H.S. Graduation Party Tomorrow

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RSteve

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My nephew's daughter. She was adopted as an infant when my nephew and his wife were both 44-years-old. My nephew's wife had uterine cancer in her twenties and hadn't planned on ever marrying. My nephew is a physician, who met his wife when she was employed at a clinic where he practiced. The graduate is a "big" girl who has had multiple emotional problems growing up. The adoption was semi-open. The girl had a fairly normal pre-adolescence until the birth mother requested that she come visit her. That was in the adoption contract. My nephew's wife accompanied my great niece to meet her bio-mother and some half siblings. The unmarried bio-mother, with several children, was living in a 50 feet trailer in a run down California trailer park.
My great niece was terrified. She asked her adoptive mother if she was going to be left there, and within a few minutes of the visit begged to leave there for home.
From that time on, the girl's problems began. Apparently after a terrible behavioral incident, my nephew asked her what was going on. She replied, "Daddy, what do you expect. We all know where I came from."
She's been raised in affluence, yet was arrested for shoplifting junk.
But she made it through high school, mostly by correspondence/distance learning and has been accepted as a "special" student at a well respected private university. I advised her parents to send her to a local public junior college at least for an orientation year. Instead, they'll pay $50K on a gamble.
I was both angry and saddened to hear that she has an internet boyfriend, who claims to be in England, to whom she's sent numerous gifts. My nephew says the boyfriend's IP address floats, which pretty much identifies him as a predator.
But, I'll go to the party and wish her well.
 
The party was very nice and the graduate was more social and happy than I've ever seen her. I think she was surprised that so many family members attended. I still have some trepidation on how she'll handle the college experience. I frequently drive by the campus and see the young co-eds trotting around in their Daisy Duke shorts, looking like models for fitness magazines. My great niece is somewhat over six feet tall and easily 275 lbs. Even though my nephew, her father, is a physician, the young woman's food preferences always were dessert items and her parents indulged her.
 
Another H.S. graduation party tomorrow. My older brother's granddaughter. I hadn't seen her in person since the beginning of the pandemic. I'd guess she's about 5'4" tall and has been competing in gymnastics since she was very young. My brother has been forwarding video of her competing in gymnastics meets for many years. As a gymnast she's actually quite tall. I saw her in person two weeks ago at the H.S. graduation party posted above. I was stunned. Apparently, while she was competing in gymnastics, she was on a very restrictive diet to keep her weight extremely low. Now, eating normally, she is absolutely gorgeous, with an amazing figure. I mentioned it to my brother. He said he was absolutely flabbergasted when he last saw her and somewhat angry that his grandchild must have starved herself to remain competitive in her sport. Her father, my nephew, speaks four languages fluently, and works in international commerce. The new graduate will attend a local private college, with a tentative major in international business, where my brother graduated, my daughter received her M.A. and where my late sister's husband was the former vice-president for finance. As a both a high achiever and a legacy student, my nephew says the school was eager to throw scholarship money at her.

Funny story about my nephew. His former employer was a Germany based multinational corporation. My nephew speaks fluent Japanese. He studied it in high school and college and lived summers during college in Tokyo. He did not have that fact on his resume and apparently never spoke of it to his employer. He was notified that his employer had purchased a large Japanese corporation and that for an upcoming meeting in Germany, all attending should become ultra familiar with Japanese etiquette. The meeting would not be in German, rather in English, and all parties would bring their own translation team.
During the course of the meeting, my nephew said it became very apparent that the Japanese translators were having extreme difficulty with some of the colloquial English and business specific terminology. He says it was quite clear that the Japanese executives were getting quite impatient, if not angry.
My nephew said he raised his hand, bowed his head, directed first at the executives, then the translators, and said in Japanese, "Please excuse my very rudimentary command of your beautiful language, but this, to the best of my knowledge was just spoken." The Japanese executives all broke into smiles, then applauded. My nephew's boss, according to my nephew, almost dropped his jaw on the table. For the duration of the meetings, the Japanese executives requested that my nephew clarify any issues that he thought might not have been made clear by the translators.
Evenings, after the meetings concluded, my nephew, who also speaks fluent German, was the guest of the Japanese as they went to dinner and had many cocktails.

A few months ago, during the pandemic, corporate headhunters, "attacked" my nephew with job offers that were too lucrative for him to pass up. After twenty-three years with the same company he moved on. I was very surprised that he made the move. He said, "I'm 45, will probably work for another twenty-five years, and have three kids to put through college. The difference in position and pay was too great not to make a move. If I were five years older, it's doubtful that these job offers would have been made."
 
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