effective idea to destroy my problem at the source. I would grab my dad’s giant Carhartt jacket, put on his oversized work boots, and walk out into the pouring rain with my ultimate weapon: a broom. Luckily the caved in piece of roof I was looking to clear a puddle from happened to be right where a ladder was attached to the back of the trailer. So I would climb up that ladder with this broom and sweep off a puddle, sort of like bucketing water out of a sinking boat. This puddle removal allowed me to stifle the flow of water to a controllable level with the previously mentioned techniques. I only ever had to do this step twice in a night once.

I felt lucky to have a computer of my own. I missed a noticeable amount of school staying home to protect it. This led to my dad finding out about the whole circus. He patched the top of the roof by re-sealing it, but the dreaded flap was not able to be tamed and would sometimes still leak. However the drips became far more manageable, I needed only to employ the first two techniques ever again.

It was on that computer, at that desk, in that trailer that I first ever signed up for “Facebook”. I was told it was “Canadian Myspace”. I remember how excited I was to connect with my guildies from World of Warcraft since those were the only friends I knew who used Facebook then. It is this feeling of connection that people get from Facebook that has me excited to announce that yesterday was my first day as a Production Engineer at Facebook.

The reason I’m sharing this story is to hopefully provide inspiration to those of you who feel rained on in life, as well as reminding myself of where I came from compared to where I am now. I could not have done this without my dad who worked his whole life to give me opportunities which he never had. He always did his best to raise me as a single father. He made sure to express to me how proud he was of everything I’ve been able to do with those opportunities. One thing he expressed before suddenly passing away was how perfect Alex was for me. She has been with me through my lowest lows and highest highs. She’s my most precious rock. I feel the same warmth of love for and from her as I did my dad, a love which keeps me optimistic and trying my best to do well in life no matter what.

I’m excited for the future :)

TL;DR: I work at Facebook now