[masraum]

Originally Posted by legion

A friend of mine didn't go to college and his whole ambition in life was to work at the install bay at Best Buy and drink and smoke as he pleased.

When he turned 25, was told by his parents that he would have to pay $400 a month rent on his bedroom. He was so angry with them, he moved out. He couldn't afford a place on his own, so he got two roommates and split the cost. It cost him way more than $400 a month and he couldn't afford to drink and smoke as he pleased. Over the next two years, he went from install bay technician to install bay manager, to section manager to store manager. Then he decided that Best Buy wasn't paying him enough, so he jumped over to Circuit City as store manager. He decided that retail sucked and went to work for Blaupunkt (Bosch) building SEMA show cars. Then he decided he didn't want to be on the road all the time so he started writing manuals for Bosch. Then he hit a brick wall and realized he wasn't going to get promoted anymore without a college degree. So he went to night school on his own dime (his parents had offered to pay for 4 years of college 10 years earlier). Along the way, he met a girl, got married and had two kids. He finished his degree and went to work for Motorola. Now he has a security clearance and designs secure communication systems and manages their installation and lives in a nice house in the suburbs with his wife and two kids.

15 years after his a parents asked him for $400 a month in rent, that act is still a sore subject with him. I can't help but think that things ended up working out WAY better than his parents ever possibly imagined.

Great story with a funny ending. Kudos to him for getting his schit together, but not for missing the fact that if his parent's hadn't done that, he probably wouldn't be where he is today. If that had been me, I'd certainly look back and would be thanking my parents if I were him.

He may have eventually gotten his crap together anyway, but he'd have started out much later which would probably have made a big difference in so many ways.