I’m really proud of my resume.  Not just because of what I had to do to earn it or the modest accomplishments it records.  Rather, more that it reflects what I believed in and who I strove to be.  Out of my peer group (give or take a few years), I’ve probably made the least amount of money and accumulated the fewest assets.  Instead, I got paid in laughter and joy.  Lots of experience, knowledge, and if I may say so with humility, a little perspective and wisdom.

One of the people who targeted me in NYC was an ass-kisser (the real term I use is a bit more profane), a backstabber, a liar, a manipulator, and a coward (he was so scared one time to even make a call to his superiors to postpone a meeting).  He even betrayed his own boss for what amounted to a hill of beans.  He focused on getting better sounding titles even when the squad was being reduced in size.  We had a nickname for him at the NYPD – silver tongue, black heart.  He gave my epileptic colleague literal fits.  So stupid, he boasted about having spies in the office.  A real spymaster does not do that.  George Smiley, he was not.  He lied about being a prosecutor (his law firm loaned him out while getting paid his six figure salary).

And he is now a Chief Judge of some agency or another, friends with Mayor Eric Adams, honored, etc.  I even think he won some “Man of the Year” award from his bar association.  His daughter who is my daughter’s age goes to a 45K private school in the city.

Yet, I woke up one morning and asked myself, would I trade places with him?  A quick and resounding no. 

Not worth it.  Don’t want it, don’t need it.  I may have been many things, good and bad, but I wasn’t that.  At the very least, coward isn’t and will not be anywhere near my name.

Who we are is what remains after all the trinkets are stripped away.

As to the daughter (and son), what father can tell them my stories?  Not too many, I venture.

And that school is certainly not teaching what I’ve picked up on this journey.