Isaac
In 2002, at age forty-one, after loosing a couple of pregnancies, I was finally able to birth Isaac. We named him Isaac because we were beginning to relate to Abraham and Sarah having children in older years. I’d forgotten that Isaac meant laughter until after I’d held him a number of times and giggled with joy as I looked into his precious face.
His older brother, Elisha, was fascinated with Isaac right from the start and ended up sharing his room with him when Isaac became a toddler. He worked at teaching him goofy faces and sounds—becoming enthralled with the effects and laughing. When Isaac could talk, Elisha enjoyed extending Isaac’s logic into hilarious conversation. We often credited Elisha with the unique sense of humor that Isaac ended up with.
During Isaac’s grade school years, I noticed his keen interest in charts and excel workbooks. Some of my other children find those things interesting too, but Isaac can be obsessed with them. If I work in excel files planning school schedules, chore charts, or budgets, he peers into my desk space and just has to know exactly what I’m doing. He was especially fascinated when I worked with project management software in one of my online college classes.
I puzzled many times at how to create course work for him in high school that would give him a taste of what he could do with his interest. Finally, I found a book that teaches Statistics using Excel charting features. In the process of the book, it also teaches how to use the basic features of Excel. Statistics is normally a college-level course, but I felt that this book simplified statistics’ concepts enough to use in his junior level of high school. Isaac grasped the Excel and statistics concepts well using it and has gone on to finish his senior year.
Graduating in the year 2020 amidst all the COVID19 chaos has been difficult for Isaac. He hopes to learn web development and find a career in that. Only time will tell.
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