my dad's a happy man

So my brother just got a job. On Wall Street. With full benefits, dental, year-end bonuses and a fat salary (although he assures me it isn't the snort-coke-off-hookers kind of salary).

This is significant because this is a man who has always shunned corporate life, much to the dismay of our father. I remember he had a job a few years back where he went to an office all day and did work and had a assignments and a boss and steady paychecks, and each time he talked about it, the veins in his neck would bulge and he'd break out in hives.

He's never been one for authority (think long-haired rocker in high school loathed by the headmaster and adored by the chicks), and to him having a full-time job was just a contract to waste away at a desk chair and emotionally beaten to a faceless pulp by society.

But don't go thinking he's some kind of unemployed vagabond. Since college, he's done just fine by himself freelancing. He even managed to go back to school for a master's degree in a massively complex and cutting edge futuristic computer science . (That is perhaps for another post, but said foray into academia just showed that this is one of the smartest, most creative thinking people I know. Stop with the awwwws.)

Nope, he's done fine, but with each passing day that he didn't have a full time job or health insurance, my father lost another fine gray hair from his poor head. See, my brother always said that every family has one - the uncle or brother or sister or cousin who bucks the tradition, breaks the family line of doctors or lawyers or whatever it might be, to forge a new path of (euphemism here) creativity.... (I don't fully agree about his assessment, particularly the part where he compared himself to our uncle who really was that one in the family... again, perhaps for another post).

For my father, a doctor from a line of doctors, this idea of setting off on a wayward path always made him a bit nervous. Although he has always been unflinchingly supportive of us and everything we do (never once a hint that we should consider being doctors), I think he was always waiting for brother to get a life. Nevermind that he had one in which he was perfectly happy and successful, it didn't fit the mold. And more importantly it didn't involve health insurance.

(And perhaps the fact that I went the traditional route right out of college, landing a job that although it paid pennies and offered only minimal health coverage, did provide some kind of stability... until I got laid off along with the entire editorial staff... just exacerbated the pressures on my brother to get a stable job. Oh how the tables have turned.)

Well now everything has changed. My father is giddy with excitement that my brother has a "real" job with a salary and a 401K and health benefits. It's similar to last year when both his children were in school earning their respective masters degrees. For a man devoted to advanced education, this was a dream come true. Now, he's won the lottery. And so now I just need to get on it and find myself a job too.