Trent Ling nearly washed out in Kindergarten. After a stellar and fulfilling five-year head start at home, school dawned but everything else suddenly fell apart. An unseemly abscessed tooth started the ball rolling. Then a debilitating illness rendered Trent strangely and suddenly arthritic. Numerous tests later, he was diagnosed with Rheumatic Fever, which lingered for many months and caused him to miss half of his entire Kindergarten year. In the midst of that, his elderly Kindergarten teacher passed away during that same school year. Chaos.
Slowly but finally recovering well enough from Rheumatic Fever to tolerate some activity, Trent was invited by his Aunt Hootie and Uncle Pat to join them on a road trip to Big Sandy, Montana (a 1200-mile round trip) to visit Trent’s great grandfather. Since he had missed so much school already while being cooped in the house under zero-activity orders from doctors, Trent received much appreciated green lights on the idea from his parents.
Age six, Trent hit the road for the first of many times. Slotted between Uncle Pat and Great Grandpa Jappe, Trent had emerged from a tumultuous year and had landed in the strangest and most interesting of places in his young life:
“This picture says so much,” Trent recalls 41 years later. “I much appreciated that my parents were my advocates, and not at all suffocating. Extremely fascinated, I learned about maps, speedometers, and odometers from Hootie and Pat. I saw from Grandpa Jappe that people could somehow live for a very long time. From the road I gleaned that freedom and possibility await us all. And I figured that the low times made the high times that much better and more meaningful. No matter what they were learning in Kindergarten in my absence, I remained certain that it could never compete with what I was being shown. That year and this picture provided early markings of my unique and invigorating path across the stage.”
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The first of many journeys in your lifetime. Rheumatic Fever helped teach you perseverance and patience (somewhat) while the wonderful road trip to Montana enthusiastically showed you that there’s more to life than what’s in front of your eyes. Learning at the age of 5 that the world is a big old place with amazing richness and opportunity is clearly from Heaven. Most of us were putting Lego blocks together within the walls of our homes at that age. No wonder why you can’t do ‘boredom’…
Wow! That was a rough start to your school years, Brother. But “artificial/canned learning” can’t beat the teachings and learning experiences that Uncle Pat, Aunt Hootie, and Great Grandpa Jappe offered you on that road trip. Yes, our classrooms are great social constructors but there is so much more richness and perspective of life outside of the classroom! By the way, I love the picture!
I love this! It couldn’t be written any better! God is so cool! And your facial expression is perfect too! (It’s definitely the 60’s!)
This also shows what loving interest Aunt Hootie had in our kids. What aunt would ask to take a five year old on a road trip? Only Aunt Hootie. And believe me when I say that I had to tell Trent not to run at least 10 times a day. However, that didn’t include his mouth. When you are five and you can’t have any physical activity and you are Trent, you can just imagine how much he talked. Once in a while, I would ask him, “Can we just not talk for a little while?” He was very good about entertaining himself, whether sick or well. But, boy could he talk!
Aww…. what a cutie pie you’re! This is a great story. Though I feel bad that you had to experience so much pain and so young. Pictures are the best source of memories. I can’t imagine how you feel as a boy and was ordered to have zero-activity! In today’s age, kids who have rheumatic fever will be happy to just sit on the couch with a smartphone 🙂 I also feel for Meme/Papa to have their baby boy sick with Rheumatic Fever. Well, look at you now! Thanks for sharing your picture with grandpa Jappe and uncle Pat.