A Kid Finds Purpose

And His Passion Will Follow

I dropped my seventeen-year-old son, Elias, off early Saturday because he volunteered to take the first shift with his ROTC class to park cars, help vendors, and pick up trash at the fall festival in town. As he opened the door out into the darkness I asked what time he needed to be picked up. “I’m only supposed to work until noon, but if they need more help I’d like to stay longer.” I told him to work as long as he wanted and to give me a call when he was done.

That’s becoming the new normal for him. Over the past few years, I’ve watched him transform from a typically lazy teenager into a young man with drive and passion. The worry I feel for his future has waned in proportion to his excitement to get dirty and help others. My main worry now is his gullibility.

He’s a prime target for con artists. I don’t know if it’s because he’s on the autism spectrum or if it’s his nature to see only the good in people. I had to tell him recently, “You know [Kid] talks a lot, bud. I don’t think he’s going to pick you up this weekend to drive the trails in the mountains in his Jeep.”

“How come? He said he would.”

“Well, I know where [Kid] lives and I’ve never seen a Jeep there.”

“But he keeps it at his uncle’s house.”

“Has he ever driven it to school?”

“No, because it’s too loud to drive in the school parking lot. They banned him.”

I sighed and said, “Did he ask you for gas money?”

Crickets.

“Okay, if he picks you up this weekend, you’re welcome to go have fun. But, if not — "

“I know, I know. I have to get my money back.”

“Right. You can continue to be friends with him, but maybe don’t give him any more money, okay?”

Of course, [Kid] didn’t pick Elias up and I know much more about [Kid] than I let on, but I want him to be able to work stuff out on his own. I’ll guide him as much as I need to, but I hope he won’t need me forever. I’m not saying I plan on hiding in bushes nearby or surveilling him from trees to make sure he isn’t being taken advantage of, but I do own binoculars and tree climbing spikes.

When Elias called me at noon, I picked up my wallet and keys, then sat them down when he told me the boss was going to let him work until six. Over five hours into his shift and he was still excited to be there. My heart sang. He has found a passion for work, and with passion comes purpose. And purpose is the key to everything.

Lack of purpose is why some men drop dead six months after retirement. They’ve dedicated their lives to the company and when they wake up one day with nothing to do – golf only lasts so long – their souls wither away, and their bodies follow shortly after. My paternal grandfather cut his own grass until he was ninety-three years old. His children, after fishing his thirty-plus year-old riding lawn mower from the pond a third time, relieved him of his lawncare duties. He died within a couple of months. I’m not saying he would have lived to a hundred fifteen if he would have been able to continue cutting his grass, but I think losing his last bit of purpose was the final straw. Then again, he probably would have drowned in the pond on his fourth excursion into aquatic horticulture. He may have preferred to go that way, old-school southern man that he was.

I’m the third generation of Cox boys to come from that pig headed I’ll-work-until-I-die old-school southern man. My dad was the same way. I’m as incapable of relaxation as they were. I have a pretty good view into Elias’s future.

My dad and grandad made a living working whatever jobs they could get. They were bound by time and place. I grew up in Hemingway, South Carolina, the same small town they grew up in; a town suspended in time despite what happened in the big world outside its walls. Storefronts changed, the Red and White grocery store burned down, and vegetation grew over the train tracks that kept the metal scrap yard on its side of town. But the town remains the same. It had a population of eight hundred when I left in nineteen-ninety-five. Four-hundred-sixty people live there now, thirty years later. I think my entire generation left, and I don’t blame us.

I’ve worked jobs I hated, because they were the jobs I could get. My first job was cutting grass in our neighborhood. I half-assed it because I was thirteen and hadn’t yet grown an appreciation for not having my dad’s foot up my ass. From age sixteen to eighteen, I washed tractor trailers in the blazing sun (for a company that is no longer there), cut grass, stuffed bowls into boxes at a Tupperware plant (for a company that is no longer there), cut grass, as a maintenance apprentice at a textile factory (for a company that is no longer there), cut grass, and washed used cars on a “BUY HERE, PAY HERE!” lot that is no longer there. It has been a year or two since I’ve been to my hometown. I wonder if the grass is still there.

I scrubbed the dirt and grime from the tractors and trailers, even in the seams that were hard to get to and often went unnoticed. I stacked bowls evenly and made double sure to stack the proper number, even when I was backed up. I apprenticed the maintenance like nobody has apprenticed it before. I never got good at cutting grass. I still hate it.

My teenage brain couldn’t have known it then, but I loved the work. I hated the jobs. The second I saw the Air Force recruiter wandering the hallways of my high school, something clicked – a way out - and I signed paperwork. The idea of running it by my parents first didn’t occur to me.

Now, thirty years later, I get to fly and maintain airplanes and, as the saying goes, I haven’t “worked a day” in almost twenty years. When Elias was about ten, he never asked me if I was going to work. He asked, “Are you going to the airport to hang out with your friends?” When I told him yes, he always asked if he could come. I brought him as much as possible so he could help me around the hangar and get to know the friends I fly and work with. He told me many times, “This doesn’t seem like a real job.”

From the mouths of babes.

When I pulled up to the building to pick Elias up after his ten-hour shift, he walked out with arms full of food, a toy firefighter helmet on his head, and a smile so big I’m surprised he didn’t trip over it. “I had the best day,” he said as he loaded my back seat with caramel corn, boxes of fried chicken, and jugs of tea and lemonade. He climbed in the passenger seat and said, “I got to work with the police department to park cars and help all the vendors get their stuff set up and I started sweating so I took my sweatshirt off and then I forgot about it, but officer Thomson said he had it…” and on and on. I listened to all of it, though I’d already lived it.

I felt the worry fade away. His work ethic has been passed down from previous generations. He’s seen that it’s okay to leave his hometown in search of something better. He knows his parents will support him when he needs it. He’ll find his purpose, and he’ll bring his passion with him. He’s going to be okay, and so am I.