Job Skills

Do you think this is what the boss is picturing when he says they aren't going to assign "older workers" to certain assignments? Heck, if someone isn't concerned with age discrimination, why would they worry about child labor laws?

Meet Alexander James Chavez. Son of my nephew Manny, and his wife, Krista.

Proud papa describes his prodigy son's activities, "Yeah. He's workin' on updates. He said something about the "host servers bandwidth and network conflicts. I dunno, these kids and
their computers. He said maybe mid week... "

Learning to use a computer came much later in life for me. My Hispanic mother never typed. Women with college degrees didn't type back then. At least not educated women from Puerto Rico. They paid other people to type for them. My mother explained- "If a woman learns to type- she will be locked in an office doing other people's work and never be paid properly."

So I vowed never to type more than I had to.

In His infinite wisdom- or is it His sense of humour, I gave to God my life to do with as He pleased, and God decided I should become a writer.

Getting me in front of the keyboard was the first order of business. Keeping me there was the next challenge. I learned that to type was so painful for me- anything I typed was memorized. The first real exercise of this skill- a list of student and parent names for the Maple Hill Elementary School. My husband offered to type it- but with hundreds of exotic names like Maninder and Zenobia- I didn't want to make Gerry's kind offer into a test of our marriage's strength. So one finger at a time, my fingers crawled over where they now run and leap. The keyboard.

The moral: Keep your options open. Don't let prejudice keep you from building skills. I thought typing would close off the opportunities in life. Turned out to be the one skill I had to have to use every other asset I bring to any assignment.